ABOUT US

The Critical Mass (TCM) is a SWaM-certified Small, Woman-owned business dedicated to the optimization of global security assistance. Located on the waterfront of Old Town Alexandria in Northern Virginia, TCM maintains an elite, agile, and experienced corps of security and sustainment experts spanning the public, private, civilian, and military sectors.

A diffuse and evolving global threat landscape combined with the rapid pace of technological advances, increasing accessibility and vulnerability of weaponizable and dual-use assets, and an expanding and diversifying security stakeholder community will challenge human and fiscal resources and outmoded engagement models. It is critical that assistance efforts adapt to ensure individual and institution partners are set up and equipped to independently yet cooperatively pursue and achieve shared, long-term security outcomes.

Therefore, it is our:

MISSION to transcend existing national and global security constructs by facilitating security assistance capacity building, training, and other engagement activities within the context of a sustainment framework designed for the 21st century threat landscape.

Supporting our:

VISION to realize an authentically connected, cooperative, synchronized, and fiscally viable global threat reduction community that achieves mutually beneficial, agreed upon, and appropriately designed security assistance outcomes.

Through our:

FOCUS on Partner-based “Impact” Development. TCM understands that stakeholders with a role or responsibility within their national security enterprise, to shape, qualify and quantify, build-out, optimize, and/or leverage existing competencies can and should serve as force multipliers in setting and achieving transformational, specific, and viable security assistance outcomes. TCM’s sustainability framework and methodologies provide an architecture and tools to activate “principal growth” ensuring impact and capacity endures post-engagement.

SERVICE OFFERINGS

TCM offers security and defense assistance policy, program, and project professional and technical support to U.S. and other donor Government sponsors, implementing stakeholders, foreign assistance coordinators and recipients.

Stakeholder Engagement

Strategic Security Framework Assessments

Strategic Policy Development & Action Plans

Program Lifecycle Design & Advising

Support to Technical, Policy, or Other Capacity Building Activities

Partner Impact Development through Professional Skills, Coaching & Mentoring

OUR METHODOLOGY

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TCM defines sustainability in the security assistance context to be “consistent and demonstrated individual or organizational capacity and self-driven commitment to acquire, practice, adapt, and leverage knowledge, skills, or competencies.” Full sustainability can be considered achieved when all these conditions are present.

To this end, TCM offers a proprietary security assistance framework, known as E-CCEL©, that serves as a roadmap for realizing transformational and sustainable outcomes. E-CCEL is premised on the “Competence Corollary” – the explicit and active recognition and integration of resident capabilities, practices, cultures, and expertise throughout the lifecycle of any assistance effort.

Evaluate Competence

Occurs outside of and is applied throughout the framework sequence.

Cultivate Competence

Information gathering, contextualization of goals, expectation setting, and awareness-raising phase.

Coalesce Competence

A representative group of stakeholders is identified and convened into meaningful bodies or acting entities.

Empower Competence

Augmentation, creation, or activation of authorized and recognized organizational mechanisms that serve as vehicles for the adoption and practice of new or enhanced processes or capabilities.

Leverage Competence

A "Critical Mass" of stakeholders demonstrates the ability and intent to apply new or enhanced processes or capabilities in support of broader or previously unaffiliated teams, organizations, sectors, or efforts.