This is a unique company, built on the talent and drive of each person we have brought in over the years. We depend on each other and expect everyone who joins our company to bring all they have to the table.

If we've hired you, we've hired you to fill a valuable position in our company. More importantly, we hired you to think, to use your judgment and to act in the best interests of the company at all times. To put it simply: "Always do what needs to be done without waiting to be asked to do it."

You never need permission to do great work—it is expected. It is your responsibility, not your supervisor's or the company's, to ensure that is what happens.

Many people have "jobs," but at DefenseWeb, this is what we do for a living. There is a big difference. Working together at DefenseWeb is an important part of our lives—not something we should dread on Monday and run from on Friday. It is something that we are doing to help us advance our skills, earn a living, take care of our families and ourselves and improve our financial security.

We expect you to require minimal "management" and instead, to be guided by a personal desire to be the best at what you do, to make a contribution wherever possible and to help others do the same. We are likely to get caught up in the daily routine of our business, the never-ending changes required to meet our customers' needs and the ongoing rush of activities. Our day-to-day practices may make it look like this principle no longer applies. Don't be deceived.

As part of the unique group of people who make up this company, you have our permission to act in our mutual best interest. If at any time you do not feel we are doing the right thing—the thing you most believe would help us all—you have an obligation to let us know. You have our permission to speak up when necessary to say what needs to be said, to make a suggestion, or to question an action or a decision.

In the same way, we promise to listen to what you have to say and to consider it carefully. This doesn't mean we will always agree with you, nor that we will necessarily change what we are doing, but we always want to hear what you most believe would help us better achieve our goals and to create a business that helps all of us—our customers, each of us, and the business as a whole to be successful.

In order to improve our business, you will need to seek to understand how and why things are done the way they are done before you work towards changing our way of doing business. We ask that you try to work with the way we work, but want you to tell us if you think that way needs to be changed.

This may sound like common sense, but don't confuse what sounds simple with what is easy to do. If it were, everyone would do it and all people, all businesses, would be successful. The fact is that many dream, but few act. Many businesses start, but most fail.

We are not dreamers. We take action, we try, we sometimes fail. We learn and we improve. We have built a business that started with little more than an idea and, through the efforts of hard-working individuals like you, we have survived while giants have fallen.

We know what we are doing, we know what can be done and we know that we have not even begun to see the payoff from years of coming to work with this attitude. We want to succeed and expect that if you join this company, you will do the same.