Artificial intelligence has been talked about for decades on how it would revolutionize human life and society. I was obviously intrigued, yet skeptical, when I began studying Generative AI in 2021. Even as I began experimenting with it in those early days, I often felt underwhelmed by its nascent capabilities. Does anyone even remember when ChatGPT knew nothing beyond September 2021?
Fast forward to today, and I’ve learned something important: Generative AI is truly remarkable, but it isn’t magic and is also not something to fear. I also strongly believe it is something that can genuinely help GovCon businesses if you can find ways to use it thoughtfully.
Here are some honest reflections and practical lessons from my own journey:
Why AI—and Why Now?
What struck me about AI wasn’t the flashy marketing claims but personally seeing how the right prompts could quickly sift through complex information and save my company time allowing us to focus on deeper strategy and building relationships.
Three Key Lessons I’ve Learned:
- Start Small, Learn Safely: My first experiments were simple—summarizing lengthy RFPs, procurement policy updates, and even developing capture briefs to help me formulate initial win strategies. The initial outputs weren’t always perfect, but it did allow me to free up time to focus on other priorities that required my own personal thinking, strategy development, and conversations with clients. As I gained more knowledge and comfort, I began to experiment further including creating my own personal GovCon GPT, Federal Growth Advisor. I may decide to publish this soon, so please stay tuned!
- Human Judgment Still Matters Most: AI is not going to immediately replace nuanced understanding, and I know it can’t interpret personal relationships. I found it helpful in suggesting capture strategies based on past data but knowing whether those strategies resonate with an agency’s specific pain points still requires hands-on human insight. Also, just because it can help you build a capture plan, doesn’t mean it can actually execute the capture tasks!
- It’s About the Right Prompts and Agents: Asking multiple generic questions does not equate to better answers. What I discovered was that clear, thoughtful prompts yielded far better outcomes than repeatedly asking basic questions. For example, instead of asking AI, “Can you explain what CSOs and OTAs are and why the government is using them more?”, I would start off with, “Act as a federal acquisition strategist with years of OTA/CSO experience that previously grew a multi-billion GovCon as the chief growth officer. Using current DoD and Executive guidance from 2025, outline a three-phase market entry plan that leverages CSOs and OTAs. Your strategy should include agency targeting, teaming considerations, legal pitfalls, and proposal design tactics unique to non-FAR-based models.” Go ahead and give it a try and you’ll see what I mean.
How We’re Using AI (Without Losing Our Humanity)
At Red Team, AI is not replacing how we’re supporting clients or running our company. In fact, as we better learn AI and understand how to apply it to our own company growth, it has allowed us to focus more effort and time on our client relationships, partnerships, and delivery success.
Here’s how:
- Focused Use Cases: We’re very selective and use AI where it truly saves time, like analyzing publicly available data, applying Executive Order and FAR updates to impacts on growth strategy, refining content, and drafting initial BD and capture ideas. I’ve also spent countless hours testing tools, GPT versions, and analysis on federal procurement strategies. If anyone is curious on whether it’s possible to have 200-page conversation on how AI + human interface can help scale a federal contractor in unpredictable times, I have a few of those.
- Guardrails in Place: We review AI outputs to ensure quality and accuracy. Believe me that everything that it generates is not always accurate or even better than the original input! Given how meticulous we are with getting to the right answer, we will often not use what AI produces given its lack of understanding of relationships, preferences, and subjectivity.
- Continuous Learning: We are teaching our teams and clients how to use AI effectively. You might think this is an impact to Red Team’s business, but we see it as an opportunity to level up our clients to ensure they’re using AI the right way. By empowering our clients, we are improving their chances of securing wins and scaling their company more quickly.
An Open Invitation to Learn Together
Over the last two years of using GenAI, I’ve come to understand AI’s limitations alongside its strengths. Although it has added tremendous benefit to Red Team, it can’t replace what we do or what our clients do, such as building personal relationships, interpreting subtle agency politics, making final strategic decisions, or delivering the best possible service.
And we’re all still learning. We don’t have all the answers, but we’re committed to openly sharing what we find. To that end, we’re considering hosting a monthly virtual roundtable: informal, interactive sessions to openly discuss real use cases, share experiences (good and bad), and collectively get smarter.
If you’re interested in participating, please comment or message me directly. These sessions will be about learning together how to use it wisely, not selling anything AI-related.
Final Thought
I believe the future of GovCon is about AI supporting us to work smarter, faster, and more strategically. Whether you’re ready to dive in or just starting to explore, we’re here to learn alongside you. I believe real progress comes from open collaboration and sharing best practices that help us all grow in how we apply AI to our work.
This article was written by Jeff Shen, President of Red Team
