Top 10 Operating Executives to Watch

Chris McCall, Vice President of Operations, LGS Innovations

With a background in management consulting and education, Chris McCall joined LGS in 2008 and worked through increasingly senior roles in business operations. When LGS transitioned from a corporate subsidiary of Alcatel-Lucent to an independent company five years ago, McCall directed efforts that resulted in streamlined business operations, more accessible internal data and increased agility. He was appointed to his current position in December 2017.

Why watch:
This year, McCall will be working to manage growth challenges while increasing the firm’s agility and responsiveness to customers’ needs.

LGS has seen double-digit revenue growth in recent years, generates a lot of intellectual property and typically produces a new patent approximately every two weeks. To keep pace with this growth, McCall will continue to focus on business case diligence, recruiting and fostering the LGS culture of innovation as his highest priorities.

“Today’s millennials are just as attracted to the culture of an organization as they are to the kinds of science and engineering projects they’ll be working on,” McCall said. “So, one key priority for 2019 is to continue to attract tomorrow’s engineers and program managers with flexible work schedules, teleworking options, tuition assistance, incentive awards and — most of all — growth paths so they can anticipate a career at LGS, not just a job opportunity.”

McCall will also be working this year to help speed the process of packaging LGS technologies into marketable solutions tailored to customers’ needs. As part of the LGS strategy for growing the LGS culture of innovation and its corporate efficiency, he plans to increase skip-level meetings with his own team and with those on other teams.

“Our customers’ missions must be considered in every aspect of the business if we are to be successful,” McCall said. “The time I spend working with our operations teams and other customer-facing groups within LGS provides the most valuable insights into the true functioning and operational needs of the business.”