By T.J. Prieur
The first film Gary Lisota, president and CEO of Valkyrie Enterprises, remembers seeing with his father was Kirk Douglas’s 1958 action-adventure flick, “The Vikings.”
“That movie captured my imagination,” says the Wisconsin native.
Later, while Lisota served as an officer in the Navy during the Vietnam War, a piece of Nordic lore again caught his attention. He read about a turn-of-the-century sloop named Valkyrie that had won the America’s Cup regatta several times.
He promised himself that if he ever owned a boat, he would christen it after the legendary warrior angels of Norse mythology, the valkyries.
EQUIPPING THE SOLDIERS | Gary Lisota, president and CEO of Valkyrie Enterprise attributes the success of his fairly new company to his employees. Photo by Paul Chin, Jr.
Lisota now sails Valkyrie IV and the image continues to follow him through his career. The vanity plates on his Ford Expedition bear the name, as does his three-year-old company, Valkyrie Enterprises.
Though he shied away from the name at first, reasoning that most people don’t know the myth or have trouble pronouncing the word, his No. 2 business associate suggested that it might be “a good branding thing.”
“Best advice I ever got,” Lisota says.
He has embraced the name and its associated mythos ever since. The company’s Virginia Beach office is decorated with Viking swords and shields, and the “hold music” on the telephone is Richard Wagner’s “Ride of the Valkyries.”
“Valkyrie” is a fitting namesake for a company that contracts engineering and technical services to the Department of Defense with a focus on the U.S. Navy and Army, and NATO.
Lisota has been in the industry since the 1980s. Prior to launching Valkyrie in June 2007, he spent 25 years with AMSEC, which he joined at the ground level and rose through the ranks to become COO and CEO.
Though he loved his work at AMSEC, as the company grew to nearly a half billion dollars in annual sales, he began to miss the feel it used to possess, the feel of a small business.
He didn’t have the time to walk around and talk to his people or visit his clients unless an issue needed to be resolved, he explains.
“My thought with Valkyrie,” Lisota says, “was that this was a chance to get back to basics, back to focusing on my employees and my customers.”
The company has had a fast start. Three years after opening its doors, Valkyrie has 102 employees and a run-rate of $17 million a year.
It became profitable last year—a rare early achievement for a small business, he says.
Lisota attributes Valkyrie’s success to its employees. He hired colleagues from AMSEC who had witnessed the evolution of a small business into a much larger one. It is a pool of talent that is able to handle growth, he says.
He emphasizes the high-end talent on every strata, from technicians to systems engineers.
“My philosophy on day one with this company,” Lisota says, “is ‘We hire the best to be the best’, and we have truly done that here.”
But for Lisota, it’s not enough to just hire the best.
“You have to stay interested in the people,” he says, “stay interested in their work, and show them that you care. Most people of course want reasonable compensation and benefits, but what excites people is when a company shows a strong interest in them personally, in their projects, in their growth.”
Lisota mentions “the old MGWA—when the management goes walking around.” He accentuates the importance of all levels of management spending a portion of their workday or workweek getting to know the people with whom they work.
To foster interaction and motivation, Valkyrie hosts monthly birthday celebrations, luncheons and employee breakfasts for on- and off-site employees.
“At the end of the day,” he says, “I think that type of interest and involvement, and a thanks once in a while from the front office for a job well done, is more important to people than a pay raise. I mean, everyone wants more pay and better benefits, but people don’t stay at companies just because the pay is good. They stay at companies because they are motivated. They’re excited. They believe in the company’s overall vision.”
