Why Employee Ownership Is Central to AMERICAN SYSTEMS’ Success, According to CEO John Steckel

John Steckel has spent more than four decades leading organizations across the military, commercial and government contracting sectors. As president and CEO of AMERICAN SYSTEMS, the employee-owned national security company, he is guiding the company’s next phase of growth through strategic acquisitions, digital transformation and investments in artificial intelligence, cybersecurity and engineering capabilities. 

Since assuming the CEO role in 2023, Steckel has overseen the company’s acquisition and integration of Epsilon, the largest in AMERICAN SYSTEMS’ history, expanded its workforce to nearly 2,000 employee-owners, advanced AI and digital engineering initiatives, and led the organization to a perfect 110/110 score on its Cybersecurity Maturity Model Certification Level 2 assessment. 

In this Executive Spotlight interview, Steckel discusses the employee ownership culture driving the company’s success, emerging trends shaping the GovCon market, accelerating technology adoption for warfighters and the leadership principles that guide his approach as CEO.

ExecutiveBiz: Tell me about AMERICAN SYSTEMS’ culture. What aspects of the company do you think are contributing most to its success while helping to attract and retain top-level talent?

John Steckel: AMERICAN SYSTEMS is 100-percent employee-owned through our Employee Stock Ownership Plan, or ESOP. Our people are not just employees, they are owners whose daily decisions directly affect mission outcomes and long‑term enterprise value. Our culture can best be described in one simple word: accountability. We are all accountable to ourselves, each other and for the success of our customers and AMERICAN SYSTEMS. This mindset drives a level of ownership, pride and teamwork you simply cannot fake.

Our ‘cultural beliefs’ form the foundation of this culture. They empower our employees to think and act like owners, and they drive how we work together and with our customers.

1. Be engaged. It’s critical that everyone, no matter their job title, understands that they can make a positive impact on both our customers and our company in their role.
2. Better together. Our employee-owners represent a wide variety of experiences and viewpoints that contribute to our success. We value sharing insights in an open and collaborative environment to make the company better every day.
3. Create opportunities. Each employee-owner contributes to our company’s growth through the excellence they deliver daily.
4. Bid smart. We work together in winnable bids that lead to increased shareholder value and more employee opportunities, because our employee-owners are the shareholders!

Employee ownership is also a powerful recruiting and retention advantage. People are not working for a private equity firm or public shareholders, they’re working for each other. When the company succeeds, every employee-owner shares in that success, creating a culture where personal and organizational goals are fully aligned.

ExecutiveBiz: What factors or GovCon industry trends are influencing your growth strategy as you look toward AMERICAN SYSTEMS’ future?

Steckel: Several forces are shaping our strategy. First, increasing mission complexity. Our customers’ problems are not getting simpler. They sit at the intersection of cyber, data, space, and contested domains. This reinforces our focus on high‑end mission and information engineering where the intersection of deep technical expertise, innovation around new technologies and operational understanding matters the most. We apply technologies such as AI, machine learning and model-based systems engineering where they create measurable mission value, not simply because they’re available.

Second, the acquisition environment is going through rapid change. The Revolutionary FAR Overhaul brought more than welcome change to the customer buying process. It’s all about speed to market and being flexible and agile to respond to evolving customer needs.

Our company culture combined with making investments in the capabilities that matter the most to our customers, like our recent acquisition of Epsilon, which expanded our capabilities in digital transformation, cybersecurity, managed IT and secure data center services, puts us in a great position for future growth and ultimately provides more opportunities for our employee-owners’ personal and professional growth.

Finally, the GovCon market is facing a long‑term competition for specialized talent. Our growth strategy assumes that our 100-percent employee‑owned model and culture must be part of our value proposition. We want to be the national security company where the best people choose to work because they can do meaningful work and build real ownership over time.

ExecutiveBiz: What’s the most challenging aspect of engineering and analysis + test and evaluation, and what solution would you propose for this challenge?

Steckel: Engineering and analysis and test and evaluation are some of the many capabilities we bring to our customers. One of the interesting developments with the changes to the acquisition process is the evolution of testing and evaluating emerging technologies throughout the development lifecycle and into the hands of our warfighters. We support the Department of War in accelerating that transition by focusing on rapid, operationally relevant demonstrations and assessments of emerging technologies to give decision makers timely, data-driven insight into how those technologies perform in realistic operational environments.

It’s not just that we conduct these demonstrations for our customers, it’s also how we conduct them. We integrate engineering and analysis capabilities, like advanced data analytics and artificial intelligence, into our proven test and evaluation processes. The result is that capabilities are delivered to the warfighter in dramatically compressed timelines and at lower cost through clear and defensible information and technology evaluation.

ExecutiveBiz: Where are you seeing the most exciting opportunities to deliver better capabilities to our warfighters today, and how are you harnessing these opportunities?

Steckel: When I started my career in business-to-government, I had the opportunity to support delivery of some amazing technologies to our warfighters. I always felt that leveraging technology developed in the product side of our industry into the service side of our industry had potential, whether that means equipping warehousemen with exoskeletons to allow them to move inventory within a warehouse without heavy machinery, or using robots to support shipboard logistics. I always felt there was unlimited potential to support our warfighter faster and at a lower cost.

I never really saw the intersection of services and technology come together—until today. The ability for AI to harness vast amounts of information in seconds makes that information actionable to our warfighters and potentially accelerates decision-making in numerous dimensions. Robotics and the advent of drones on the battlefield are changing warfare almost daily. It’s absolutely amazing how fast technology is advancing our warfighters’ capabilities.

At AMERICAN SYSTEMS, we are working with our customers to help bring these advanced technologies to their programs where it makes sense. We work to understand the customer’s needs and apply technology appropriately to make their desired outcome a reality without jeopardizing the mission. A great example of this is how we integrated LLMs and Generative AI into one of our test and evaluation programs that resulted in dramatically shortening the testing cycle and accelerated delivery to the warfighter.

We look to integrate advanced technology into everything we do for our customers and ourselves to reduce cost and deliver desired outcomes at the speed of technology.

ExecutiveBiz: Your website mentions: “The supreme quality for leadership is unquestionably integrity. Without it, no real success is possible, no matter whether it is on a section gang, a football field, in an army, or in an office.” – Dwight D. Eisenhower. Tell me about what leading with integrity means to you and how this principle has guided you as CEO of AMERICAN SYSTEMS. 

Steckel: I’ve been blessed that my leadership journey has passed through the U.S. Naval Academy, service in the fleet and some amazing companies. Over that journey, I’ve learned the lesson that integrity and trust in others is critical to all leadership. At AMERICAN SYSTEMS, integrity is one of our core values, and it’s foundational to our culture of ownership and accountability.

Integrity is all about being open and honest with yourself and others. It means keeping to your principles and being true in how you act. Personally, I strive to live up to that value by living our cultural beliefs of being engaged, better together, creating opportunities, and bidding smart while being as transparent as possible with all our employee-owners. Living the value of integrity is critical to the success of our company and our ESOP, not just for me, but for all our 2,000 employee-owners.