Raytheon’s Fundamentals For The Future

To develop, integrate and apply our capabilities effectively, to drive innovation, to meet our customers’ needs, to achieve growth, to enhance shareholder value, we must retain, attract and develop the best talent.

These fundamentals start with a core foundation in ethics, because that is essential to earning and maintaining the trust of our customers. We know that bad things happen to good people, but when they do, our team knows it is important to raise one’s hand at the earliest stage and ask for help. As part of this awareness process, we are continuing the transition I mentioned in last year’s letter from an ethics “training” regimen to focus more specifically on ongoing, lifelong ethics “education.” We believe good companies identify issues early and then apply the proper resources for resolution.

To ethics, we add a culture of learning, because companies that depend on innovation must draw upon the skills of lifelong learners. And a key element of the learning process is embedded in our Raytheon Six Sigma™ efforts. With each project and each employee experience, we learn more about process improvement and about providing value to the customer. Raytheon Six Sigma is now part of our DNA structure, and it continues to evolve to meet the needs of the business and our customers.

We are also using our learning initiatives to reinforce the skills that have made us successful in the past — and to add new capabilities necessary to remain successful. We have initiated the Raytheon Certified Systems Architect program that is training and certifying a new generation of technical leaders to be capable of designing and integrating the mission solutions of the future. We have a number of certified architects — supported by close to 3,000 engineers trained in the principles of systems engineering and hundreds of lead systems engineers who have completed our extensive Systems Engineering Technical Development program. These training initiatives continue to improve our capabilities, expand our ranks of systems architecture and systems engineering experts, and provide the core skills required to grow our company.

We surround all of these fundamentals with a focus on diversity — of thought, as well as of gender, age, race, sexual preference and all the aspects that together make each of us unique. The company’s focus on inclusiveness and the external recognition we have received are very gratifying, but the journey continues. We will continue to pick up the pace of this important journey.

To continue to be world-class innovators, we also must continue to value different ideas and put a premium on respect, which our team defines as acknowledging one’s presence, valuing one’s opinion, providing ongoing feedback, showing appreciation and explaining why we do what we do. This is about all of Raytheon’s team members being valued members of a great team.