Members of the OCS are put through a series of physical and academic tests. Only a small number of people have the potential to finish OCS training and join the world's best military. Chavira was a successful Navy candidate, and he served as a nuclear officer before becoming an intelligence officer. He received his first taste of leadership and management while serving in the Navy. As a Managing Partner of Axiologic Solutions, Chavira still embodies the ideals of the Navy, which include honor, courage, leadership, and collaboration.

 

Michael Chavira worked as a systems engineer at Booz Allen Hamilton before founding Axiologic Solutions to defend the country's U.S. Army soldiers. Chavira discovered the value of focusing on the human component of complex systems during his time there. Often, the military is completing huge acquisitions and constructing complicated systems, but these systems are not performing at full capacity or as efficiently as they could be because they are not focused on the end user. This insight prompted Chavira to consider starting a business and how he would run it differently if he could. "It was during this time in my life that Tom Stauber and I started talking about starting a business," Chavira explained. "We wanted to apply as many of the principles we'd learned in our careers to being an employee-centric organization as possible." We decided to focus on what we both knew very well, which was systems engineering, because we met in graduate school at UVA."

 

Over the last decade, Chavira and Stauber have utilized the same methodology they've used to provide best-in-class services to their customers to build their company and guarantee their internal procedures are running smoothly. "As we grew our business, we rapidly realized how crucial it is to optimize our business procedures." Running a $20 million firm demands a completely different mindset and set of abilities than reaching your first $1 million in revenue." As a result of this insight, Chavira sought out and spoke with other business owners, many of whom ran much larger organizations, to inquire about the tools and processes they used to run their businesses. "I reasoned that if we could adopt some of these tools before we required them, we'd be more effective than our competitors throughout our growth phases."