12 Books to Help You Do Your Job Better – Plus the 7 Gov Stories

On GovLoop Insights’ DorobekINSIDER:

• Sometimes you can’t choose your supporting cast. You have to manage what you have and make the best of it. Managers sometimes inherit employees they don’t know how to develop and they must work directly with peers they don’t mesh with. But the best leaders will always find a way to compromise and push forward. We get some insider tips.

You can find all of our programs online: DorobekINSIDER.com and GovLoop Insights at http://insights.govloop.com.

But up front: The DorobekINSIDER summer reading list: 12 books to help you do your job better

As life generally slows down during the summer, it is a good time to do a bit of reflection. One of the best says to do that for me is by reading. And there are some great books out there worth your time.

A few of my favorites:

• Little Bets: How Breakthrough Ideas Emerge from Small Discoveries by Peter Sims: I selected the book for the DorobekINSIDER Book Club a few years ago, but the book seems as relevant today as it did back then. Sims talks about doing little things that can have a big impact. What could be better mantra for government, right? You can also hear the DorobekINSIDER Book Club conversation with Sims and Dave McClure, the former associate administrator of GSA’s Office of Citizen Services and Innovative Technology.

• Drive: The Surprising Truth About What Motivates Us by Daniel Pink: Another selection from the DorobekINSIDER Book Club. The crux of the argument in this book is that pay-for-performance systems simply don’t work all that well. It is essentially a carrot-and-stick approach, and there is ample evidence that the carrot-and-stick is actually de-motivator. A caveat: These are for information age jobs. And he argues that there are better ways to motivate people. Hear the DorobekINSIDER Book Club discussion here.

• The SPEED of Trust: The One Thing That Changes Everything by Stephen M.R. Covey: A third selection from the DorobekINSIDER Book Club from back in 2008 — but again, just as relevant today. This book was recommended to me by Dave Wennergren back when he was at the Defense Department and he stressed that without trust, nothing can get done. The book notes that trust is built — and learned. Again, you can hear the DorobekINSIDER Book Club back when it was on the radio here.]

Tom Fox from the Partnership for Public Service gave us his summer reading list last year. And if you are more of a movie kind of person, Fox offered leadership lessons from movies… there is even a book on the subject: Movies to Manage By by John Clemens.

Finally, FastCompany recently posted 9 Beach Reads For Ambitious People:

• 7 Habits of Highly Effective People; The Creative Habit: Learn It and Use It for Life;

• The 4-Hour Workweek: Escape 9-5, Live Anywhere, and Join the New Rich;

• Finding Your Own North Star: Claiming the Life You Were Meant to Live;

• The Happiness Project: Or, Why I Spent a Year Trying to Sing in the Morning, Clean My Closets, Fight Right, Read Aristotle, and Generally Have More Fun;

• Manage Your Day-to-Day: Build Your Routine, Find Your Focus, and Sharpen Your Creative Mind;

• The Power of Habit: Why We Do What We Do in Life and Business;

• Switch: How to Change Things When Change Is Hard;

• Getting Things Done: The Art of Stress-Free Productivity

The SEVEN stories that impact your life

1. Government Executive: Senators Want a Proper Count of Intelligence Contractors- “The 17 agencies in the intelligence community must get a better handle on the extent of their reliance on contractors, witnesses told a Senate panel on Wednesday. Overuse of outsourcing presents risks to both national security and managerial efficiency, senators and an auditor warned.”

2. Federal Times: VA to conduct monthly inspections of scheduling practices- “The Veterans Affairs Department will be conducting monthly in-person reviews of scheduling practices in every clinic it oversees, according to a June 18 announcement by acting secretary Sloan Gibson. Widespread reports of falsified wait lists and improper scheduling practices has sparked an inspector general investigation, the resignation of former VA secretary Eric Shinseki and a flurry of legislation that would make it easier to fire senior management and reform the VA health care system.”

3. IRS: IRS Makes Changes to Offshore Programs; Revisions Ease Burden and Help More Taxpayers Come into Compliance- “The Internal Revenue Service announced today major changes in its offshore voluntary compliance programs, providing new options to help both taxpayers residing overseas and those residing in the United States. The changes are anticipated to provide thousands of people a new avenue to come into compliance with their U.S. tax obligations.”

4. FCW: IGs seek better access to federal clouds- “The trouble started in 2006, when Chuck Coe, the assistant Inspector general for IT audits and computer crime at the Department of Education, had to issue a subpoena to a subcontractor to get access to IP addresses and diagrams from a subcontractor doing hosting for the agency. The subcontractor challenged Coe in court, out of concern that the investigation might compromise the security of other customers. Coe prevailed; the subcontractor unmingled the Education data from its public cloud and put them in their own environment.”

5. Federal News Radio: Sequestration pushes DHS contract spending to lowest level ever- “The Department of Homeland Security’s contract spending continued to decline during the first year of sequestration and fell to its lowest level ever, according to a new independent analysis of government contract data.”

6. Nextgov: IRS Emails Wouldn’t Have Vanished in the Cloud- “The Internal Revenue Service likely would not have lost years’ worth of emails critical to ongoing investigations if the agency had been using a cloud-based email system, industry officials say.

7. Federal News Radio: VA chief: More vets wait 30 days for appointment- “About 10 percent of veterans seeking medical care at VA hospitals and clinics have to wait at least 30 days for an appointment — more than twice the percentage of veterans the government said last week were forced to endure long waits, the acting veterans affairs secretary said Wednesday.”

Seeking inspiration from others:

• 6 Unconventional Tips For Selling Your Big Ideas [FastCompany] Take a cue from the likes of Amy Adams and Mike Tyson: The key to getting others on board with your ideas involves fogetting, interrogating, and showing off a little

• Bay Area’s best CIOs – see who is in the running for top honors [Silicon Valley Business Journal]

• 50 ways to disrupt the world [CNBC]