Career

How to Spark Innovation at Your Agency

Quick, be creative! For most people, this is a tall order. Thinking creatively on-demand is not an easy task; in fact, it can be outright intimidating. But, according to four experts in the field, it’s also probably not a necessary one for innovation. Results from OPM’s 2014 Federal Employee Viewpoint Survey indicated that nearly 91Read… Read more »

5 Tips for Making the Most of Your Government Career

Latonia Page and Rachel Dorman facilitated a discussion on how to Make the Most of Your Government Career at the Next Gen 2015 Conference. Here are their top five tips that you can start using today to further your career in the public sector, whether at the local, state or federal level. Consider your careerRead… Read more »

Networking to Build Coalitions

Do you have anyone in your life that will speak the truth to you? I’m speaking of unfiltered, unadulterated facts…Well NextGen speaker, Mary Abbajay of the Career Stone Group experienced a dose of “truth serum” when her sister explained, “ No one offers you anything because you’re not nice.” This pivotal moment became the startingRead… Read more »

Moving Forward by Working Backward: From Overall Strategy to Daily Tasks

In the pages of management books and in the bottomless sea of online materials, there is no shortage of five-part frameworks and six-step plans for devising and executing organizational strategy. But Joshua J. Marcuse, Senior Advisor for Policy Innovation within the Office of the Secretary of Defense, has accomplished the feat of sifting through muchRead… Read more »

The Importance of “Yes, And…” for Collaboration

We all know what improv is. It’s a form of acting where actors create scenes and characters on the spot, generally inspired by one word or a simple phrase. But how does improv relate to what you do every day at work? And what lessons can you learn from improv as a government employee? One ofRead… Read more »

Teambuilding with Multiple Generations

With four generations spanning our government workforce, many have asked- how can we level all generations and skills to build successful teams and make government better? Leaders in government, young and old, come from all walks of life. Government’s challenge is to harness the diverse skillset, listen to all perspectives, and help generations work together.Read… Read more »

Rethinking Leadership in the Everyone-Leads Era

“It’s ok to fall out of a tree.” “Maybe you shouldn’t climb that tree.” Henry De Sio broke the ice during today’s lunchtime keynote here at the 2015 NextGen Conference by bringing his two sons up on stage to share their leadership lessons. The boys were eager to share all of the info they’ve learnedRead… Read more »

8 Awesome Tech Tips & Tricks

When you think “tech + government,” do you automatically follow that up with… “= disaster”? Jay Austin, a presenter at Tuesday’s Next Generation of Government Summit, wants to change that perception to one of “tech + government can = awesome stuff.” Austin came to HUD as a Presidential Management Fellow in a not-so-long-ago time when InternetRead… Read more »

5 Ways to Get Well in the Workplace in 60 Seconds or Less

Government workers these days are facing mountains of stress. Limited resources. A 24-7 news cycle. Constant connectivity and all of its demands. A growing disconnect between public perception and needs and the reality of services. Stress manifests itself in a variety of ways — from illness to grumpiness to self-isolation — and too often itRead… Read more »