This week I interviewed Shaun Donovan, Secretary of Housing and Urban Development, who – through leading with ‘malignant optimism’ – tries to instill a culture at HUD that encourages creativity and risk-taking. Q: How can federal employees be better leaders? A: My sister, a psychiatrist, once jokingly diagnosed me as a malignant optimist, completely incurable,Read… Read more »
On April 30, 2010, over 200 public and private sector participants convened at the Department of Housing and Urban Development to think big about how the Government can learn from the emerging trend to use prizes and competitions to solve some of the grand challenges of our time. This event, led by Robynn Sturm fromRead… Read more »
[Note: cross-posted from cpsrenewal.ca] [Photo: my father Rick and my son Kohl, taken back in June 2008] At the last #w2p mixer (an unofficial social event in Ottawa for Government of Canada Web 2.0 Practitioners) a colleague asked me “What drives you?”. I replied that I cared in the movement in a general sense; thatRead… Read more »
If you’ve started a new position, transitioned into a new role, or planning on making a move in the near future, I’d recommend reading , “The First 90 Days: Critical Success Strategies for New Leaders at all Levels” by Michael Watkins. Michael Watkins is an Associate Professor of Business Administration at Harvard Business School. ThisRead… Read more »
For the past few days I’ve been mulling over the announcement of a new social networking system for Federal employess. According to an April 27 article in the Federal Times, it will be unveiled later this year. At first I had a cynical reaction along the lines of, “Oh great. Just what we need. AnotherRead… Read more »
Peter Kinnaird (a member of our community), Mario Romero, and Professor Gregory Abowd, all of the Georgia Institute of Technology College of Computing, have posted Connect 2 Congress: Visual Analytics for Civic Oversight, a paper presented at CHI 2010: The 28th ACM Conference on Human Factors in Computing Systems, held 10-15 April 2010, in Atlanta,Read… Read more »
In this week’s interview I speak with Nicole Nelson-Jean, who has worked for more than 14 years with the Department of Energy on nuclear arms control, nonproliferation and national security issues. Nicole discusses some of her complex roles such as securing Russian nuclear materials in Siberia, as well as how she balances those responsibilities withRead… Read more »
As we work on how to use social networking technologies in Gov 2.0, I thought this article from IEEE Transactions on Engineering Management might be of some interest to practitioners. “The Strategic Implications of Web Technologies: A Process Model of How Web Technologies Enhance Organizational Performance” answers two questions: 1) “How do Web technologies supportRead… Read more »
We can’t escape the fact that Gen Y/Millennials are going to transform the workplace over the next five years. By 2014 there will be more than 58 million Millennials employed in various organizations in the U.S. alone. Employers must begin adapting to the challenge of these generations to remain sustainable. Having cross generational strategies forRead… Read more »
It was a dark and (stormy)…well cold…night in Washington last week when I arrived. Following eight hours on I-95, three cups of coffee, two traffic jams, and a metro ride in a dark subway; I had finally arrived. My mission was clear and time was of the essence. I had to make it to theRead… Read more »