If you follow me on Twitter, you know that I’ve been captivated by the antics and misadventures of Murder, She Wrote’s protagonist, Jessica Fletcher. Dame Angela Lansbury, the actress behind the widowed bestselling mystery writer, keeps it real at every point of the series, which ran twelve seasons from 1984-1996. (So it’s just a littleRead… Read more »
A couple weeks ago, I wrote about how to strike a good work-life balance, and a major part of that is effective time management. It’s important to understand that we can never manage time—there will always be 24 hours each day for you to accomplish everything you need to do. The real management technique comesRead… Read more »
When you’re first starting out in your career, it’s easy to think that your job consists of “what my boss tells me to do,” followed closely by “how my boss tells me to do it.” But after fifteen years of study, practice and mostly observation, I’ve concluded that the most productive employees in the worldRead… Read more »
Frustration, Rage, Anxiety, Despair! These are the feelings I have heard from many federal government civilians who have endured hiring and pay freezes, furloughs, sequestration, and government shutdowns, as well as current and pending workforce drawdowns and budget reductions. Add to the mix, the front edge of the Baby Boomer generation became retirement eligible in… Read more »
Nowadays, everyone has an opinion about federal information technology — how projects should be managed and whether chief information officers have adequate authority to do their jobs. The truth is that all CIOs are not empowered equally. Many argue the culprit is not the nearly 20-year-old law that created the position but rather inconsistent implementationRead… Read more »
More and more, managers are being encouraged to use positive reinforcement in their employee reviews, rather than focusing on weaknesses. The argument is that by doing this, employees are more productive and engaged in their work. Opponents of such a management technique say that discussing negatives, or ranking employees against each other, can actually encourageRead… Read more »
Civil unrest in places like Ferguson, Missouri and Baltimore has local government leaders across the country concerned about police-community relations in their own cities and towns. While it’s true that larger cities with greater diversity – whether economic, ethnic, racial or religious – are more at risk, government leaders in cities of all sizes canRead… Read more »
In earlier SMART Articles, I discussed the evolutionary phases in becoming a digital organization, described how all business functions are being transformed by social and digital technologies, articulated the primary barriers to digital engagement, and offered a digital transformation framework (to read these and other related pieces, click here). This article extends those pieces by proposingRead… Read more »
When we are grateful instead of hateful, it fills our hearts so we have more to give. In mental health care, we are faced with a lot of “What if’s”. What can you can keep after giving it away? Your word.
What do you know about the clerk working in your city our county government? We’re guessing probably not a lot. However, a clerk in your local government is constantly doing a lot of work — mostly behind the scenes that you may never know about. And the fact is, the job of a clerk is criticalRead… Read more »