Leadership

Community Advocates can learn from Silicon Valley

6 Things Silicon Valley Can Teach Social Entrepreneurs WRITTEN BY: Claire Diaz-Ortiz Co.Exist Based on my work leading social innovation at Twitter, here are six essential things that Silicon Valley can teach social entrepreneurs. Claire Diaz-Ortiz If there is anyplace that knows about innovation it is Silicon Valley. Claire Diaz-Ortiz asks “Can a social enterpriseRead… Read more »

Innovation as Experimentation

Innovation is a hot buzz word these days. Tech magazines rank the most innovative companies in world. Industry groups do the same for government. So what does it take to actually be “innovative?” In the book Running the Gauntlet by Jeffrey Hayzlett, Deustch Inc. CEO, Linda Sawyer states, “Be fearless and not afraid of failure.Read… Read more »

CIO vs. CTO

Don’t wrestle over tasking, there is plenty of responsibility to go around Count me among the many who have been confused at times by what it really means to be CIO vs. CTO. Both jobs are generally technology oriented, both include responsibility for the delivery of technology to the business, and both jobs require advancedRead… Read more »

Getting Exercise Jumping To Conclusions

Quick! Read the series of letters and numbers shown below. Don’t waste any time. Can you read them? (The images are on the left side of the page below the first image) Hopefully you found that to be pretty easy. (And, if I were better with HTML I would have figured out how to putRead… Read more »

The Office Borg

“We are the Borg. Lower your shields and surrender your ships. We will add your biological and technological distinctiveness to our own. Your culture will adapt to service us.” – From Star Trek, First Contact As a teleworking manager looking in on a traditional office environment, the dangers of the office often seem frighteningly similarRead… Read more »

Vote for my gov 2.0 startup in Global Startup Battle? http://bit.ly/PermitMe

Hola GovLoop, Last weekend I pitched and created a startup company at Houston Startup Weekend focused on improving government permitting processes (if you have operated a business, you know the pain). Our startup, PermitMe, won the competition and now is competing for votes in the Global Startup Battle versus 120 other startups from around theRead… Read more »

Federal Salary: It’s About Principles, Not Pay

In case you missed it, the latest study from the official Federal Salary Council (FSC) asserts that white-collar federal employees (“feds”) are paid a whopping 35% less than their private sector equivalents. Are federal executives really being short changed by more than one-third of their salary versus private sector peers? Feds don’t work in governmentRead… Read more »

Why do I need to “Transform” my organization?

Are strange forces at work driving change in your organization? Why do I need to transform the organization? Wouldn’t a little tweak here or change there be good enough? I like to use the term organizational transformation because I think it more clearly portrays the shift in thinking and execution required to effect real changeRead… Read more »