The Balanced Scorecard Institute is a well-respected organization that has a popular method for measuring organizational effectiveness. I’m going to work on building its lessons into my office. The basic idea behind the Balanced Scorecard comes from its creators, Drs. Robert Kaplan and David Norton: “If you can’t measure it, you can’t manage it.” AccordingRead… Read more »
Craig Thomler’s post about redesigning government got me thinking about the other ways that legacies from the Industrial Revolution are no longer serving us well. The language could use some updating. So could the ways we think about how best to structure work. One of my recent favorite non-fiction books is “Shop Class as SoulRead… Read more »
Want to make your organization successful? Simple, employ strong and consistent leadership. But how do you actually do that? Tom Fox is the Vice President for Leadership and Innovation at the Partnership for Public Service. Tom told Chris Dorobek on the DorobekINSIDER program that government leadership success still lags behind the public sector. Can YouRead… Read more »
I believe I run a very effective office. But it’s not enough to believe it, or even for others to say it, it’s important to be able to measure and demonstrate it with data as well. The best way to demonstrate effectivess is to measure your office’s results and benchmark those results against competitors. ButRead… Read more »
I spent this Saturday in a 5 hour session all about the MBTI (Myers-Briggs Type Indicator) and how to translate an understanding about personality types into a tool to help navigate the workplace. If you’re not familiar with the assessment, it’s a quick quiz that determines your personality type along 4 trait dichotomies. In anRead… Read more »
“Violence Leads Nowhere” This is the phrase that stands out in the latest Facebook post sent to me by an Egyptian woman whom I came to know when I was in Cairo earlier this year. I was there speaking to members of the various political parties on leadership at The American University in Cairo. InRead… Read more »
It can be draining to be around bad listeners. But I meet them all the time, of all ages. If I had to say one thing that I think they all had in common, it would be untapped potential. It’s gotten to the point where every time I see someone who doesn’t appear to beRead… Read more »
As a government executive, you often are tasked with leading change or achieving increased efficiency in your organization. Leading Change in Government, presented by Georgetown University’s McDonough School of Business on Sept. 25-27, is designed exclusively for government executives and draws on the latest research to equip you with the specific skills and tools neededRead… Read more »
Over the weekend, Politico published an opinion article on how the Center for Strategic Counterterrorism Communications (CSCC) within the State Department uses social media and web forums to engage with potential radical groups to help influence them against violence or becoming a part of terrorist organizations. Unlike commercial marketing teams that use social media toRead… Read more »
The point of these posts: Agile methodologies used by software (and web) developers can be adapted to provide similar value to the rest of us. Not just for techies any more! Waterfall document development. I put it to you that document development in the OPS also tends to follow a waterfall methodology. (If “waterfall methodology”doesn’tRead… Read more »