Around this time, various IT and professional web sites list what they consider the top skills for the coming year. It’s interesting to look back and see what skills stay on the lists, what skills fall off the list, and the new skills that appear. I haven’t seen such a list for government workers soRead… Read more »
A manager asked me the best way to “knock the rough edges off” his team? I said, “How about we grow them until the rough edges are covered?” Are you a knocker or a grower?
Social Connect via: As the public service changes and let’s not doubt it is changing quite a bit, the need for a new management style emerges due to a much different set of employees to manage. I’ve argued before about the evolving public service from the point of view of an employee. Today, I’d likeRead… Read more »
American City and County Magazine ran an article recently titled Trimming the fat-or-not with Lean Six Sigma by Stephen Ursery. The article refers to the success of Lean Six Sigma in Irving Texas and its failure in Erie County, New York, according to Mark Cornell spokesperson for Erie County Executive Mark Poloncarz. In Irving Texas,Read… Read more »
What does political savvy mean to the average employee? If you have ever watched the TV sitcom The Office you probably have a good idea of what political savvy is not about. While the politics of The Office employees may seem funny on TV, in the real world of work these behaviors could kill yourRead… Read more »
We have an image of leaders – whether it is John Wayne leading a charge in combat, or JFK declaring to the world the USA will put a man on the moon by the end of that decade, or Steve Jobs radically changing established market segments like music, telecom, and computers with new technology. Traditionally,Read… Read more »
GEAR. The Performance Management Pilot you’ve never heard of. In November 2011, the Employee Performance Management Workgroup put forth a set of recommendations to help catapult our federal government into the arena of 21st century performance strategy. The five key goals they’d like agencies to address are as follows: Articulate a High-Performance Culture Align EmployeeRead… Read more »
We have previously provided a Quickstart guide to standing up Rackspace cloud servers (and have one for Amazon servers as well). These are very low cost ways of building reliable, production ready capabilities for enterprise use (commercial and government). And Bryan Halfpap has provided a Quickstart guide which shows you how to build a HadoopRead… Read more »
Every good, successful team is lead by an effective leader. Part of your organization’s media plan must focus on your team’s structure, even if there are just two members. A social media team is only as knowledgeable and functional as its players…with a leader who delegates responsibility and provides guidance towards achieving objectives and establishingRead… Read more »
This is a new recurrent feature taking an unserious look at leadership lessons from George RR Martin’s Game of Thrones series. BE FOREWARNED: THIS ENTIRE SERIES MAY BE ONE GIANT SPOILER. I WILL DRAW UPON WHATEVER QUOTES FROM THE FIRST 5 BOOKS OF THE SERIES I SEE FIT. READ AT YOUR OWN RISK. As aRead… Read more »