The Federal Coach: Of Cigarettes, Rats and Trans Fats: CDC Director Thomas Frieden on Leading in Public Health, When Success is What You Don’t See

Dr. Thomas R. Frieden became the director of the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC), and administrator of the Agency for Toxic Substances and Disease Registry in June 2009, following a seven-year stint as New York City Health Department Commissioner. He has worked on tuberculosis issues in New York and India and spent 12Read… Read more »

Blog Recap: Yesterday’s Hearing On Inspiring Students To Federal Service

Yesterday I had the chance to sit in on a hearing by the Senate Subcommittee on Oversight of Government Management, the Federal Workforce, and the District of Columbia. It was titled “Inspiring Students to Federal Service.” I took some notes and thought I’d share them in the form of brief summaries of each of theRead… Read more »

How to run a better offsite meeting or tour

by jeanine&preston I’ve learned these lessons while preparing for an upcoming offsite meeting for the leadership of my client, I’ll be presenting on the trends that are going to impact them over the next few years. Create an agenda upfront so expectations are clear – This seems like commonsense that everyone would follow, but theyRead… Read more »

Why management wont come? #localgovcamp

I didn’t attend the ‘why management wont come to camp’ session at the weekend because my own failed efforts to bring anyone else from my organisation felt like education enough. People wont give up their Saturdays. Some wont because they go home at 5 o clock and that’s it, because they feel they don’t getRead… Read more »

UniversalCitation.org: A New Non-Proprietary Legal Citation Project

UniversalCitation.org is a new, U.S.-based effort to urge governments to adopt non-proprietary legal citation standards, and to create new technologies that process and output non-proprietary legal citation information. According to the project’s Website, the organizers of this effort are Tom Bruce of the Legal Information Institute at Cornell University Law School — and a memberRead… Read more »

Open Data Job Posting at MaRS in Toronto

The following job posting can be found on the MaRS website here. So here’s a job for an open data advocate living in, or willing to move to, Toronto. For the right person with the right vision, this could be about getting a group of organizations to open up their data to drive innovation andRead… Read more »

The Fed Coach: How To Become a Great Federal Leader — Without Senior Leadership Support

What suggestions do you have for being an effective leader when you don’t have support from your leadership? – Federal manager (GS-15), U.S. Department of Homeland Security I commend you for wanting to grow as a leader and become more effective so that you can engage your team and have a positive effect on theirRead… Read more »

Seven Management Imperatives: Act with Strategic Intent

The United States federal government operates in a period rife with significant, seemingly intractable challenges, including an evergrowing federal deficit, economic uncertainty, unemployment, and an aging infrastructure. These challenges go to the core of effective public management. As Don Kettl notes in Reflections on 21st Century Government Management, many problems faced by government allow littleRead… Read more »

Applying Merger and Acquisition lessons to a growing small business

This is 4 years old almost, but I thought still interesting. The MIT Sloan Management Review in the Fall of 2008 identified six lessons from studying M&;A activity: Reduce role ambiguity – You may have several managers with previously overlapping duties, clear up who does what. This helps reduce attrition. Due diligence is a mustRead… Read more »

PM Podcast Episode 185 How to Develop Your Project Team’s Leadership Skills (Project Leadership Series)

This week’s episode of The Project Management Podcast: In this premium episode we are going to continue to develop project leadership skills. But not just anybody’s skills. We are focusing on what you and I can do as project leaders in order to enable our own project teams to take more leadership responsibilities. After all,Read… Read more »