Leadership

Hawk Method of Management

Let’s face it. You cannot truly measure employee output, once you are managing people who are not producing or processing widgets per hour – people we call, erroneously, “knowledge workers.” People who are useful and productive because of the relationships they maintain, the external sources they consult to solve problems, and the imagination they bringRead… Read more »

Federal Eye: Report: Ex-Postal Service official violated policies

The former third-ranking official at the U.S. Postal Service improperly used his office to conduct personal business, awarded millions of dollars in noncompetitive contracts to former colleagues and failed to disclose stock holdings in a company conducting business negotiations with the mail agency, according to a new watchdog report. Robert F. Bernstock stepped down inRead… Read more »

McChrystal, Guns and Rock n’ Roll: A Cautionary Tale of Off-the-Cuff and On-the-Record

When your mission is on the line there is no such thing as “off-the-record,” and “deep background” can be nothing more than a description of the harmonies on a Beach Boys album. If you want to play with leaks and don’t think you’ll get wet, hand in your gold stars and go to plumbing school.Read… Read more »

Is the Young World Rising? Preview from Next Gen Gov Summit

At the YGL/GovLoop Next Generation of Government Summit 7/6-7/7, we have a ton of great speakers talking about opportunities for young leaders to change government. One speaker is Rob Salkowitz who wrote the awesome Wiley-publish book “Young World Rising: How Youth Technology and Entrepreneurship is Changing the World” We did a quick interview where weRead… Read more »

Jennovation 1.1: Don’t Go it Alone: Why Public-Private Partnerships Make Sense

Welcome to the second posting of my featured Govloop blog series—Jennovation—coming to you every other Monday. This series contains my musings on innovation, Open Government (Open Gov) and Public-Private Partnerships (PPPs). Let me start by saying, I was rather surprised by the comments on my first posting. While Gov 2.0, Open Gov and innovation haveRead… Read more »

I can do THAT with my mouse? The integration imperative for government document management software (part II)

July and August used to be pretty rough times for my colleagues in community development. Each year, we would have to gather reports on projects funded with federal dollars. Some years we had a staggering 200 projects underway. In June, the information from this paper avalanche had to be manually entered into our database. OneRead… Read more »

Controlling the Invisible

Recently, I was engaged in a listserv conversation (remember those?) regarding the balance between standards-based enterprises and the need to engage creative talent who may bristle at standard processes. The conversation moved to the question of new processes and standards that respected the nature of complex organizations (rather than early 20th century bureaucracies), and IRead… Read more »