Online Launch of NCDD Catalyst Awards

To celebrate NCDD’s 10th anniversary this year, we are very excited to launch the NCDD Catalyst Awards. Two $10,000 prizes will be awarded to team projects organized, led and selected by NCDD members that jump-start the field’s next best ideas and impact our communities’ and our country’s ability to solve its most challenging problems. Today,Read… Read more »

Thinking Strategically About Your Leadership Potential: The Informational Interview (Part III)

For Millennials, there seems to be a constant reminder that the “retirement wave” about to sweep away a significant portion of the Federal workforce will be a tremendous opportunity to enter public service. While it’s always great to recruit new talent, there is also an abundance of talented professionals within government already. Every so often,Read… Read more »

Introducing Our Emcees for NCDD Seattle

We’re thrilled to have two great NCDD members serving as our conference Emcees for NCDD Seattle: John Gastil and Susanna Haas Lyons. They’ll be providing you with familiar, friendly faces throughout the event, introducing presenters, making announcements and helping us transition between activities. John Gastil is the Head of the Department of Communication Arts andRead… Read more »

Invitation for Workshop Leaders to Post their Case Studies on Participedia.net

NCDD has been involved in a great project called Participedia.net for the past couple of years. Participedia is a new online repository for detailed case studies on democratic innovation and public engagement. Here’s a letter from Participedia director Pat Scully extending an invitation to session leaders at NCDD Seattle to contribute their stories and casesRead… Read more »

How Long Should I Stay Here?

Each year, our organization hires a group of recent college graduates into our human resources intern program. The interns spend the next two years traveling throughout the Department learning the ins and outs of processing HR actions, the culture and a bit about themselves. The program culminates with graduation and an honest Q&A session withRead… Read more »

Project Communication Fail

A classic post for me is titled“Silence — One of the Two Great Wastes™”. The article cites a few sources that conclude: “…that project deterioration was a function of not listening and not speaking. We named those behaviors the Two Great Wastes.” I love the term quoted in the post, “organizational silence” to describe whenRead… Read more »

Dating Management: Online Strategic Planning

Welcome to column number two of Dating Management. Let’s pick up where we left off last week and assume you’ve convinced Stressful Sue and Irksome Isaac, your high-performering employees whose lack of a love life has left them irritating you and your office, to join an online dating site. Now what? What do you tellRead… Read more »