Netzwerk Bürgerbeteiligung: New German Online Community for Public Participation

Late last month, a new online community launched in Germany for people and organizations that “want to advance citizen participation in political decision making and shape the future of public participation” (translation mine). From the website (in German): Die Partizipation der Bürgerinnen und Bürger an gesellschaftlichen und politischen Entscheidungsprozessen ist ein elementarer Grundpfeiler der Demokratie:Read… Read more »

How does external communication through customer service improve the reputation of the organization?

What is a reputation? It’s basically a preconceived expectation of behaviors based on previous direct experience and indirect assumptions. What is the reputation of your favorite restaurant, how about your doctor, or the last place you decided never to go back to? Every person you come into contact with every day is forming an impressionRead… Read more »

How do internal communications affect the ability of an organization to provide good service?

Picture great service as a three-legged bar stool. Your customer is sitting on top. What happens if one of the legs isn’t strong, or is flat out broken? That’s right, the customer falls off the stool and has a bad experience. Each of the elements represented by the bar stool can be given its ownRead… Read more »

Is there an NAO community?

At the moment we are spending some time helping colleagues launch this year’s graduate recruitment campaign – branded as Big-on. We are quite proud of our contribution including the branded Big-on Facebook page which my colleague Alex Mueller does a lot of work on. We also have a dedicated Big-on area of our website IRead… Read more »

What Bob the Builder Taught Me About Training

It’s not rocket science, but I’m talking about training to reach the stars. Forgive the pun and the cliche, but they seem most appropriate here. Can we do it? Of course, we can. I learned all I know from the Cave Man who must have said, “I need to fix this. I have no otherRead… Read more »

The Government Man and the Unforgettable Mentor

A while back I asked about your quirkiest boss. Now I ask that you think about the most unforgettable character you encountered in your government career. In my book, Confessions of a Government Man, I discuss many that I met many in my career. “Large Lewis” Levine was in a class by himself. He wasRead… Read more »

CO2 Emissions Explained Simply

Tom Brokaw hosted a program back in 2006 that sought to explain a typical American family’s carbon footprint in a simple yet memorable way. All these years later, we dug up the video to see how it has aged. It still seems fresh to us, and remains a great illustration of our impact on theRead… Read more »

Steve Jobs remembered

Steve Jobs Feb. 24, 1955 – Oct 6, 2011 Entrepreneur, Reinventor, Stylist, Visionary I was on the exhibition floor of SharePoint 2011 yesterday when someone gave me the news about Jobs’ passing. My first reaction, you have to be kidding. Sure he was ill, but he’d bounced back before. How can he be gone, he’sRead… Read more »

All Skilled Up

In a previous post I described how we’re supporting people to come up with ideas for ourcompetition through an interactive game. We’ve been working with Turner Contemporary’s Blank Canvas group who “bring younger (aged 13 – 25) and older (over 60) people together, to help them to explore similarities and differences and to interact withRead… Read more »

Steve Jobs remembered

Steve Jobs Feb. 24, 1955 – Oct 6, 2011 Entrepreneur, Reinventor, Stylist, Visionary I was on the exhibition floor of SharePoint 2011 yesterday when someone gave me the news about Jobs’ passing. My first reaction, you have to be kidding. Sure he was ill, but he’d bounced back before. How can he be gone, he’sRead… Read more »

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