Tim Constantine

Outstanding answer Elliot! I never heard of EdgeRank and was beginning to think I was losing my mind. My guess is that the vast majority of government agencies, local dry cleaners, and everywhere else I see those “Like us on Facebook” signs never heard of EdgeRank either. I wonder how many of the organizations would feel “cheated” for taking…[Read more]

Hi Emily,

I liked our agency page with my personal account. I have not taken any action to hide the posts from our agency page – they just don’t show up. We have encouraged people to like our page to some extent but if they don’t see our posts I’m wondering what’s the point.

We have the free and open source program LimeSurvey – http://www.limesurvey.org/
Full featured, no limits, no cost, and we control the data.

Faye’s right , I wasn’t clear when I said “you” — I originally meant, “Why does your organization have a web site?”

Even though I wasn’t clear up-front, thanks for everyone’s response so far, they give me more even more ideas.

We use our wiki to house our forms (Word templates), policies, and procedures. We have videos of computer processes, links to internet resources, information on how to use our phones, fax machines, and computer software. We house old documents in the wiki for “records retention” purposes.

Although not the “wiki way” we also setup a structure to…[Read more]

I read your Getting it all to the Table post before, but I don’t think I fully appreciated it outside the context of this thread.

I’ve been talking all around it, but you’ve done a better job with the terminology – strategy and tactics. In “Getting it all to the Table”, you mention, “Decision processing modifications need to help us sort out…[Read more]

In my comment above I mention that, “I don’t think there’s often a requirement for instant decision making (when trying to be innovative).” Well, no doubt sometimes there is. So, in addition to my previous advice about how to train someone to think in an innovative way, I’ll add this:

I spent 22 years in the Air National Guard, and each year we…[Read more]

This is a tough one for me to convey David, because there’s definitely a time-and-place for that “blink”/decide.

First, I can totally agree with the premise that sometimes (as in the examples you cited) this is the ONLY way to make a decision.

Also, Blinking can be a great way to make a decision that’s “good enough”. (I’m not disparaging “good…[Read more]

I vote for 3a as well, 3b at least. I think people need to see value before they register and restricting content (no matter how easy the registration process) leads a good many people to say, “Well, never mind then.”

Hi David,

Yes – and I meant to cite him in my comment! Thanks!

His thoughts made perfect sense to me as I see a constant cycle of “decide -> implement” or “decide -> don’t implement” and how that short-cycled thought process can be an obstacle to critical/creative thinking, and therefore an obstacle to innovation.

Hi Dustin,

Very impressive stuff. What strikes me the most is the fact that your “very small town with a very limited budget”. I think a lot of times in government, we’re as creative and innovative as we need to be. A small town with a limited budget needs to be very efficient, and I think those constraints (especially in this case) make for some…[Read more]

Last week I setup a meeting where we’re going to discuss if and how we can implement creative and innovative ideas. As a homework assignment, I told the participants to start coming up with creative and innovative ideas to bring to the meeting.

On the way to work this morning it occurred to me that I hadn’t really told them how to do that, so…[Read more]

Absolutely!

I can think of a few specifics here. Please add to the discussion if you can think of more!

2) By promoting and encouraging it:
– Train people how to think in an innovative way.
– Encourage participation in peer (cross-agency) work groups.
– Send people to conferences to learn new ideas.
– Set aside time for innovation and…[Read more]

“A consideration to merge methodologies/processes between D4U and SCRUM may bring out the best of both worlds.” — Absolutely!

The only things I’d maybe add is that the ultimate goal of D4U/Scrum shouldn’t be to “bring forth a closer end product that reflects the way people actually do their business” but to “bring forth a closer end product that…[Read more]