Posts Tagged: featured blogger

Good Engagement? Bad Engagement? Time to Check Your Cholesterol!

My post on engagement from a few weeks ago, The Myth of Social Media Engagement in the Public Service, generated a healthy debate on the nature and inherent value of engagement in the public sector. Some interpreted my post as saying that I held little or no value in engagement for the public sector. ThisRead… Read more »

Happy, Happy, Happy Citizens. Possible?

I have always been interested in happiness. Even before Pharrell Williams made it fashionable to sing about and dance to, I was interested in what made people happy. When I was given the opportunity to do some research for a Masters degree in Public Leadership (Virginia State Univ 2013) citizen satisfaction with local government becameRead… Read more »

7 Steps to Productivity

In my last blog, I talked about how to increase everyone’s productivity by tweaking your meetings. What about making your personal time more productive? Technology helps you multitask and do more, right? Wrong. Mutitasking creates lower quality results making you less productive. Here are seven productivity tips that I have combined from inc.com, a listRead… Read more »

Are You an Integrative Thinker?

It’s one solution or the other. If “A” is true, then we should definitely do “B” – it’s so obvious! Let’s solve this problem one step at a time. As government officials, we often feel our job duties are closer to those of an ‘inferno abatement specialist’ (government speak for “firefighter”) than those of aRead… Read more »

Do Retailers Dishonor Memorial Day?

On this year’s Memorial Day let’s hope that most Americans take some time to pause, ponder and pay tribute to the heroic soldiers who died in battle serving America throughout our history. More than one million American men and women have died in military service since the Civil War, according to the U.S. Census BureauRead… Read more »

Big Data and Positive Deviance

The triple aim continues to be the focus of payment and delivery reform. Predictive analytics and big data are poised to make an impact in achieving the triple aim. Recently, there has been interest in connecting predictive analytics with other tools to amplify impact in lowering costs, improving quality, and improving population health. Furthermore, itRead… Read more »

Getting Started with open311

This is a continuation of an article about open311 use cases in which I looked at three cities using open311 solutions to communicate with their constituents. This week, I’d like to offer some advice about getting started with open311 technology. The best places to start are with mobile reporting applications and the constituent relationship managementRead… Read more »

PMF: Presidential Management Fellowship — or Frustration?

It’s a long, sordid story, but the moral is simple: Beware what you ask for — you might get it! A little background: Back in 2007, I was so happy. The Presidential Management Fellowship program office “popped the cap”—they allowed universities to nominate an unlimited number of graduating students for the prestigious PMF program. Previously,Read… Read more »

6 Ways to Engage Your Workforce

Adding on to my last post on the Women’s Empowerment (WE) initiative in Kansas City, Missouri, we are looking closely at our internal practices to build a more inclusive, diverse city government. As a woman, a new mom, and coming from the male-dominated profession of architecture, I am acutely aware of some of the barriersRead… Read more »