It is unanimously accepted in effective employee motivation space that managers who positively reinforce their employees drive high levels of engagement. Unfortunately, much of the positive feedback employees receive is simply recognition for a job well done. While recognition has its place in the workplace, appreciation has much greater impact on job performance. Our country’sRead… Read more »
We’ve all seen one of these great PowerPoint presentations – the lights go down, the screen lights up with a high resolution picture of an elephant in the middle of a river spraying water on its back and the speaker weaves a story around it, teaching you important lessons and inspiring the bejeezus out ofRead… Read more »
Once upon a time, there was a young girl living in Fairfax County, yearning to go to school. She wanted nothing but to attend the best school in the safest neighborhood with a good police force. But the problem was that she had no way of figuring out which schools were in which areas. InRead… Read more »
Remember your teacher telling you to pay attention and “Get your head out of the clouds?” Well, times have changed, and it’s time to get your head in the cloud. Cloud computing, that is. With a simple internet search, it is easy to discover the many ways in which cloud computing is benefitting private andRead… Read more »
You wouldn’t go to a new restaurant without checking out the Yelp reviews, but government might buy a billion dollar software system without checking the data first. But now government is trying to reverse the trend. They are starting to use performance data to create better government decision-making. Chris Mihm, Managing Director of Strategic IssuesRead… Read more »
Complex problems require new thinking, and sometimes that means stripping the question down to simple components. The New York Times detailed how Apple uses a series of Picasso’s lithographs to teach this concept. The artist moved from a full sketch to a minimal outline through the course of 11 prints. A spare collection of linesRead… Read more »
How many hours per day to you spend dealing with paper? One hour? Two hours? For many in state and local government, it can actually be upwards of six hours a day! That’s too much time dedicated to printing, filing and searching for information when you could be doing more important, mission-critical tasks. Fortunately, emerging technologyRead… Read more »
Talent acquisition for the federal government is a challenging proposition in this era of talent shortage. Despite the lingering effects of the Great Recession and the fact that for many it seems like we are still in a recession. According to Rahaf Harfoush, co-author of the New York Times best-seller The Decoded, 1 out ofRead… Read more »
When I was little, I dreamed about growing up to be a princess. Not the kind that lives in an ivory tower and spends the royal treasury at the beach. The kind that actually helps her country. Now that I’m a little older, I have realized that we can’t all be Kate Middleton and haveRead… Read more »
When you’ve been given a task that stretches your skills, or requires knowledge you don’t have, how do you get up to speed quickly? (And impress your boss with how well you rose to the challenge?) I love taking on a new challenge – it gives me a chance to learn something new and breakRead… Read more »