5 Ideas on Improving Government from NextGen Leaders

Two weeks ago, we held the Next Generation of Government Training Summit, the largest gathering of rising Gen X & Y government leaders.  800+ attendees from 75+ agencies came to be inspired from keynotes from people like Dr. Jill Biden, get training on topics like human-centered design, and most importantly, to connect and learn from others in government.

On day two of the Summit, we provided a collaborative space where we asked the question “If you were in charge, what’s one thing you would change in your office tomorrow?”

Here are five interesting ideas we heard:

1. Elevate the mission – One person commented: “I would change the sense of purpose and urgency we bring to work” and a number of others put similar comments on bringing back the call to service.
2. Improve office layouts – Many individuals had ideas around improving the office layouts with ideas from standing desks to open offices.
3. Better ideation – The NextGen crowd wanted to take new approaches to problem-solving, from quick huddle brainstorms to team building retreats to agency Ideation labs.
4. Improve technology – There were numerous comments on improving technology from the use of collaborative internal tools like Slack/Skype to improving external-facing technology like agency websites.
5. Work culture- There was a call to improving work culture and employee engagement with issues raised from increasing autonomy, making a safe work environment, and increasing diversity.

I’m more excited about the future of government than ever as I know there are thousands of passionate rising leaders working hard to make impact. Hopefully some of these ideas will spark some actions throughout government to make it even better for everybody involved.