Friday Fab Five – Common Sense, Story Time and Rules for Success

It’s that time again…

Friday’s Fab Five!

Every Friday, we’re summarizing the best of the week and highlighting five members or moments that were especially awesome.

The Most Commented Blog of the Week goes to Good Project Management is Common Sense by Josh Nankivel. Josh always does an awesome job giving GovLoop the low down and tips on project management but his post this week really hit home with the community and it had a great title.

Thanks for sharing. I couldn’t agree more – understanding human psychology and what motivates people has been a huge benefit to me as a project manager. The tools, processes, methods and techniques can help get the machine started, but it is truly the human element that makes the system sing. – Bill Krist

I run into the wall of frustration when I find myself surrounded by people (often other management) who have never been PMs, but believe they understand it intimately and only expect a PM to manage templates & meeting minutes. Good Common Sense goes right out the window at that point. And that sucking sound that follows is usually the project circling the drain. – Sonya

The Top Forum was Did You Survive 1995 Shutdown? Tell Your Story. While the forum was posted by your truly it was populated with amazing answers from experienced govies who know their way around a shutdown. Luckily there was no shutdown… at least not yet but seeing the wealth of experience in the comments section of the forum got me pumped.

December 1995. My agency was targeted for major cuts, and 89 coworkers, roughly half the staff, were laid off just before the shutdown. Staying at home, waiting for the phone to ring was not remotely a vacation, but more like a deathbed watch. The shutdown ended — and the snow hit. We finally went back to work, and half the conversations in the halls were along the lines of “I never expected to see you still here.” – Hope OKeeffe

Most Active Group: GovLoop Group Creators Group. Have you created a group on GovLoop? Do you need help getting people active and engaged? Well if so this group can help. Just last week they posted the tops 10 things to do to get your group rolling. All the people in this group are rockstars so if you have a question this is the place to go.

Quote of the Week comes from Mark Hammer on the discussion Government vs. Civilian Jobs. The discussion focuses around the benefits and stability that some govies receive with their federal employment. The contention is that it’s much more than the private sector and hence is maybe not fair. During the debate Mark’s comment rang very true to me.

Job stability is NOT a “perk”. It is an operational necessity.
There are some services, programs, agendas, where it really doesn’t matter how new the staff is or how much turnover there is. Much of government work simply cannot happen unless those doing it, and those overseeing those doing it, have assurances of stability.

Finally, Rockstar of the Week goes to Anthony Tormey. For the last few weeks Anthony has been blogging on the site feverishly and has put together quiet the series of posts with his “Success Rules“. This week he posted rules 11 and 12 which are dynamite.