As the first decade of the 21st Century ends, I hope that the economic events of the last thirty-five years finally loosen the hold that neoclassical economics has on public policy. It is widely recognized that the accepted economic models that governments use to shape policy are just not empirically valid. Today’s economies are vastlyRead… Read more »
I started this tradition in my Junior year of college thanks to an inspiring philosophy professor who applied Ancient Greek philosophy to his profitable management consulting practice. His guiding concept was arête which has deep meaning but essentially means the pursuit of excellence in whatever you do. It really resonated with me because I wasRead… Read more »
Incidents like the TSA’s implementation of pat-downs and the Federal government’s response to the Gulf Oil Spill demonstrates that the current methods of government communication aren’t working as well as they did in the past. It used to be that citizens would get most of their information from network news shows, major national magazines andRead… Read more »
Have you ever had the experience of talking to someone and you start to feel that person is saying one thing but means another? Have you arrived at work in a bad mood and noticed that everyone else suddenly seems to be developing the same bad mood? What you are experiencing is the powerful effectsRead… Read more »
This is in response to Lucas Cioffi’s question on whether there is a difference between Gov 2.0 and Open Gov. I wrote a short response to his blog posting but I wanted to expand on my answer because I believe that there is a bigger movement than just Open Gov or Gov 2.0. This biggerRead… Read more »
For people who are on the cutting edge of the Gov 2.0 movement, we often forget that a majority of government employees are still not enthusiastic about the potential of the new social networking technologies in their workplace. Now many of these folks are using Facebook, Twitter, Flickr, etc. to keep up with their familyRead… Read more »
A book that I constantly recommend is Beinhocker’s The Origin of Wealth for two reasons. First, Beinhocker demonstrates how traditional economics is inadequate for explaining today’s economic systems. Second, he introduces complexity economics which is still developing but does a much better job in describing how real-world economies work and how people behave economically. ToRead… Read more »
In the last twenty years, I’ve probably read hundreds of books and articles on organizational change. My dissertation was a case study of a major organizational change. In all that time and all that I read, I found very little that dealt with how to best communicate a vision for change. The advice was mostlyRead… Read more »
Take a moment and look around your personal office space. Now look at your computer and notice what your desktop icons are and what programs you have open. According to Richard Ogle, the books, documents, computer programs, and other work aids are parts of our extended mind. We create documents, spreadsheets, whatever to offload ourRead… Read more »
I believe that the best argument made by Eggers and O’Leary in If We Can Put a Man on the Moon was the need for lawmakers to consider how their proposals will be implemented when the programs are passed to the agencies. I was thinking about this when I was visiting the Woodrow Wilson Center’sRead… Read more »