In the tech industry, people speak of “10x” programmers, those who are ten times as productive as average. Who are the 10x public administrators? The 10 is figurative, since there is no agreed-upon quantification of productivity in programming or public administration. And in both fields productivity includes creativity, rather than grinding through a set process.Read… Read more »
UPDATE: Want to give a lightning talk at the ASPA conference? See http://wp.me/p4a7oW-18 If a public administrator wants to be taken seriously, should she wear a suit or a hoodie? It depends which culture she’s dealing with. Traditional public administration culture focuses on hierarchical institutions–how the public administrator can serve the institution’s mission and advanceRead… Read more »
Open government advocates create both opportunities and headaches for public administrators. On one hand, exposing government’s information and internal processes to the public strengthens democratic control–a core value of many public administrators. And greater openness can admit creativity and innovation that advance an agency’s mission. But on the other hand, public administrators work in anRead… Read more »
There are good guides to strategy for government agencies and other organizations, such as Mark Moore’s strategic triangle. But most public administrators have little influence over their employer’s strategy. What the individual public administrator can control, and what he can benefit from, is a personal strategy for obtaining his own professional objectives. Your own professionalRead… Read more »
To get everything you want from your professional life, it helps to look beyond your job. Not many employers will satisfy all your desires for being on a track to promotion, having stimulating work and colleagues, and doing work that makes the world better. Government workers might have approached that in the heyday of theRead… Read more »
What if you could create the innovation that is most exciting to you, not just work the project your boss wants? What if you could collaborate with a team of enthusiastic colleagues, not some people who care and some who couldn’t care less? What if you could show off your skills in front of theRead… Read more »