Career

Member of the Week – Savi Swick

I had the opportunity to speak with Savi Swick who works for the Health and Human Services Agency for the County of San Diego. She is deeply engaged in many county initiatives to better serve the community. I appreciate the time she took to discuss her role and ambitions. Thank you Savi! 1. What isRead… Read more »

Tip 1 for Winning Government Contracts: Understand the full gamut of federal market opportunities and where your business could benefit from these. PART 1.

This is the second blog in the series of 10 tips for winning government contracts and growing in the federal market. You can see the first blog post here. Today I am going to cover the first part of Tip 1: Understand the full gamut of federal market opportunities and where your business could benefitRead… Read more »

Career Disruption Stress or Surviving “The Jack Benny Dilemma”: When It Really Is “Your Money or Your Life”

This week I was the keynote speaker at the Forty Plus annual dinner (www.40plus-dc.org/), a volunteer-based, Washington, DC, career transition/support group. In general, members are white collar types, e.g., federal employees, managers, IT professionals, academics, even some entrepreneurs, who are “in between jobs.” With only 20 minutes of speaking time, my subject was definitely apt,Read… Read more »

Think your customers/citizens are stupid? Guess who their leader is…

Providing great services and products is difficult for businesses, government agencies, everyone. It is easy to blame the customers, or the citizens, for not understanding the complexity of issues ranging from how to install your product to the need for building permits. While, to be honest, there a likely a couple of knowledge-challenged people amongRead… Read more »

Brush that Dirt off Your Bike Lanes – Social Media for Spring Cleaning

Government of the people, meet the people. With technology making our world smaller and more closely interconnected than ever before, it seems only natural that new social media like SeeClickFix.com could link citizens and government in productive dialogue about issues affecting the public space. Recently we helped bicyclists in Lansing, Michigan help clean up debris-coatedRead… Read more »

An Alternative to ‘Work-Life Balance’

Originally posted on ImprovisingMe.com Let me start by stating I HATE the phrase ‘Work-Life Balance’!!! NOTE: My apologies, in advance, to my mother, for she never liked us using the word “HATE”, but let’s just say “strongly dislike” doesn’t emphasize the point well enough in this case. ‘Work-Life Balance’ or some VERY similar phrase, getsRead… Read more »

Implementing And Operating An Open Government Organization

The President’s December 8, 2009 Memorandum on Open Government requires a new approach for many federal government organizations. It will impact the people, processes and technology of government offices. It will impact the work habits and behaviors of government employees. For Open Government plans to be successfully implemented, cultural issues will also need to beRead… Read more »

On My Transformation from Social Worker to Public Servant

I read somewhere that the (median) average age of entry into the Canadian federal public service is 34 years old. That fits me reasonably well; this is my second career. For my first 10 years of “professional” employment I was a social worker, and my speciality was child and adolescent mental health. It was theRead… Read more »