Somerville, Massachusetts is a city of 75,000 people located just north of Boston. Somerville as a city understands the importance of leadership training. Two years ago the city brought in Dr. Hugh O’Doherty a Harvard professor and leadership expert to teach City managers and department heads adaptive leadership skills. Mayor Joseph Curtatone recently created theRead… Read more »
Last night, we hosted the fourth GovLoop Mentors Program Kick-Off Event, welcoming and congratulating more than 50 new mentor pairings at the District Architecture Center in Washington, DC. I wanted to be sure and post the names of both mentees and mentors to honor their commitment to the advancement of their careers and the bettermentRead… Read more »
Sequestration is here, and it’s here to stay for at least a little while. And this new reality has created some major management challenges for government leaders. So how do you manage through the uncertainty? Tom Fox is the Vice President for Education and Outreach at the Partnership for Public Service. He told Chris DorobekRead… Read more »
Whether you’ve been a supervisor for years or are new to managing people, the relationship between you as a supervisor and those you supervise is one of the most important. But between long, busy workdays and stressful situations, that relationship can get ignored or thrown out the door entirely. Elisa Ortiz, deputy director of governmentRead… Read more »
Government is full of the best and the brightest, in fact, you might argue that the world’s foremost scientist, engineers, topic experts all reside in government. So why is it so difficult to make progress? “It’s a pocket of excellence issue,” said Richard Spires, CIO, DHS, ” he told the crowd assembled at the Excellence.GovRead… Read more »
Sequestration carries the threat of widespread furloughs of many federal employees, but the alternatives could amount to a case of pick your poison for those same feds. Eric Yoder is a staff writer at the Washington Post. He told Chris Dorobek on the DorobekINSIDER program that, “many of the alternatives are the same things thatRead… Read more »
Leadership “experts” list dozens of characteristics that they say are important for successful leaders. Many lists overlap, but I think they really come from the experiences and observations of the writers. One former senior level political appointee, Linda Springer, recently observed that a common set of successful characteristics private sector – being decisive, directive, andRead… Read more »
Creativity is the number one skill needed by companies today. Constant change and innovation is necessary for organizations to thrive and survive today. Yet most City Halls and Town halls do things as they have always done them for many years. Boston Mayor Thomas Menino created the Mayor’s Office of New Urban Mechanics to encourageRead… Read more »
More than 109,000 people have pledged to stay home this week. It’s all part of National Telework Week. The 3rd annual experiment allows agencies to test telework strategies for one week. Dan Kent is the Federal CTO and Director of Solutions at Cisco. He told me that Telework Week is growing, already this year’s pledgesRead… Read more »
As I mentioned before, when I started going through the top 5 questions that I hear from government supervisors, I realized that the article was getting rather long. As promised, here are the remaining questions…plus one bonus question that is often in the back of supervisors’ minds and never spoken. If you missed the firstRead… Read more »