Leadership

Do vague requirements cause programs to fail?

Do vague program requirements cause projects to fail? That’s the question ESI International wanted to know. They surveyed project team members, including project managers and contracting officers, and found that 80 percent said their agencies lacked a formalized process for defining and managing program requirements. Bill Damare is the Vice President for Government Markets atRead… Read more »

Confident Enough to Win

Determining the outcome of an election is no more difficult than accessing which candidate is most comfortable in his or her own skin. Even with this knowledge, it is a spectacle each election as we witness the mind-blowing lengths candidates go through to make us believe they are something they are not. Bad advisers andRead… Read more »

Saving lives with inter-agency teamwork — how one Sammies finalist is reducing medical errors

Every year, tens of thousands of patients die or are harmed by preventable medical errors such as pharmaceutical prescription mistakes, hospital acquired infections and surgical missteps. Breakdowns in communication among doctors, nurses and other care providers are a leading cause of these tragic errors. James Battles is a social science analyst at the Agency forRead… Read more »

Is Your Office Team Like a Family? Should It Be?

I was just reading an article titled “5 Ways Leaders Must Build a Family Environment to Achieve Excellence.” The article cites a McKinsey study which learned that family-controlled companies outperform their competitors and extracts some lessons for creating great teams, including: Give Teams a Sense of Ownership Everyone Must Protect One Another Instill Values toRead… Read more »

Meet the SWAT team for social media (VOST) and is there a VALUE in transparency?

On today’s program Earlier this week, we asked if Twitter and Facebook spelled the end of emergency management. Well, emergency managers are actually learning to use those tools to broaden their eyes and ears about what is going on in an emergency. They are called Virtual Operations Support Teams. And we’ll talk to an emergencyRead… Read more »

VOST — It’s like the SWAT team for social media

Everybody needs situational awareness — that’s what they call it in the military — knowing what you need to know to make the best decisions. That is particularly true for emergency managers. Earlier this week, we spoke to Adam Crowe who suggested that emergency managment as we now know it is dead. His argument: socialRead… Read more »

OMB Guidance: Prepare to SOAR

OMB has released its long-awaited guidance for the implementation of new provisions in the GPRA Modernization Act of 2010. It describes a novel way to meet a statutory requirement to annually judge the performance of government programs. Agencies will have to put this new approach in place over the next two years. A provision buriedRead… Read more »