The Department of Defense is partnering with the Performance Improvement Council to host the upcoming Performance Symposium for all federal government employees. You must be a federal government employee to register. The event will take place on June 27-30, 2011 at the National Conference Center in Lansdowne, VA. Federal employees are invited from every departmentRead… Read more »
Every successful organization has at least one linchpin; some have dozens or even thousands. The linchpin is the essential element, the person who holds part of the organization together. Without the linchpin, the thing falls apart. – by Seth Godin in Linchpin: Are You Indispensable? (2010) Two American icons have been getting a bit ofRead… Read more »
Readers of this blog know I like to play the electric guitar (I turn it up to 11), and I like Arlington Fretworks. http://arlingtonfretworks.com/home Proprietor and craftsman Daniel Carbone repairs and builds guitars there. I have written previously about his standards of excellence being off the charts. (One client wrote that he would trust himRead… Read more »
Have you ever needed to turn in a report or spreadsheet on how well you or your team performedon a particular task/project? How well were you able to portray your efforts in terms of efficency and quantity? For instance, if you are a manager of a helpdesk, creating a spreadsheet that shows the amount ofRead… Read more »
Finally, the Office of Management and Budget has released the 2011 Circular A-133 audit guidance document. As usual, new programs have been added, other programs have been deleted, and individual program descriptions have been updated. In addition, OMB has added guidance and references relating to Transparency Act reporting, and clarified reporting requirements and auditors’ responsibilitiesRead… Read more »
This article was previously published on Tri Tuns blog. OBSERVATION You are responsible for ensuring end-user adoption of the IT system in your organization. To ensure this occurs, you retained consulting services unique to user adoption, such as Tri Tuns. Now that the contract is near completion, you are worried that you may see aRead… Read more »
This article was originally published on Tri Tuns Blog. OBSERVATION You are responsible for ensuring end-user adoption of the IT system in your organization. To ensure this occurs, you retained consulting services unique to user adoption, such as Tri Tuns. Now that the contract is near completion, you are worried that you may see aRead… Read more »
Grant recipients (both pass-through entities and subrecipients) may want to take note of an interesting item in OMB’s recent guidance on implementation of the Improper Payments Elimination and Recovery Act (PL 111-204). OMB says that for grant programs, agencies must consider payment recapture audits at the grant recipient level. “Federal agencies should work with stateRead… Read more »
This article was originally published on Tri Tuns Blog. OBSERVATION A common practice – and TRAP – of change management is to attempt to convince (“sell”) end-users that the new IT system is beneficial to them. Change management teams spend several hours trying to “spin” their communications to attain this goal. The fallacy is spendingRead… Read more »
I recently served on a grand jury, which is definitely some experiential learning. It allows one to discover many facets of the community that may not be encountered so regularly in the course of everyday life. The way a grand jury works is that you hear many, many case summaries, each of which takes anywhereRead… Read more »