Do people – employees, peers, bosses, customers, everyone – feel valued when they interact with you? Do they feel listened to – and heard? Do they feel you make every effort to address their needs – or explain what you can do for them? In our “get it done,” fast-paced work environment, these are tough […]
I appreciate my demise is a regular theme of my writing. But maybe it is important that I prompt contemplation of this huge, inevitable event that most of us spend our lives trying to ignore. And perhaps a more useful outcome of my reflections is that they were not what I expected them to be. […]
Recent studies have shown that women are half as likely than men to start a business. While this is a gender equality issue, it is also an economic one. We compose over 50 percent of the U.S. population, have earned 60 percent of undergraduate degrees, 60 percent of Master’s degrees, and almost 50 percent of […]
As 2015 reluctantly winds down to its final days, I find a highly-charged momentum continues on a topic that has become and will seemingly remain among the most important objectives of any organization and its leaders. Across the country, from companies to communities to colleges, the dialog of how to pursue diversity and inclusivity in […]
One of the great things about government is that unless something cataclysmic happens, there will always be a government and it will always need contractors in various forms. Freelance writers don’t think to go for government contracts even though they are often extremely well paid relative to the wider market, and can be a steady […]
Everybody tweets. Chances are your employees tweet from their mobile phones while they’re on the clock. Yes, even government employees. Some are probably very good at Twitter, using it to manage their own personal brands and share their own voices. In an age where government entities are accused by the public of being insincere when […]
Stay Ahead of the Silver Tsunami Here at Hennepin County – Minnesota’s most populous county – we’re preparing for the silver tsunami. Almost 43% of our 8,000 employees are preparing to retire in the next five years. When Baby Boomers leave, we will lose not only valued employees but also the skills they have honed […]
Throughout our lives, whether as employees or students, we’ve been trained to focus heavily on the minutia—dates, names, and other tidbits of knowledge. Instead of understanding the “why”, we worry about all of the “what”. The “what” included the name of the theater that Lincoln was shot at and the exact decimals of Pi. And […]
Recent news has shown an improvement in the unemployment rate, but are all generations created equal among the numbers? Not quite. Georgetown University’s Center on Education and the Workforce found that 40% of millennials are unemployed, the worst being for graduates age 21-25, while 44% of recent graduates are passing the time in dead-end, low-paying […]
It was a stunning and unexpected defeat. My boss and I were briefing the administrator on our recommended policy position for the agency. We had the research and data; we had a thoughtful, reasonable recommendation; it seemed like a no-brainer. We miscalculated badly. The administrator rejected the recommendation and killed the policy. What did we […]
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