Push Beyond the Comfort Zone
Part of leading yourself is learning when to challenge yourself at strategic moments in your professional life. When I look back at my career, several big professional growth spurts were directly attributable to when I pushed my comfort zone. These were times in which...
The Adaptation of Metrics: From Baseball to the Badge
In the Fall of 2003, I happened upon a book about one of my favorite subjects—baseball—and by the time I had completed reading Moneyball, I had found a way to pierce through some of the most daunting challenges facing leaders of organizations: How to find talented...
Government Security & Information Assurance Training
Advanced technology has brought incredible progress to society, but it’s not without its faults. Chief among them is faulty information security, which breeds identity theft, viruses, malware and hacking, to name a few. The biggest defense against these threats is...
KPIs for Life: Understanding Organizational Management
I am working on a new but familiar project focusing on performance management and key performance indicators (KPIs). The framework and presentation of a performance management system does not matter I am realizing. Specifically, the way performance measurement...
George Washington’s Vision For National Banking
It’s February and time to celebrate George Washington’s birthday, February 22, 1732. Washington, the 1st President of the United States, greatly contributed to foundation of the banking and finance industry. Washington said, “A people…who are possessed of the spirit...
Information Governance Insights: The Magic Black Box
We’ve talked a lot about Information Governance and the goal of increasing the productivity of employees, lower costs, increase operational opportunities, and cover downside risk by providing consistency, integrity, security and availability of information throughout...
How Government Can Utilize Niche Social Media
If you have been reading GovTalk the last few months, you should have some direction on how to use the three largest social media platforms to your entity’s advantage. Facebook, Twitter, and YouTube are the top tools to coordinate a social media campaign for any...
A Journey to End the Journey
In my previous article I described how I often use the analogy of a mountain to help me tackle the challenges of life. But in 2007 I actually moved the mountain from analogy to reality. By then any remaining doubts that my recovery was not both incredible and...
Of Leaders and Teams
In the first of this two-part series, we used illustrations of bridges as we looked at the power of external forces and the active perspective leaders employ to swiftly assess, understand and respond to challenges facing their organizations. We’ve already seen that...
Everyday Innovation
We met for breakfast in the antique Foshay Tower (now a W Hotel) in Minneapolis. My breakfast guest was the renowned cartoonist, John Bush. Now deceased, his syndicated cartoons were at that time white-hot. I was there to learn how his mind worked since my...
Motivational Junk Food: What’s the Problem?
The Problem with Feeding People Motivational Junk Food Excerpt from Why Motivating People Doesn’t Work … And What Does by Susan Fowler. Be careful of being driven. If you are driven, who is doing the driving? I heard this old adage many years ago, and ever since,...
Bilingual, Basic or Fluent: What Are the Differences?
By Jaymie Pompeo, Career Coach Growing up, my entire family instilled the value of a second language. My parents are native speakers and placed heavy emphasis on using Spanish at home while my English developed through the help of Sesame Street and elementary school....
The Courage to Be Curious
Leaders being asked to do more with less resources sometimes default to a “just get it done” attitude when tackling daily tasks. As a leadership tool, the willingness to evoke curiosity in these times often falls to the sidelines in one-on-one dialogues and team...
Benefits of Behavioral Logic Trees
While reading Phi Kappa Phi’s patterns themed Winter 2015 Forum, I thought about patterns of my own life. Specifically, I thought about how I develop patterns around my neophobia (neophobia, is the aversion, fear [phobia] of the unfamiliar, new [neo]). It is...
Do Governments Need Economic Development?
There are some who argue government has no business getting involved with economic development. They believe economic development is not a government function. Conversely, there are others who maintain economic development is the primary function of any American...
5 Reasons Why the Public Sector Needs Marketing
Marketing + public sector = success does not seem like a common equation. Marketing is the actions (sales, public relations, pricing, packaging and distribution) taken to place your product or service with a customer. It is synonymous with the private sector and...
You Have Chosen Your Current Income
What if you were told you are earning today exactly the amount you have chosen to earn, no more and no less; that you are where you are financially because you have chosen to be right there. Would you agree with that? Most would adamantly disagree. But the fact...
Women’s Leadership: Challenging Our Social Norms
Women are equally qualified for leadership positions as their male counterparts, however, less of us continue to fill political and corporate leadership positions. Most Americans find women indistinguishable from men on key leadership traits such as the capacity for...