The recent election cycle was painful. Regardless of your viewpoints, it seems our civil liberties were nearly ravaged. Many opinion leaders are calling for healing and more tolerance. Lord knows, we experienced a wicked year of community violence and upheaval that ended with a federal campaign about a war of the words. Throughout the year… Read More Leadership, Change and Respect for Our Foundational Law

Don’t get too excited by the title. No, I am not advocating for the mass retirement of men. Instead, I am making a case for retirees mentoring replacements before they retire. Take my retirement in 2014. After 36 years within state and local government (and in many roles) I filed retirement documents about 90 days… Read More HR Innovation: Mentirement

One morning, at two government offices, the day begins for two people. A male, enters the office late and gets reminded at the front door by his supervisor that his 15-minute tardiness is noted. Across town, a young woman enters the office after the official start time. She does with event as her supervisor sees… Read More One Morning at the Office

Organizations require order and standard procedures to thrive. Max Werking’s seminal essays ring true both about the positive and negative effects of bureaucratic order. One of the longstanding tools managers use in the bureaucratic order is the employee evaluation. For the new employee it typically is the probationary report. For the permanent employee, it is… Read More Has The Time Come to Eliminate Annual Employee Reviews?

Presently, government programs require much flexibility based on existing law, policy, procedure and practice. Standard operating procedure follows these principles pretty well. It is when an emergency strikes that government is tested. As we have seen during recent weeks, violence has taken its toll. Law enforcement, the courts and elected officials struggle to respond to… Read More Policy Change During Crisis

Organizations generate many observed behaviors which necessitate the use of paradigms such as culture. Small organizations (up to 300 persons) can show useful indications of the culture paradigm, where larger organizations (301-12,000+) can defy if not become unworkable within a cultural analysis. Military, paramilitary and law enforcement organizations typically adhere to more rigid cultural norms… Read More The Fallacy of a Culture in Large Organizations

Voters in many states have demonstrated discontent with the status quo policies and procedures. Some of the presidential candidates have proposed significant change to current policies including health care, immigration, civil rights and more. As public employees, we are concerned about how we could accept or implement such changes. At this time, we must wait… Read More Setting the Stage for Political Support of the Public Sector

I have noticed the postings in restaurant windows about sanitation ratings, generally on an A through F platform. This raises the question of why don’t we rate government program performance similarly with a very public notice good until the next rating? Of course, some will say that agency performance is more complex than a letter… Read More Is It Time for Posting Agency Performance?

I had a colleague in state government ask me for help with a proposal to change a business process. From prior experience, I was aware that a particular program manager was the reviewer. He had consistently rejected change proposals because, as he stated, “…the taxpayers don’t pay me to waste time looking at childish ideas.”… Read More Can Managers Lead Innovative Change?

Our union of communities, the United States of America, and its branches of government has upheld inalienable rights for many diverse Americans. As the nation grew, it struggled with racism, economic injustices (including imprisonment) and the right to live differently from other people. We care for others. Yet we continue to struggle with old and… Read More Keep Hiding the Mentally Ill