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April 28, 2016 By AMK

Why you can’t run government like a business

For years, politicians have been telling us the federal government needs to operate more like a business, but can a private sector leader truly be a great public sector leader? Is the reverse true?

Good to GreatSuccessful leadership in business or government requires a mastery of communication and negotiation skills, and an ability to engender trust and credibility. But routinely ignored are the different responsibilities and skills required.

When private sector leaders are tapped for government service, they must recognize that different skills are needed for success. The high wire act of learning on the job can be disastrous for both the office holder and citizens.

Jim Collins, author of Good to Great: Why Some Companies Make the Leap and Others Don’t (HarperCollins 2001), wrote a monograph entitled Good to Great and the Social Sectors: Why Business Thinking is not the Answer. It explores the differences in detail. Collins writes that social sector organizations look to the private sector for leadership models and talent, which may be a mistake, “because of the checks and balances that exceed the capacity of private sector leaders in their facilitative leadership capacity . . . Indeed, perhaps tomorrow’s great business leaders will come from the social sectors, not the other way around.”

Keep reading this article at: http://m.govexec.com/excellence/promising-practices/2016/04/why-you-cant-run-government-business/127213

Filed Under: Government Contracting News Tagged With: big government, check and balance, communication, industry, leadership, negotiation, reform

July 25, 2014 By AMK

Government’s biggest failures: 2001-2014

With scandals at agencies ranging from the IRS to the Veterans Affairs Department fresh in the public’s mind, a longtime scholar of federal management has published a new assessment of government’s failures since 2001.

In the paper, called A Cascade of Failures: Why Government Fails, and How to Stop It, Paul C. Light, the Paulette Goddard Professor of Public Service at New York University, examines 41 stories that resonated with the public in a major way, using the Pew Research Center’s News Interest Index as a yardstick. The nonpartisan index, which has been published since 1986, attempts to measure how closely Americans are following stories covered by news organizations.

“Federal failures have become so common that they are less of a shock to the public than an expectation,” Light writes. At the same time, he adds, “I did not write this paper as yet another cudgel against ‘big government.’ As I have long argued, the federal government creates miracles every day, often in spite of tighter budgets, persistent criticism and complex missions.”

Light concludes in the study that government failures have been increasing over time, from an average of 1.6 per year from 1986 to 2001 to 3 per year after that.

Keep reading this article at: http://www.govexec.com/management/2014/07/governments-biggest-failures-2001-2014/88678/

For the full list of 41 failures Light assessed, click here.

Filed Under: Government Contracting News Tagged With: big government, DHS, failure, FEMA, GSA, mission, NASA, operations, oversight

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