Insights / Blog x

Contributors
Mission (not so) Impossible: Developing a Mission Mindset

Mission (not so) Impossible: Developing a Mission Mindset

With government agencies becoming increasingly complex, they often require a large staff of government employees and sometimes contractors to achieve their goals. While focusing on the daily tasks, it can be easy to lose touch with the agency’s overarching mission. The mission of an agency defines priority objectives, short-term and long-term goals, and the precise context of the operation.

Developing a mission mindset is critical to keeping an organization’s mission in focus, as it is the foundation for understanding your office and agency’s goals. A mission mindset drives delivery from mission statement to task completion, which allows the individual to understand how their direct assignments contribute to realizing the mission.

→
Arc Aspicio
,
Design (re)Thinking with the Mission in Mind

Design (re)Thinking with the Mission in Mind

In the past several years, Design Thinking has become a prominent technique to solve complex challenges in Government. Design Thinking is a human-centered approach to problem solving where empathy is a key principle, and where we strive to understand stakeholders’ goals, ambitions, motivations, needs, desires, and frustrations. It provides a structured, yet iterative and flexible process to create alternatives, and identify and then implement new ways of working to achieve mission goals.

→
Arc Aspicio
,
Boosting Customer Experience with Customer Data

Boosting Customer Experience with Customer Data

Collecting and analyzing Customer Data is an essential element of Customer Experience. However, using Customer Data to tailor and improve a Customer’s experience is a tricky scenario to get just right. Using too much data, or too personal of data, can make a customer uncomfortable and turned off. Suggesting a related product or service or offering help, in an authentic way, can make for a delighted customer.

→
Rob O'Keefe
, ,
Entrepreneurial Consultants in a Hybrid World – Our New Normal

Entrepreneurial Consultants in a Hybrid World – Our New Normal

In some ways, consultants have always operated in a hybrid world – working at their client sites throughout the week and then coming together with their colleagues in the office or on the phone. Since the pandemic, this has gotten even more complicated with multiple online platforms for day-to-day work, workshops, and conferences.

Thriving in this new hybrid model does not just happen – it requires clear leadership direction, investment in a collaborative culture, new soft skills in relationship building, and a workforce that desires to reach out and connect to tackle new projects and challenges.

→
Lynn Ann Casey
, ,
The SILab Transportation Security Innovation Contest: Keep Calm and Carry On:

The SILab Transportation Security Innovation Contest: Keep Calm and Carry On:

Many government agencies are adapting their responses to the ongoing COVID-19 pandemic. The Transportation Security Administration (TSA), in particular, had to adapt to vetting passengers through checkpoints in a safe, effective way. Fast, practical innovation alongside the necessity for the creation of long-term solutions was critical for the agency as passenger volume increased steadily.

TSA faced a critical problem: ensuring the safety of airline passengers and Transportation Security Officers (TSOs) while prioritizing safety and security. The TSA Innovation Task Force issued a call for white papers on Innovation Demonstrations for Enterprise Advancement, focusing on solutions for safe-distance screening and reducing the spread of infectious diseases.

→
Arc Aspicio
,
Addressing Misconduct: Building Professional Responsibility Functions in Government

Addressing Misconduct: Building Professional Responsibility Functions in Government

Agencies are staying at the forefront of supporting their workforces by enhancing their focus on professional responsibility – the discipline of proactively reducing misconduct and harassment throughout the workforce. Focusing on addressing and even preventing misconduct and harassment – as a standalone office reporting to an agency head or as a critical function within an existing independent office – is important to the workforce and helps agencies carry out their mission more effectively. It helps agencies earn and maintain a reputation of integrity and trust from the public.

→
Arc Aspicio
,
What Lies Ahead: Ten Risks for the Next Ten Years

What Lies Ahead: Ten Risks for the Next Ten Years

While some days, it seems impossible to focus on any threats other than the vulnerabilities and accompanying hardship of the current COVID-19 pandemic, it is critical that senior Government leaders take a more strategic and long-term view of all potential threats over the next four to ten years. These are threats that we can only imagine, beyond today’s reach and capabilities, but nonetheless plausible from those who intend to do us harm or from potential threats that natural or man-made catastrophes can cause. Once senior leaders are aware of the threats, they must prioritize them and make choices about where to invest in preparation and prevention.

→
Arc Aspicio
, ,
SILab Ideas: Process and Tools for Improving Organizations

SILab Ideas: Process and Tools for Improving Organizations

A great customer experience (CX) depends on efficient, compelling processes. Process improvement sounds simple enough – just identify a few bottlenecks or weak points, reroute processes, teach the new processes to your employees, and congratulate yourself on a job well done. Right?

Process improvement rarely goes this smoothly and they can be particularly difficult for the Federal Government because the size and complexities of the programs leads to processes that become firmly ingrained in day-to-day work and culture. To get it right, the Government must recognize their weak spots and develop a plan that integrates process improvement with their strategy and with organization change management techniques.

→
SILab
, ,
Enhancing Customer Experience (CX) with Behavioral Science and Strategic Communications

Enhancing Customer Experience (CX) with Behavioral Science and Strategic Communications

Citizens and customers of the government are demanding increased access to more efficient services. Covid-19 has also raised the bar on the need to provide accurate and informative data – in visualizations – to citizens who are becoming savvier about data accuracy and usefulness. Strategic communications are an essential part of raising the bar on customer experience (CX).

→
SILab
, ,
Government Innovation Is All About the Mission

Government Innovation Is All About the Mission

When people hear the word ‘innovation’ today, they often think of high-profile digital startups in Silicon Valley, impressive advances in medicine, or new tools and techniques for remote collaboration and social interaction. Private-sector organizations, with their leadership in these areas, have set a high bar for Government organizations to aspire to. So, what does innovation really mean for the Government? How can it harness the ideas in its workforce to bring innovation to life?

→
Robert Thomas
, ,
Applying Artificial Intelligence in the Government

Applying Artificial Intelligence in the Government

In recent years, government agencies have been transitioning to artificial intelligence (AI) for more efficient, accurate, and cost-friendly results. This trend will continue as technology improves and becomes more accessible and cost effective. Technology using AI, including tools that exploit data, is integral to solutions that improve agency operations and processes and data-driven decision-making.

→
Arc Aspicio
, ,
Innovating in a Socially Distant World

Innovating in a Socially Distant World

As organizations across the country went virtual with the pandemic, work and collaboration continued but often in very different and innovative ways. Team meetings went online, and eventually people went on video! Workshops required new facilitation techniques and new technology to support “break out” sessions. Remote happy hours and interactive Kahoots made work more fun, even at a time when we could not see colleagues in person for extended periods.

→
Lynn Ann Casey
Empathizing with your Employees: How to Lead in Times of Uncertainty

Empathizing with your Employees: How to Lead in Times of Uncertainty

In more ways than one, the current coronavirus pandemic has changed employee’s daily lives and conduct. New strategies for adapting to the current situation were installed in a matter of weeks and days, and, amid this uncertainness, employees had to transition to remote work seamlessly while maintaining and successfully delivering on critical deadlines.

→
Arc Aspicio