We’ve talked a lot about the rule of threes in the past; it pops up in literature, communication, survival, photography – oodles of places. When you are trying to get a point across, you are best served and most successful when you think in terms of three. Don’t believe me? ...
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Every large institution takes on some level of bureaucracy, which can be incredibly frustrating and infuriating to normal people who have to work with it. Almost every institution tends to adopt its own acronyms and language, in part to simplify internal communication but also, as I’ve seen, as a kind ...
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Trust in government is up! Some measurements of trust in government actually show improvements for the first half of 2023 compared to numbers from 2020 through 2022. However … it’s still putrid. Only one in four Americans has confidence in Washington. One in three has confidence in state and ...
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People find it quite impossible to relate to faceless, sterile institutions. I have yet to meet anyone who gets all warm and tingly around the U.S. Department of Treasury’s Office of the Comptroller of the Currency (OCC). The challenge remains that those sterile public institutions are all in the business ...
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While we’re on the subject of humility, dealing effectively with emotional, upset, angry people requires a skillset that’s counterintuitive to the ways that most of us usually communicate and interact with others. These skills and strategies may be different, but they work. Professionals, understandably, want to express confidence and professionalism ...
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Winston Churchill is often credited with saying, “A fanatic is one who can’t change his mind and won’t change the subject.” You know people like that. We’ve elected way too many people like that. Actual or presumed expertise often results in confidence – certainty, but that certainty comes with a ...
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Your trustworthiness and credibility will likely mean the difference between career success or failure. If you’re untrustworthy but lucky, you might wallow in abject mediocrity. Most people who get into public service in the first place do so because they are the good guys – they just don’t often know ...
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It was pointed out recently that we seem to be a nation united on values and divided by politics. (Values unite, issues divide.) Almost all of us want to feel safe, secure and provide better futures for our kids. How we do those things is where things begin to deteriorate. ...
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Normal people tend to avoid conflict like explosive diarrhea. It’s really difficult, messy, and makes your stomach hurt. So, most people do what they can to pretend it’s not that important or that bad or, failing to justify it away, they defer it to somebody else or they kick the ...
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I’m not talking about your next set of wheels (although electric vehicles (EVs) are clearly in your present or future) – we’re talking about public engagement. Reach and effectiveness are two arguably valid measurements for authentic public engagement. In this age of ever increasing demands on people’s time and attention, ...
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