Category: Project Management

It’s a very intriguing name for Obama’s quest to recruit top talent from the likes of Google and Facebook. While this article in Fast Company is long, it’s a very interesting one, focusing on the mission of these top recruits – to “reboot” how government works.

Most of these recruits are young professionals that were on successful career tracks with public companies. What made them take a salary cut, move from one coast to another and work for the government is brilliantly explained in this article. Without a doubt, the transfixing power of creating technology that will make life easier for millions of people, had a lot to do with the decision to take a technology job in Obama’s administration. The article explains what inspires these young men and women and helps us more fully understand their work ethics.

We highly recommend that you put some time aside at lunch, or at the end of the day to read the entire article, but here are some of the high points.

• Healthcare.gov – remember when the site just didn’t work? People were getting locked up and the site froze from too many visitors. It wasn’t the result of a dearth of engineering talent in the DC area, but rather the technique they used to build the site. Instead of one huge project, the fix-it team rolled out the site in stages – testing it, improving it and repeating the process to get the right outcome. It’s a strategy used by most public companies in order to build software that works. It’s called building “agile” software.
• Making Government Work Better – The young people recruited for these government projects aren’t just software engineers, but according to the article, “they’re data scientist, user-experience gurus, product managers and design savants.” Making the user experience better on any platform is what they strive for. “Fixing bugs” for software companies is not very inspirational. But solving problems that have plagued the government for years is both satisfying and intriguing. These young professionals are uniquely capable of handling these “planet-sized” websites, since they’ve worked on huge sites solving various problems while creating extraordinary growth for their former companies.
• Changing Minds About the Slowness of Government – According to this group of talented professionals, “Everything else is getting done faster.” The technology industry is built on the belief that processes can become twice as efficient every two years. Because that belief is so integral to their work, these professionals have a hunger for increased performance. If what we do online every day is completed far faster than before, then the same should be true for the Federal government.
• Washington, the “Go-To” Place for Technology Gurus – The folks now being lured to DC are arguably among the very best. Talent is extremely important, but so is attitude, patience, collaboration and the ability to work within the structure of the government. According to the article, candidates are screened for EQ – that is, emotional intelligence. The workload within the Federal Government is huge. Can this team create enough momentum, before Obama’s second term ends, to achieve a stable environment and re-energize government agencies?

These technology gurus believe they’ve already had an impact. They can gauge improvement on various sites – from the Immigration site to the Veterans website. Interestingly enough, the recruitment team is not expecting these young professionals to make a career out of the Federal Government. But rather to enlist them for a year or two to accomplish real change. As a result, there is now a third option open to technology gurus – a start-up, a big company and now, Washington.

The healthcare.gov site successfully deployed by making incremental changes, testing the changes and making improvements. Can this process of incremental change work at your organization? Here are some thoughts that might lead to success.

1. Making incremental changes is not as disruptive and typically does not significantly threaten existing structures.
2. Incremental changes are typically slower, but can move a team steadily forward. Incremental gains prove better than none at all.
3. Often, the magnitude of a change will dictate how employees react. Employees will often react positively to a change that does not cause them to move too far from what they know.
4. Incremental change is often determined by the gap between the current state and where you want to end up. If the gap is large, incremental changes may not be possible. But incremental changes require less change management – you’re asking your employees to make a smaller leap from what they know, to what they are comfortable with.

Change and change management can be taught. LMJA works with organizational challenges. If you need help or would like to discuss your options, give us a call at 301-670-0051, or email me at Leadership@lmja.com.