Russ Linden & Associates is a management education and consulting firm, providing services that support organizational performance and change.
We offer open enrollment workshops as well as customized programs in such areas as collaboration, creating a customer-focused organization, the human side of change, and organizational learning.
Russ Linden's Management Columns:
Russ is one of a group of authors who write columns for the "Management Insights" series. These weekly columns are published online by Governing Magazine, and by Harvard's Kennedy School of Government. To see all of Russ's past columns, click on the Governing cover to the right.
Here's his latest column:
The Life-Saving Power of Crowdsourcing
It’s hard to imagine a better demonstration of its potential than the worldwide volunteer effort that helped rescue thousands of people after the earthquake in Haiti.
“The future is already here–it’s just not very evenly distributed.” There’s a good deal of truth in science-fiction author William Gibson’s observation. One of the most interesting and powerful aspects of our future–a tool that has the potential to take us a long way toward distributing information to where it can do the most good–is the phenomenon known as “crowdsourcing.”
The use of crowdsourcing–inviting large numbers of people to help solve a problem or make a decision via the Internet–has exploded as creative problem-solvers have found new ways to exploit its power. Most of us are familiar with Wikipedia, the online encyclopedia, which relies on the public to create and edit its content and has fewer than 90 paid employees. Open-source software is another example: Thousands of people with programming skills freely spend their time joining communities that form to develop and improve it.
For the full column, click here, and for a complete list of columns, click the GOVERNING cover on the right.
Russ' Management Columns are now posted on his new blog.
To visit Russ' blog click here, where you can also sign up to receive his columns as a quarterly email. See directions for signing up on the blog-site, to the right under Russ' photo.
For A Good Read Try:
"The Trusted Leader"
Most government agencies are filled with "technocrats"- employees with strong technical skills who are most comfortable working on the operational aspects of thier jobs. It sometimes takes years before they learn what Bob Stripling, a long-time city manager, discovered. As Bob puts it, "The longer I work in this business, the more I realize that it's fundamentally about managing relationships."
That's one of the key themes running through "The Trusted Leader". It shows how managers and leaders in government are finding ways to build trust, work across boundaries, and connect with a variety of stakeholders. Russ is pleased as both a contributer to this book, and a teacher in this field, to recommend this title as an insightful aid to those looking to broaden thier understanding in this area. For more on this new title, as well as ordering information, click on the cover below.
Russ' latest book, is available
at the following location:
....copies are also available at Amazon.com, and Barnes and Noble.
What People Are Saying About
Leading Across Boundaries
Russ's Most Recent Columns on Management in Governing Magazine.
Russ's Most Recent columns on management innovations posted on the Public Manager website.
Are you a "Collaborative Leader"?
Collaborative leaders understand how to lead as a peer (not only as a superior). They know that many of their most important projects require cooperation from people over whom they have no formal authority. Thus, they use the art of influence to gain cooperation. Read Russ's article on collaborative leadership, which appeared in the summer, 2003 issue of the Leader to Leader journal. Click here to see the article in its entirety.
"The Quest to Become 'One' "- A Report by Russ Linden*
Have you ever wondered,"How do I get all of the employees to start pulling in the same direction?" "Why do some managers still make it thier career strategy to hoard information instead of sharing it?" "Why is it difficult for the workforce to see the big picture?"
In recent years, several large federal organizations have tried to answer these questions through initiatives aimed at getting all of thier untis to work as "one". This report describes three such efforts in detail, at the Department of Veterans Affairs, Department of Transportation, and NASA. Each used different approaches, but they undertook their initiatives for the same reasons: their customers demanded it, ans they couldn't succeed as fragmented entities.
This paper examines what it means for large public agencies to work in an integrated way, across the hurdles faced in doing so, the strategies that seem to work well, and some lessons learned.
* This report was published by the IBM Center for Business of Government. You can learn more about ths Center at: www.businessofgovernment.org.
Location:
336 Parkway Street
Charlottesville, Virginia 22902Contact:
Phone: (434) 978-7775
e-mail:russlinden@earthlink.net
Website updated: March 28, 2013
PowerPoints updated: March 18, 2009