Brad Rourke

Category: management

  • Start With Just One

    My friend Cindy Cotte Griffiths wrote a piece as the year began that holds an excellent lesson. She tells a story of a project her young son was working on. Instead of trying to add a whole bunch of elements, he wanted to see how few elements it would take te get his task done.…

  • Making Document Reviews Work

    If you are having a meeting (or a conference call) to review a document, here are three things that can make it helpful: Insist that whatever is being reviewed get shared ahead of time, with ample time to read Insist that participants edit the document using Track Changes ahead of time, send the changes directly…

  • Oh, D.E.A.R. — How to Respond to Crisis: Eat the Whole Bug

    I spent the last weekend, as I do a couple of times a year, leading ethics and leadership sessions at the Sorensen Institute for Political Leadership’s Candidate Training Program. This is a bipartisan, intensive boot-camp for new candidates, delivered within an ethics framework. It has been proven to work and numerous grads are now holding…

  • New Norms Needed For New Realities

    As my friends on Facebook know, I recently turned off the voicemail on our home telephone line. Even though I had a fairly stern outgoing message that informed people they should not expect a message to reach us timely, people were still leaving messages and getting miffed when we didn’t call back. But the thing…

  • Renaming An Organization

    My good friend Hildy Gottlieb, author of the very important Polyanna Principles, is in the midst of choosing a new name for her organization, the Community-Driven Institute. She has written a very interesting and transparent article about that process, and has thrown a few ideas out there for people to react to. The Vision Words…

  • Speaking In Opposites: Why Organizations Need Outward-Facing Empaths

    Over the weekend I encountered two signs that got me thinking about the messages large organizations send to those they serve (sometimes these are “customers,” other times they are “patrons” or “constituents”). Everyone knows that organizations have a tendency to put their own needs first. We’ve been hearing management gurus berate corporate America for this…

  • Myers-Briggs In The Nonprofit Workplace: How To Lead With J's And P's

    When they discover Myers-Briggs personality types, many people are transfixed by the dichotomy between “extraverts” and “introverts.” This may be because this is the easiest and most in-you-face concept. That was my own experience, when I first learned that I am an ENTP personality type. The Myers-Briggs Type Indicator has four factors, each of which…

  • LaHood's Dilemma And The Difficulties Of Evaluation

    Yesterday Transportation Secretary Ray LaHood, in response to a question at a congressional hearing, suggested that Toyota owners ought to avoid driving their cars. Specifically, he said: “My advice is, if anybody owns one of these vehicles, stop driving it, take it to the Toyota dealer because they believe they have the fix for it.”…

  • Donate Services To A Candidate?

    My latest article on my blog at the Washington Times Communities, Public Square Today, is now live: Donate Services To A Candidate? A good friend asks: In your experience, are most services used by local candidates donated? A candidate for the . . . State House, whose staffer attended my recent social networking class, asked me…