I’m using this post as a testing ground of sorts with which to work out the design of my 5-minute Gov 2.0 Expo talk on May 25th, 2010. As a result what you are about to read may seem random and disjointed at first. Fair warning.
I think what I’ll probably do is develop the case study as a full-on post for Must. Be. AWESOME!!! so that interested folks from the expo can come here and read through the entire narrative. What I’ll need to do then is make the 5-minute preso more of a pitch for people to come back and get the full effect. Plus, it’ll be a great place to start a conversation about the Tech Team, share experiences, continue analyzing, etc.
Original Pitch
“Instituting a Culture of AWESOME in Government: The Case of the IED Task Force Tech Team”
- Purpose 1: Demonstrate how gov entities can exude AWESOME
- Purpose 2: Extract lessons (positive & negative) from case study
- Contraints: 45-min preso time shortened to 5 minutes — warrants major curtailing in presentation of findings
Major Themes in Research/Interviews
- Righteous mission: helping to save soldiers’ lives
- Brotherhood: team exceptionally loyal to one another, inside & outside of work
- Fellowship: people & job were fun – weekly happy hours & grill-outs
- Leadership: BG Votel and LTC Jost took risks, backed up his people every time
Lessons Learned
- The right mix of personalities will enable AWESOME in any enterprise.
- AWESOME activity creates swarm of “antibodies” (naysayers, can’t-do’s, etc).
- People will give 18hrs/day if the activity is AWESOME.
- Small, super-empowered teams can change everything if given the chance.
- Cults of personality and rabid positivity will engender loyalty between all echelons.
- Middle management worked for team members, not vice versa.
- The business of AWESOME is inherently and unavoidably social.
- Ad hoc, task force structure engendered agility, effectiveness, & ownership.
- Permanizing the organization destroyed team cohesion & introduced stagnation & irrelevance.
Unanswered Questions
- How transferrable is this case to other parts of government?
- If JIEDDO was borne of the Tech Team / JIEDDTF, then wasn’t the organization a failure? (because JIEDDO pretty much sucks today)
The IED Task Force Tech Team (circa 2004)
A note on formatting: I’m also currently fooling around with Prezi, a new web-based system of designing presentations that purports to help design better presentations by forcing you to think creatively, visually, and using mind-mapping techniques. The videos make it seem pretty cool, and I was considering using this for my Gov 2.0 preso. However, I’m concerned that the Gov 2.0 staff isn’t ready for the newness of Prezi (I’m not even sure of the file formats supported), and I’ve only got a few weeks to play around with it. Further, despite the New York Times‘ recent story on how tired of PowerPoint everyone in the Defense establishment is, everyone’s still using it and everyone’s used to seeing it.
In 5 minutes’ time, I’m not even sure the benefits of Prezi would be worth it. Still, I may do a longer version of the talk in Prezi to post here on the blog at a later date. We’ll have to see what the future demand looks like for this case study.
