CURRENT TOPICS
Littlefoot on Leadership: Love, Hope and Mission in an Age of Skeptics and Cynics
Leadership matters in every situation. In the Disney movie, “The Land Before Time,” Littlefoot the dinosaur confronts every challenge that you face in your organization – and he gradually learns to succeed. The situations in which he finds himself are the same as yours because they are fundamental to the human condition (or that of an anthropomorphic dinosaur). The keynote in four points:
- Working toward OK, building trust, and preparing for whatever comes next.
- Skating to where the puck is going to be, or what leaders can learn from hockey.
- Leadership is a learned skill – formal authority is just a battery back-up system.
- Determination, miracles, and judgment day.
Governance is Paramount in Any Organization – and Politics Drives Governance
When we witness a truly spectacular failure in an organization – think Enron, or the Challenger Shuttle disaster – the root cause is almost always a failure in governance. Politics, the thing that drives governance, is the process by which stakeholders contend with each other over the control and direction of the organization, the allocation of resources, the choices of means and ends, and the values embodied therein. The keynote in four points:
- Politics is ubiquitous and sacred to a self-governing people.
- Good politics, bad politics, and the administrator’s political responsibilities.
- Mind the gap – the disconnect between the regular folks and the people in charge.
- Changing the culture of organizations.
Honest, Competent Government: Fulfilling the Promise of Performance Auditing
Government of the people, by the people, for the people isn’t just a wonderful ideal captured in elegant rhetoric, it’s the way the real world actually works. And it works better when people know the truth. How can performance audit organizations do better at contributing to create a government that citizens can trust to tell the truth and learn from mistakes? The keynote in four points:
- Successful audits aimed at achieving macro-level impact.
- Fat rabbits and lurking demons – a conceptual framework for performance audit.
- Similar challenges, diverse responses: internationally-derived good ideas.
- Meeting the “Bill Russell criterion” in performance auditing.
Answering the Obama Administration’s Education Call-to-Arms: Re-Connecting Schools and Communities
With “Promise Neighborhoods,” “Race to the Top,” and dozens of other budding initiatives, Education Secretary Arne Duncan and the “Obamans” plan to transform America one community at a time. Will it work? What’s it mean to educators and community leaders? How can you make it fit with your own agenda? The keynote in four points:
- Community building and social capital as keys to organic growth.
- Human development, not real estate development, as the key to jobs.
- Building a political base for schools as neighborhood anchors.
- Building a grounded – and effective – grants strategy
CURRENT ARTICLE
Mayor Funkhouser writes an article two or three times a year. The most recent article is
Why Citizen Trust in Government is at an All-Time Low - And What Today's Leaders Can Do About It (click to download pdf document).
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