Tackling Wicked Government Problems: A Practical Guide for Developing Enterprise Leaders

by Jackson Nickerson (Editor), Ronald P. Sanders (Editor)

Overview

How can government leaders build, sustain, and leverage the cross-organizational collaborative networks needed to tackle the complex interagency and intergovernmental challenges they increasingly face? Tackling Wicked Government Problems: A Practical Guide for Developing Enterprise Leaders draws on the experiences of high-level government leaders to describe and comprehensively articulate the complicated, ill-structured difficulties they face—often referred to as "wicked problems"—in leading across organizational boundaries and offers the best strategies for addressing them.

Tackling Wicked Government Problems explores how enterprise leaders use networks of trusted, collaborative relationships to respond and lead solutions to problems that span agencies. It also offers several approaches for translating social network theory into practical approaches for these leaders to build and leverage boundary-spanning collaborative networks and achieve real mission results.

Finally, past and present government executives offer strategies for systematically developing enterprise leaders. Taken together, these essays provide a way forward for a new cadre of officials better equipped to tackle government's twenty-first-century wicked challenges.

Product Details

ISBN-13:	9780815726401
Publisher:	Rowman & Littlefield Publishers, Inc.
Publication date:	11/01/2014
Sold by:	Barnes & Noble
Format:	eBook
Pages:	250
File size:	1 MB

About the Author

Jackson Nickerson is the Frahm Family Professor of Organization and Strategy at the Olin Business School at Washington University in St. Louis. He also is a nonresident senior fellow in Governance Studies and associate dean and director of the Brookings-Olin Executive Education partnership at Brookings.Ronald Sanders is a vice president at Booz Allen Hamilton and the firm's very first fellow. Before joining Booz Allen he served in a number of senior government posts, most recently as the U.S. intelligence community's associate director of national intelligence for human capital, as well as faculty positions at Syracuse University's Maxwell School and the George Washington University.

Table of Contents

Preface vii

1 The Enterprise Leadership Challenge Jackson Nickerson Ronald Sanders 1

Part 1 Contemporary Enterprise Leadership Challenges

2 Leading the National Security Enterprise; Some Personal Observations J. Michael McConnell 19

3 Collaborating to Honor Our Veterans Pasquale (Pat) M. Tamburrino Jr. 29

4 Confronting Complexity and Creating Unity of Effort through Enterprise Leadership Thad Allen 37

Part 2 What Makes for an Effective Enterprise Leader?

5 Leading the Enterprise through Network Governance Jackson Nickerson 47

6 Critical Connections: Driving Rapid Innovation with a Network Perspective Rob Cross Andrew Hargadon Salvatore Parise 57

7 Leadership in a Networked World: How to Accelerate Organizational Change and Improve Performance Thomas W. Valente 75

8 Leveraging Networks through Boundary Spanning Leadership Donna Chrobot-Mason Kristin Cullen David Altman 89

Part 3 An Enterprise Approach to Leadership Development

9 Building a Culture of Executive Collaboration Jim Trinka 107

10 Developing Enterprise Leaders: The Case of the U.S. Intelligence Community Ronald Sanders 119

11 Interagency Rotation Programs: Professional Development for Future Enterprise Leaders Laura Miller Craig Jessica Nierenberg 141

12 Reinventing the Senior Executive Service as an Enterprise Asset Stephen T. Shih 153

13 Meeting the Enterprise Leadership Challenge Jackson Nickerson Ronald Sanders 162

Contributors 181

Index 189

What People are Saying About This

From the Publisher

"In a world where problems pay no attention to boundaries, and a failure to navigate those boundaries can produce disaster, this book is a welcome guide. It not only charts the big issues we face, but it also lays out a plan for getting the leaders we need. It's an invaluable contribution to the inescapable debate." —Donald F. Kettl, Dean, School of Public Policy, University of Maryland

"Now, more than ever, the country needs effective leaders who can 'move the needle' to improve enterprise performance. Ron Sanders, Jackson Nickerson, and a cast of proven leaders provide practical advice on how to improve leader development in government to tackle tough problems and achieve better enterprise-wide outcomes." —W. Scott Gould, former Deputy Secretary, U.S. Department of Veterans
Affairs, and coauthor of The People Factor

"Today's big problems cannot be solved by single organizations, no matter how powerful. They demand collaborative effort by people in various federal agencies,
and often by others in state, local, and foreign governments and the private and nonprofit sectors. Marshalling these resources is the job of the 'enterprise leader,' a term coined in this volume to describe the qualities increasingly demanded of federal officials. It makes a convincing case both for viewing 'wicked problems' differently and for preparing agency officials to work across boundaries in addressing them." —Timothy B. Clark, Editor-at-Large, Government Executive Media Group

"Government's ability to keep up with an ever-more complicated and changing world depends on a move to a new 'enterprise' model of leadership, and this book is a great starting point for telling us how to get there." —Max Stier, President and CEO, Partnership for Public Service