Articles: What Kind of Change to the Civil Service System Is Really Needed? FedSmith.com, Timothy J. Clark, August 15, 2011,www.FedSmith.com
Recently started a series of articles on identifying options for improving the quality of government service. Taking a little different approach from what I’ve done in the past in trying to develop an interest and awareness of the variability paradigm.
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Op-Ed. The Sidney Awards, By DAVID BROOKS, Published: December 25, 2009
Every year, I give out Sidney Awards to the best magazine essays of the year. In an age of zipless, electronic media, the idea is to celebrate (and provide online linkof poor quality:d “cost es to) long-form articles that have narrative drive and social impact.
One of the awards includes a medical related “cost of poor quality” story, e.g.,How American Health Care Killed My Father, by David Goldhill. Note reference to the 100,000 deaths refers to common cause variation.
My dad became a statistic—merely one of the roughly 100,000 Americans whose deaths are caused or influenced by infections picked up in hospitals. One hundred thousand deaths: more than double the number of people killed in car crashes, five times the number killed in homicides, 20 times the total number of our armed forces killed in Iraq and Afghanistan. Another victim in a building American tragedy.
Business and the Way of Democracy, By ANDREA BONIME-BLANC and MARK BRZEZINSKI, Published: December 26, 2009
The role that integrity plays in the private sector is similar to the role that democracy plays in the public sector.
Much like transitions to democracy over the past four decades transformed governments from mostly authoritarian to mostly democratic, we are currently witnessing a transformation of global corporations from a more or less opaque shareholder-centric model to a more transparent multi-stakeholder model.
Article infers a reference to the Myers-Briggs Type Indicator (MBTI). The assessment has its critics but I have found it has been a useful tool – I’m generally pretty accurate in identifying preference which helps improve communications.
Op-Ed. An Officer and a Creative Man, By MARK MOYAR, December 19, 2009, New York Times
Researchers have found that the leadership ranks of big organizations are dominated by either "sensing-judging" or "intuitive thinking" personality types. Those in the former category rely primarily on the five senses to tell them about the world; they prefer structure and standardization, doing things by the book and maintaining tight control.
.. . But this personality type functions less well in activities that change frequently or demand regular risk-taking, like technological development or counterinsurgency. Organizations that thrive under such conditions are most often led by people with intuitive-thinking personalities. These people are quick to identify the need for change and to solve problems by venturing outside the box.
Comments about the Article: Small Wars Journal.
Note the reference to cause and effect. The “effect” represented in the statement: “Our aim is to manifest the fundamental innate mind of clear light, the most subtle level of consciousness, and to remain within that level of mind without regressing to grosser levels.” On the “causes”: the practice of the Great Completeness style of meditation.
Dalai Lama Quote of the Week
Two years ago a Tibetan yogi who practiced the Great Completeness style of meditation in the Nyingma tradition achieved a state of the complete disappearance of his gross physical body, which we call "achieving a rainbow body." His name was Achok, and he was from Nyarong. He studied philosophy from time to time at a Geluk monastic university near Lhasa called Sera, and he also received teachings from my junior tutor Trijang Rinpochay, but his main teacher was the Nyingma lama, Dujom Rinpochay. Although he practiced Tantra according to both the old and new schools of Tibetan Buddhism, his main practice was the recitation of "om mani padme hum" and its accompanying meditation.
Until about three years ago, he frequently said he hoped to have the opportunity of meeting the Dalai Lama in this lifetime. Then, one day he called on his followers to perform offerings for the sake of the Dalai Lama’s life. After they made offerings, he surprised them by announcing that he would leave. He put on his saffron monastic robe and told them to seal him inside his room for a week. His disciples followed his request and after a week opened the room to find that he had completely disappeared except for his robe. One of his disciples and a fellow practitioner came to Dharmsala, where they related the story to me and gave me a piece of his robe.
Since he usually remained in retreat as a very simple monk with no pretensions, unlike some lamas, he proved that he was a good practitioner and finally this occurred. You can see the connection between cause and effect. There are others about whom miracles are claimed, but without the proper causes.
In Highest Yoga Tantra, the potencies–that in ordinary life produce impure environments and beings by way of the very subtle wind and mind–are purified through ppractice of the spiritual path, whereby they are transformed into the pure, altruistic mind, speech, and body of a Buddha. Our aim is to manifest the fundamental innate mind of clear light, the most subtle level of consciousness, and to remain within that level of mind without regressing to grosser levels. However, this purified state is not just mental; it involves body, but a body fashioned from wind, the wind that is the mount of the mind of clear light. The ultimate purpose of these manifestations is to assist others in achieving the same freedom from suffering and limitation.
The center of this process of purification is realization of the luminous and knowing nature of mind–understanding that afflictive emotions such as lust, hatred, enmity, jealousy, and belligerence do not reside in the very essence of mind but are peripheral to it. When the mind knows its own nature and when this knowledge is teamed with powerful concentration, it gradually becomes possible to reduce and finally to overcome the afflictive states that drive the process of repeated suffering. This is the Tibetan view of the intimate relationship between mind and matter, and how they work in the process of altruistically directed purification.
–from Mind of Clear Light: Advice on Living Well and Dying Consciously by His Holiness the Dalai Lama, translated and edited by Jeffrey Hopkins, Ph.D.
Defense Department Planning To Expand Minerva Initiative, (Inside The Pentagon)…Jason Sherman
The Pentagon plans this year to expand a fledging program launched by Defense Secretary Robert Gates to foster cooperation between the military and social scientists in a bid to improve understanding of 21st-century security challenges and develop a cadre of experts to influence national security policy.
Gates, a former college president, launched the Minerva Initiative last year with the goal of invigorating the type of collaboration between the Pentagon and academic institutions that thrived during the Cold War.
Just as the National Defense Education Act of 1950 encouraged the study of subjects like Marxism, Leninism and communism, yielding insights into the Soviet Union, Gates has handpicked new areas for research that he hopes will produce long-term results. These include Chinese military and technology studies; research that illuminates the perspectives of terrorists; research into possible disciplines required to deal with current and future security challenges; and religious and ideological studies.
On Dec. 22, the Pentagon awarded contracts to seven researchers working with 16 academic institutions. The National Science Foundation, which last summer partnered with the Defense Department on the Minerva initiative, is expected to announce another round of awards this month.
Cheney: U.S. Close To Meeting Goals In Iraq, (USA Today)…Wire reports, Jan 5, 2009
WASHINGTON — Vice President Cheney said Sunday that the United States is accomplishing its aims in Iraq. Interviewed on CBS’ Face the Nation, Cheney offered a spirited defense of the 2003 U.S. invasion of Iraq, of which he was a top advocate.
“We are close to achieving most of our objectives. We have a significant reduction in the overall level of violence,” Cheney said.
The vice president, who leaves office in two weeks, also cited as successes the removal of Iraqi leader Saddam Hussein, a new Iraqi constitution, elections and a recent U.S.-Iraqi agreement. It gives the Iraqi government the lead role in providing security for the country and calls for a U.S. military withdrawal by 2011.
“All of these things by anybody’s standards would be evidence of significant success,” Cheney said.
In a recent series of farewell interviews, Cheney has been defending the decision to invade Iraq and the subsequent U.S. occupation. More than 4,200 U.S. servicemembers have died in the nearly 6-year-old war.
Cheney acknowledged pre-war intelligence that concluded Iraq had weapons of mass destruction was wrong. Still, he argued that Saddam had the technology, the personnel and the desire to build such weapons again.
Asked if the violent insurgency that followed the 2003 invasion could have been avoided if the United States had deployed more troops, Cheney said the administration had failed to take into account a post-Saddam power vacuum where no Iraqi was willing to take charge and maintain order.
“There weren’t any Iraqis early on who were willing to stand up and take responsibility for their own affairs,” he said. “So I would chalk that up to miscalculation.”
You can’t earmark bravery or budget patriotism.
Private donors are already doing a lot to help recuperating soldiers in San Antonio. In recent years, two “Fisher Houses” were built near Brooke Army Medical Center by the Fisher House Foundation to give family members of injured soldiers a place to stay. And across the street from Mrs. Markelz’s facility is the gleaming new Center for the Intrepid, a state-of-the-art amputee and burn-victim rehabilitation facility built with private funds and donated to the Army.
Private donors are already doing a lot to help recuperating soldiers in San Antonio. In recent years, two “Fisher Houses” were built near Brooke Army Medical Center by the Fisher House Foundation to give family members of injured soldiers a place to stay. And across the street from Mrs. Markelz’s facility is the gleaming new Center for the Intrepid, a state-of-the-art amputee and burn-victim rehabilitation facility built with private funds and donated to the Army.
“This is not about philanthropy, this is not a gift. It’s an obligation. It’s a partial repayment on a debt we owe these guys.”
We live in an era of earmarks and ever-expanding bailouts where there is seemingly little that the government is incapable of doing. But you cannot earmark bravery or budget patriotism. And perhaps that is the best justification for what citizens — and not government alone — should do to aid those who have volunteered to defend their freedoms.
…Gates has focused on the simple idea, albeit a complex task, of getting the job done. This grounded purpose has been long needed in a Washington polarized by political disagreement over the use of military power abroad and the struggle to reinvigorate strained alliances. Gates’s pragmatism is rippling through many facets of U.S. policy and helping to repair damaged relations with Congress, the State Dept. and the global aerospace industry. This is why he is Aviation Week’s Person of the Year for 2008.
As he sits at his mile-high desk, clad in his Air Force One crew jacket, George W. Bush is as he has ever been: upbeat, focused, confident in his past decisions and in the future.
On Iraq …
The action that will always most define the Bush presidency will be the invasion of Iraq. It is also the decision he remains most visibly passionate about, especially given it was the cornerstone of his broader “freedom agenda” in the Middle East. That agenda, he says, is working, and he remains confident that while it “was widely criticized by some as being hopelessly naïve and idealistic, is really the only practical way to provide long-term security . . .” He is convinced the region is stepping into a new era, and will continue on that path “unless America loses nerve in our belief in the universality of freedom.”
Would it have been easier to just replace Saddam with another strongman? “Early on, I knew we were in an ideological conflict, and you don’t win ideological conflicts by replacing one strongman with another. . . . And frankly, that’s been a big shift in our foreign policy in the Middle East, which is — and this is not a criticism of anybody, it’s a recognition that presidents deal with the realities of the situation. But in the Cold War, to prevent communism from taking root in the Middle East, we promoted stability. Well, it just so happens that over time people became so resentful and so hateful that they were swayed by a group of very smart and very capable ideologues to become their foot soldiers.”
On the home front:
He also counts as an accomplishment his protection of the homeland, in particular that he is “leaving behind tools that future presidents will be able to use — and even though they were controversial when they were implemented, people are going to get in that Oval Office and say, now I understand why this tool is important.”
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