Good Enough for Government Work

Get a copy of the book here Captain D. Michael Abrashoff was the former commander of the guided missile destroyer, the USS Benfold , during the late 1990s.  During his tenure as Captain of the ship, Abrashoff led the ship to achieve the highest performance scores in the Navy, slashed operational costs, and improved crew morale. How he accomplished this is the subject of the book, It’s Your Ship: Management Techniques from the Best Damn Ship in the Navy , written by Abrashoff himself. When Captain Abrashoff took command of the Benfold in 1997, the prior commander was not well-liked by his crew, the ship was among the worst performers of any in the Navy (as evidenced by its poor “readiness indicators”), and the ship’s retention rate was at a dismal 28% - that is to say almost ¾ of its sailors were so disenfranchised with the assignment, they chose not to reenlist for a second tour. By the end of his command, the Benfold was operating on a budget surplus; its readiness indic...

The Extent of the Problem The phrase, “It’s good enough for government work,” has come to illustrate the negative stereotype of public sector workers as ineffective, uncaring, lazy, and inefficient. But is this stereotype accurate? Do American citizens really believe their civil servants are this bad? Unfortunately, recent surveys do not paint a pretty picture of American’s perception of us. A 2010 survey by the The Washington Post found only 51% of Americans believe federal public workers work as hard as their counterparts in the private sector and 52% of Americans believe they are paid too much money ( Rein & O’Keefe, 2010 ). In 2014, the McKinsey Center for Government surveyed 17,000 individuals across fifteen states and discovered people were more than twice as likely to be satisfied with private enterprise exchanges as with government services. Furthermore, exchanges with essential government services such as public transportation and the DMV had the lowest satisfaction scor...

Introduction My name is Dan Lyndall and I am passionate about public sector management. More specifically, I am passionate about making public management better. Rarely is management in the public sector seen as laudable or something to be proud of by the general public. In fact, it is more often seen as joke. I am on a mission to change that mindset and this blog will document my personal journey of understanding about what makes government good and what makes it bad. It will be full of my personal insights as well as scholarly articles highlighting empirical evidence of the leadership characteristics I find most appealing. Thanks for reading and welcome to my blog! By the way, if you found this blog through a search engine, save this URL ( http://gegwblog.blogspot.com ) as the permanent link. This post will be the first of many more to come on a weekly basis and I wish to take this opportunity to tell you a little about myself and how I came to be so interested in blogging abou...