Ditching the Easy Fix at Victor Valley College
February 27, 2023
If you’re always implementing an easy fix, you’re probably looking at all your problems as technical issues rather than complex, adaptive ones. But it can be hard to find the motivation. Not to mention the time to peel back the layers of those big, intractable issues and devise solutions. Here’s a pep talk in the form of an example from Victor Valley College in Victorville, California, where McKenzie Tarango is the Dean of Instruction,…
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How the City of Albuquerque Grows Entrepreneurial Thinking From the Inside Out
January 25, 2022
Many cities have worked to attract entrepreneurs over the past decade. Albuquerque, New Mexico, is among them—but in an innovative twist, the fast-growing Southwestern city also worked to foster an entrepreneurial mindset from the inside out. City leaders aren’t looking for municipal employees to start their own businesses. Instead, they’re following the Entrepreneurial Learning Initiative’s definition of entrepreneurship as the self-director pursuit of opportunities to create value for others. Here’s the story of how…
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Cultivating Curiosity: The New Learning Imperative
May 30, 2019
Photo by Stephen Hickman on Unsplash Learn How to Think (and Act) Like an Entrepreneur Part 4/8 Among the most distinguishing characteristics I’ve noticed among entrepreneurs, is an unusual desire to learn. It’s not that they are great students in the traditional sense, (in fact, in many cases, it’s quite the opposite) yet they always seem to be engaged in learning, usually through non-formal and informal means. For example, they learn through observation and inquiry,…
Read moreSteidle: The future of work is entrepreneurial
November 30, 2018
Why do so many people not understand the power of entrepreneurship? Perhaps the word “entrepreneurial” gives them hives or they have no idea how the word even applies to them. After all, they are not interested in starting a business so why should they care? Ice House Facilitator and founder of the Innovation Agency, Samantha Steidle answers this question and more in a blog post initially posted in the Roanoke Times. Read Now …
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Driving Engagement & Innovation in Government
May 3, 2018
(updated on 4/9/2019) Declining Government Employee Engagement Employee engagement is a significant challenge for government agencies. In fact, employee engagement is lower in public sectors than in private sectors. And, while 71% of state and local government employees are not engaged in their work, 17% of those employees are actively disengaged, working against the mission of the organization. Actively disengaged employees are more likely to miss work, quit their job, have more accidents, and…
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An Entrepreneurial Mindset for the New World of Work
March 19, 2018
The world is changing rapidly. From artificial intelligence, robotics, and self-driving cars to the new “gig” economy, the evidence of dramatic change is abundantly clear. Suddenly, the rules for survival have changed and the mindset that once enabled us to succeed is rapidly becoming obsolete. We are at the dawn of a new workforce revolution; one that requires everyone to think like an entrepreneur. Download NACCE Journal Article
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How Do You Improve Employee Engagement? Start with an Entrepreneurial Mindset [Infographic]
October 5, 2017
Gallup reports that 87% of employees around the world are not engaged in their work, a colossal waste of human capital. Nearly one in four employees are actively disengaged, working against the mission of the organization. Yet, nearly all humans want to be engaged in work that matters. The difference between those who will flourish and those who languish in the workplace is mindset. So, what is your workplace mindset? We all have a…
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Can Government Workers Learn to Think Like Entrepreneurs?
August 30, 2017
(Updated 4/9/2019 to reflect the current number of city employees that have been through the program) If you’re like most people, the word entrepreneurial is probably not the first thing that comes to mind when you think of government employees. For many, the word ‘bureaucrat’ is often used as a derisive term to describe government workers who may be seen as lazy, unthinking, and unproductive. And, recent Gallup research seems to confirm some disturbing facts: unhappy state…
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