Delivering on Digital: The Innovators and Technologies That Are Transforming Government
William D. Eggers
RosettaBooks (June 2016)

How to attract, hire, train, and then retain the talent for digital thinking that can transform any organization

This book’s title refers to taking full advantage of unique opportunities that have been created by various digital technologies. Hence William Eggers’ emphasis on the importance of attracting, hiring, training, and then retaining the talent needed. Heaven knows, there is great demand for highly skilled or high potential works at all levels of government. Many of the silos at these levels are disguised as people. Years ago, John Kotter told me during an interview that the most difficult change to achieve is changing how people think about change. It is also necessary to think innovatively about innovation, especially when attempting to transform government.

In this context, I am again reminded of the fact that, in 1865, a German physicist, Rudolph Clausius (1822-1888), coined the term entropy during his research on heat. The word’s meaning “a turning towards” (in Greek, en+tropein), “content transformative” or “transformative content.” Claudius used the concept to establish a mathematical foundation for the second law of thermodynamics: without the injection of free energy, all systems tend to move (however gradually) from order to disorder, if not to chaos.

In Leading Change, Jim O’Toole suggests that the strongest resistance to change seems to be cultural in nature, the result of what he so aptly characterizes as “the ideology of comfort and the tyranny of custom.” Those who seek to transform government at any level (federal, state, county, or municipal) do indeed face some daunting challenges.

These are among the dozens of passages of greatest interest and value to me, also listed to suggest the scope of Eggers’ coverage in Chapters 1-4:

o Making a New Kind of Government (Pages 9-12)
o The Journey to Digital Transformation (17-19)
o The Digital Mindset (22-37)
o Strategy Drives Digital Maturity (44)
o Digital Leadership (46-49)
o Building Digital Talent (50-54)
o Scaling Digital Capacity (54-59)
o Developing Digital Capacity (64-65)
o Talent Strategies (65-67)
o The Design Stage: Imagining a New Future (75-82)
o Making Agile Development Work for Government (89-91)
o Putting It All Together: A Billion-to-One Experiment (99-101)
o The Sad Legacy of Government IT Procurement (111-113)
o Principles of a Reinvented Procurement System for the Digital Age (114-115)
o Leveraging best practices (128-130)
o Success Strategies (135-137)
o The Case for Horizontally Integrated Government (139-141)
o Branching Out: Creating Systems Built Around Data Exchanges (150-156)
o Managing Identity (161-163)
o Four Obstacles to Uniform Digital ID (166-171)
o Creating Value (171-172)

William Eggers recommends and explains nine strategies that will help decision-makers in governmental entities that need to attract, hire, train, and then retain the talent they need to compete successfully in a global marketplace that seems to become more volatile, more uncertain, more complex, and more ambiguous each day.

In my opinion, these same strategies — with only minor modification — can also be of substantial benefit to non-governmental organizations (NGOs) such as the Fortune 500.

Here they are:

o Create an interesting job description.
o What’s your offer? Create a unique value proposition to attract the best talent.
o Don’t leave recruitment to HR staff.
o Embrace a temporary dream team.
o Balance tech whiz kids with government veterans.
o Identify each capabilities gap.
o Ensure cutting-edge technology for cutting-edge talent.
o Identify the torch-bearers.
o Build a digital ecosystem.

So, what to look for when recruiting candidates?

Having high-potential to develop a digital mindset would be high on the list, if not atop it. Eggers: “There’s no agreed-upon definition of a digital mindset, but five characteristics tend to be common among individuals and organizations that understand d the opportunities inherent in digital transformation: a belief in openness, user-centricity, co-creation, simplicity, and agility.” He thoroughly discusses each. (Please see pages 25-37.)

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William (Bill) Eggers is responsible for research and thought leadership for Deloitte’s Public Sector industry practice and has advised governments around the world. He is an internationally recognized authority on government reform, columnist, and author of seven books. His books have won numerous awards and his commentary has appeared in dozens of major media outlets including the New York Times, Wall Street Journal, The Washington Post, The Guardian, and the Chicago Tribune.