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 howenterprise leaders use networks of trusted, collaborative relationships to respond and lead solutions to problems that span agencies. It also offers several approaches fortranslating 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.
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 at the Brookings Institution 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 first fellow. He also has served in a number of senior U.S. government posts, including Associate Director of National Intelligence, Chief HR Officer for the Internal Revenue Service, and Director of Civilian Personnel for the U.S. Department of Defense.
"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
"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
