Leadership at ED

Wednesday of last week, I attended a leadership meeting among staff in various departments of ED. It was an inter-departmental meeting, intended on sharing successes found in one area in the hopes that they would be useful to others. This is a really great practice, especially for ED because it is really scattered. Not only are there different buildings, but the headquarters, LBJ, where I work, is sprawled out with long hallways. So if you don’t work directly with someone, chances are you don’t seem much of them at all. Then, from an employee’s point of view, I really appreciate the facilitated opportunity to think out loud and have a discussion about how best to lead within the agency.

The same kind of weekly-discussions of relevant, but not frequenly discussed, topics occurred this summer during my time working with the Minnesota Literacy Council for AmeriCorps. Each week we focused on a different topic (race, working with multiple ages, brain development), each adding a layer of context and understanding to the work we did every day. This way, we were hopefully making a conscious effort to be aware of these issues and work in a way that best deals with them.

But back to the conference. To my new-to-the-agency eyes, it seemed to be a productive meeting, and there were lots of things I took note of for myself. Most notable was to stay in step with technology. You don’t know where it’s going next, and if you stay with the old, not only are you losing time while you’re working in the old way, but you’ll most likely have to invest more time and energy into catching up. The example used in the meeting was to have open-source documents, which seem scary because anyone can see them and anyone can add to them. But they do wonders in terms of keeping people in the know. Having one, centralized location for information keeps everyone up to date. And coming from my office, there are more than enough copies of documents that get shuffled around between edits, the idea of open-sourced documents greatly appeals.

So to put it into practice, I think I’ll make a better effort at using my phone as an agenda/planner. Even since I’ve been here, I’ve made more than a few lists of things I need to do, groceries I need to buy, ect. But I lose them. I like having things written out, but there’s something to be said for having everything consolidated in one place, especially if it’s not going to get lost as easily as my papers.