When you think of a book club, does your mind go to a circle of friends, great food and beverages, and a rousing discussion of the best new fiction? Mine did. Until I read a recent article in
Governing magazine entitled, “Can a Book Club Improve Government?” A group of Baltimore city employees started spending their lunch breaks at book club meetings and the lessons they are learning are being applied to the challenges the city faces. Government book clubs are open to all employees and are attended by staff at all levels, from agency heads to mid-level managers, to front-line employees. And talking about the ideas in books is giving employees strategies that can be implemented at every level.
Some successful titles for government-based book clubs include:
- If We Can Put a Man on the Moon: Getting Big Things Done in Government, a collection of success stories by William D. Eggers and John O’Leary
- Citizenville: How to Take the Town Square Digital and Reinvent Government, by Gavin Newsom, with Lisa Dickey, provides ideas for community digital communication and engagement
- The Ten Faces of Innovation: IDEO’s Strategies for Defeating the Devil’s Advocate and Driving Creativity Throughout Your Organization, a guidebook for designing the workplace to encourage creativity and teamwork by Tom Kelley and Jonathan Littman
See
http://www.governing.com/topics/mgmt/gov-good-government-book-club.html for a complete list of books and more about the Baltimore city government book club. How about it, Nebraska librarians: would you like to host a book club for your city employees?
When you think of a book club, does your mind go to a circle of friends, great food and beverages, and a rousing discussion of the best new fiction? Mine did. Until I read a recent article in Governing magazine entitled, “Can a Book Club Improve Government?” A group of Baltimore city employees started spending their lunch breaks at book club meetings and the lessons they are learning are being applied to the challenges the city faces. Government book clubs are open to all employees and are attended by staff at all levels, from agency heads to mid-level managers, to front-line employees. And talking about the ideas in books is giving employees strategies that can be implemented at every level.
Some successful titles for government-based book clubs include:
