Insights

If you are building a budget argument for leadership development inside a federal agency, the strongest sentence available to you was not written by a consultant. It was written by the Government Accountability Office, and it is four words longer than a tweet. “Twenty areas are on GAO’s High-Risk List in part due to skills […]

When a federal agency identifies a performance problem (mission outcomes below target, a compliance failure, a customer service gap, an error rate that keeps climbing), the first instinct is often to commission a training course. That instinct is understandable but frequently wrong. Training addresses knowledge and skill deficits, and those deficits are only one of

If your agency runs a leadership development curriculum that feeds the Senior Executive Service, it is teaching to a model that no longer exists. The Office of Personnel Management replaced the five Executive Core Qualifications outright, named a fixed set of competencies under each one, and eliminated the written artifact most SES-track curricula were built

In the most recent governmentwide Federal Employee Viewpoint Survey, federal employees rated their immediate supervisors at 81% positive. They rated their senior leaders at 63%. Eighteen points separate the person who approves their leave from the people who set their agency’s direction (OPM, 2024 FEVS Governmentwide Management Report, p. 6). That gap is one of

Federal agencies face a unique constellation of challenges when implementing organizational change. Unlike private sector organizations that can pivot quickly in response to market conditions, government agencies operate within rigid statutory frameworks, undergo congressional scrutiny, manage geographically dispersed workforces, and must maintain continuity of critical public services—all while implementing transformational change. Whether it’s a workforce

The argument about measurement is over For most of the last two decades, whether to measure leadership development was an agency preference. Program managers who wanted evaluation data built the capability. Those who did not, did not. Nothing in the framework governing Senior Executive Service Candidate Development Programs (SESCDPs) forced the question beyond the general

The requirement tightened exactly as the comparison came apart Two things happened to federal training evaluation in 2026, and they pull in opposite directions. The first tightened the requirement. On June 25, 2026, OPM published a final rule overhauling Senior Executive Service Candidate Development Programs, effective July 27, 2026. It rewrote 5 CFR 412.303 to

The governmentwide federal employee survey was cancelled, then decentralized, then cut nearly in half. Here is what that means for federal workforce management — and why it matters beyond government. What changed, and when For more than two decades, the Federal Employee Viewpoint Survey (FEVS) served as the primary instrument for measuring workforce engagement, satisfaction,

What Makes SDVOSB Sole Source Awards Different Most federal contract awards go through some form of competition. But sole source awards — where the contracting officer selects a single vendor without soliciting offers from others — are authorized under specific circumstances. For service-disabled veteran-owned small businesses (SDVOSBs), the rules create a legitimate and valuable acquisition