Weekly Roundup: February 3-7, 2025

Leadership

5 Questions to Help Your Team Make Better Decisions. In fast-paced, complex business environments, it’s often hard to carve out the time for thoughtful, thorough analysis. Leaders might recognize that better questions lead to better decisions, but they aren’t sure exactly what to ask. These five questions can help. 1) What would happen if we did nothing? 2) What could make us regret this decision? 3) What alternatives did we overlook? 4) How will we know if this was the right decision? 5) Is this reversible?

9 Trends That Will Shape Work in 2025 and Beyond. Gartner research has identified three key challenges for company leaders in the coming year: 1) New demands for a future-ready workforce; 2) The evolving role of managers, and 3) Emerging talent risks for the organization. Within these challenges they offer nine predictions that address ongoing organizational concerns around technology, collaboration, employee retention, AI, knowledge management, and more. Employers should identify the trends that are most likely to impact their organization — and those that offer the opportunity to secure a comparative advantage.

Don’t Let Bad Time Management Undermine Your Leadership. According to a survey by SHRM, 84% of workers believe poorly trained managers create unnecessary work and stress. And poor time management is a huge factor. Commit to improving these five time management flaws: assigning your team work without a clear understanding of their existing workload, asking for help at the last minute, not setting boundaries with upper management, never being available to your direct reports, and not taking the time to give credit and positive feedback.

What's Your Leadership Origin Story? How you tell the story of your own path towards becoming a leader frames your leadership style, as well as the ways in which you cultivate and support other leaders within your organization. Based on an in-depth survey of 92 leaders, the authors shed light on four distinct types of leadership narratives: they found that the stories they heard were all framed around Being, Engaging, Performing, or Accepting. They go on to discuss gender disparities in their findings and offer suggestions as to how leaders can better understand — and expand — their leadership stories.

Performance

USPS turns a profit during busy season as DeJoy says his reforms are taking hold. The Postal Service turned a profit of $144 million during its busiest season of the year, operating in the black for the first time since the height of the COVID-19 pandemic. Postmaster General Louis DeJoy celebrated the achievement and attributed the success to changes he has implemented to cut costs, bring in new business and make the postal network more efficient. The profitable first quarter of fiscal 2025—from Oct.1 through Dec. 31—marks a stark departure from the same period in fiscal 2024, when USPS lost $2 billion. The USPS will next look to reduce its headcount, continue consolidations and launch new products, though it still expects to lose money this year. 

DOGE Will Team Up With FAA to Fix America’s Aging Air Traffic Systems.  The Department of Government Efficiency (DOGE) is going to work with the Federal Aviation Administration (FAA) to give the country’s air traffic control (ATC) systems an upgrade, according to a series of posts to X on Wednesday.  The two agencies will work together to make “rapid safety upgrades” to ATC systems, Musk said in a post on his social media platform X.  The announcement comes just days after the FAA announced a temporary outage of its aviation warning system for pilots on Saturday. It’s worth noting that this warning system, known as the Notice to Air Missions (NOTAM) system, is separate from the in-flight air traffic control system. 

Workforce

GSA plans moving staff to Interior headquarters, as Trump administration reconsiders merger. Senior leaders at the General Services Administration are planning to relocate employees from their current headquarters to the nearby Interior Department to prepare for the eventual sale of the 1800 F Street property.  A timeline for the move remains unclear, but Public Building Service Commissioner Michael Peters said last week that GSA plans are underway to move out of its current headquarters building — the first step to downsize the federal government’s non-defense building space by 50%.

IT/Technology

USCENTCOM Appoints New CTO, Deputy CIO. The Pentagon’s U.S. Central Command (USCENTCOM) has appointed Joy Angela Shanaberger as its new chief technology officer (CTO), she announced in a LinkedIn post. Shanaberger succeeds Schuyler Moore, who announced her intent to step down as CENTCOM CTO in November to join the U.S. Naval Forces Europe-Africa/U.S. 6th Fleet as an intelligence officer.

SSA Names Michael Russo CIO. The Social Security Administration (SSA) has named Michael Russo chief information officer (CIO). Russo, who started in the new job on Feb. 3, is taking on the position as a first-time Federal employee bringing a lot of private sector experience with him.  

Cybersecurity

Karen Evans Returns to DHS in Senior Advisor Role at CISA. Long-time Federal government IT and cybersecurity leader Karen Evans has returned to the Department of Homeland Security (DHS) as a senior advisor in the agency’s Cybersecurity and Infrastructure Agency (CISA) component.  Evans previously served as chief information officer (CIO) at DHS during the first Trump administration. Evans comes to CISA at a time when the agency’s top management focus is being revamped.

DISA’s Herman: Foundational Steps Key Zero Trust Benefits. Implementing zero trust security architectures promises a wealth of benefits, but government agencies can only realize them if they’ve taken the necessary foundational steps.  “Many benefits that you can get out of zero trust … can’t be achieved until you’ve done all of the things to make sure that you protect it, to get past the technical debt and any other problems that you have to address,” said Brian Herman, cybersecurity and analytics director at the Defense Information Systems Agency (DISA). According to Herman, a good place to start – especially for agencies within the Defense Department (DoD) – is “adopting zero trust principles [in] the network pillar.”

Presidential Transition – Updates

Which of Trump's nominees have been confirmed?  The Senate is currently vetting and voting on President Donald Trump's nominees for his Cabinet and other senior roles. We’ve made a list of his nominations thus far and will update when they are confirmed by the Senate. There also are links to our coverage regarding how these individuals plan to lead their agencies and what workforce changes they could make.

THIS WEEK @ THE CENTER 

RECENT BLOGS

• The Future of AI For the Public Sector by Katherine Barrett and Richard Greene. A Summary of Insights from the IBM Center for The Business of Government Roundtable, “Ensuring Responsible AI for Society” Over the course of the last several months, the wisdom garnered from that exciting gathering has been distilled in a series of blog posts. The first covered the potential benefits of AI; the second delved into some of the concerns and solutions about its use and the third, which ran on January 8, focused largely on the issues of bias that are of concern to many observers.

ICYMI – Leveraging the Upside of Disruption.  This week Michael Keegan welcomed Terence Mauri, author of THE UPSIDE OF DISRUPTION: THE PATH TO LEADING AND THRIVING IN THE UNKNOWN to explore insights for how leaders can best handle disruption, the skills and mindset they need, and how leaders can discern the upside to disruption and see it as a strategic advantage.