Tackling Wicked Government Problems : A Practical Guide for Developing Enterprise Leaders

How can government leaders tackle the complex interagency and intergovernmentalissues they face increasingly today? Tackling Wicked Government Problems: A PracticalGuide for Developing Enterprise Leaders draws on the experience of some of the federal government's most successful executives and leadership development experts who offer proven strategies for successfully taking on the great challenges that confront our nation. Here, they point the way forward for the next generation of senior public officials. Jackson Nickerson, Ronald Sanders, and their colleagues offer several approaches for translatingsocial network theory into practical approaches for building and employing collaborative networks. They present real solutions for developing enterprise leaders and explore how such leaders can use these networks to respond to, and eventually solve, thorny problems that span multiple agencies and disciplines.

Contributors: Admiral Thad Allen, Commandant, U.S. Coast Guard (ret.); David Altman, Center for Creative Leadership ?Europe, Middle East, Africa; Donna Chrobot-Mason, University of Cincinnati; Rob Cross, University of Virginia and Network Roundtable;Kristin Cullen, Center for Creative Leadership; Barry Dorn, Harvard School of Public Health and Tufts University School of Medicine; Andrew Hargadon, University of California, Davis;Leonard Marcus, Harvard School of Public Health and Harvard Kennedy School; J. Michael McConnell, Booz Allen Hamilton; Laura Miller Craig, U.S. Government AccountabilityOffice; Jessica Nierenberg, U.S. Government Accountability Office; Salvatore Parise, Babson College; Stephen T. Shih, U.S. Office of Personnel Management; Pasquale (Pat) Tamburrino Jr., U.S. Department of Defense; Jim Trinka, U.S. Department of Veterans Affairs; Thomas W. Valente, University of Southern California

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.