FiscalShare

Zombie PowerPoint

or, Why PowerPoint Cannot Die The YouTube video Death by PowerPoint is really, well, to the point. Yet, despite obvious abuses, PowerPoint is here to stay. Powerpoint is the perfect vehicle for bulleted and numbered lists. We are addicted to lists. What do you think most people will click on: Study shows correlation between polyphenols and health, or

November 22, 2013 Short URLbusiness, communication, content, data, lists, Management, Microsoft, microsoft powerpoint, powerpoint, presentation, slides, speech, teaching, trolling, trolls, workDaily Work, Data, Management

Make Them Cry “Uncle!”

My boss and mentor used to chastise me. “Pile work on your staff until they cry ‘uncle’ ” she would say. Is that really a valid management technique? Sounds a bit draconian. “Not at all,” she would counter. “You don’t really know if they are working at full capacity until you give them too much

November 22, 2013 Short URLbusiness, complainers, cross-training, human resources, job, job description, job rotation, Management, problem solving, public education, work-avoiders, workloadManagement

Budget Advisory Committees are Hard

When the Budget Advisory Committee was approaching my boss and I would look at each other and groan in unison “Ugh BAC!” Why? It was not that we didn’t want to talk budget with the community. Hey, we’ll talk your ear off with all sorts of budget geekiness if you let us. It is because a BAC

November 17, 2013 Short URLbudget, budget advisory committee, budget development, community, community input, data, Education Code, government, government spending, input, Management, problem solving, public education, school district business, school districts, school spending, schools, unionsAnalysis, Data, Government, Public Schools

Government’s Return on Investment

Is it ever OK to say “I spent more on that, so I am in compliance.” Is spending more money the only way to demonstrate “success?” I say this is the opposite of success. Are we going to allow school districts to shrug off poor results by spending more. I really don’t understand the critics of California’s Local Control Funding Formula’s

November 7, 2013 Short URLaccountability, anti-government, California, civil rights coalition, Education Trust-West, government, government spending, kpi, lcff, local control funding formula, measures, measuring success, outcomes, regulations, return on investment, right wing, ROI, school districts, spending, successFinance, Government, Local Control Funding Formula, Public Schools

Local Control Funding Formula: Nothing and Something

The California Department of Education has “updated” its reporting software by removing the previous revenue schedule and replacing it with, um, nothing. I am going out on a limb. I have created my own multi-year calculation. Please email me at support@fiscalshare.com if you want a copy. We are four plus months into the fiscal year,

November 7, 2013 Short URLaccounting, analysis, budget, calculation, California, California Department of Education, California school districts, CDE, Excel, government, lcff, local control funding formula, public education, public school finance, revenue forecasts, school district, school financeAccounting, Analysis, Daily Work, Data, Excel, Finance, Local Control Funding Formula

Give Up Already!

I was still in bed when I heard such frightful swearing from the kitchen. Upon investigation I discovered that Spouse had impaled his index finger on a nail and was trying to open up a “bandaid”. Not a brand name Band-Aid, mind you, but a cheap generic version thereof. He handed it to me. Here

November 6, 2013 Short URLanalysis, assumptions, band aid, business, choices, give up, Management, release, stick to it, surrenderAnalysis, Daily Work, Management, Uncategorized, Working Together

Of Gerbils and Groundhogs

Supposedly Mark Twain said “I didn’t have time to write a short letter, so I wrote a long one instead.” The meaning being, of course, that it is easy to produce a lot of words and hard to condense them into something pithy, meaningful, and interesting. I have been writing a presentation on career development.

October 27, 2013 Short URLbusiness, career development, employee engagement, government, hiring, locus of control, powerpoint presentation, presentation, workCareer Development, School District Jobs

“Dog Person” Gets Cat: Surprised by Level of Dissastifaction

I am working on a proposal to present at a professional conference next April. The topic I have chosen is career development. Thus, my blogging volume is both: 1) Temporarily reduced, and 2) HR related Why the topic of career development? Well, frankly, it is on the list of proposals they are seeking. And also,

October 24, 2013 Short URLbusiness, career development, Disgruntled Cat, employee engagement, employment, hiring, job description, job satsfaction, public educationCareer Development, Management, School District Jobs, Working Together

When School Districts Borrow

This an outstanding guide to school district debt financing by Orrick, Herrington & Sutcliffe, LLP. While the guide references California law, it is useful in understanding public school finance in general. School district administrators in California function in a complex financial universe that increasingly requires familiarity with and use of sophisticated tax-exempt public finance techniques to finance

October 20, 2013 Short URLanalysis, bonds, borrowing, business, California, data, debt, debt financing, education, education business, education finance, finance, finance techniques, government, Herrington & Sutcliffe, Management, Orrick, public education, public finance, public school finance, public schools, school district, school district administrator, school district administrators, school district debt financing, school districts in CaliforniaFinance

FiscalNote: Real Time Government Analytics

Following this company with great interest: “If you look at finance today, we can get in-depth stock and trade updates and analysis every quarter of a second, and it doesn’t make sense to not have the same type of real-time information about what’s happening in the government,” Tim Hwang

October 20, 2013 Short URLanalysis, analytics, Deirdre Bolton, FiscalNote, government, legislation, Tim HwangAnalysis, Data