Boston, MA – February 29, 2012 – Ascendant Strategy Management Group, Inc. announced today that it has obtained approval from the United States General Services Administration (GSA) under Schedule 70 Contract GS-35F-0610X to provide its software and consulting services to federal government, state and municipal governments. This contract is listed on both the GSA Library and the GSA Advantage!® procurement sites.

The Sunday, February 26, 2012, New York Times had a great opinion piece about Bell Labs and how it was the 20th Century's hub of innovation with inventions such as the transistor, the laser, the silicon solar cell, and the first communications satellites. I think Dan Pink, a keynote speaker at our Mission-Driven Management Summit, would agree with a lot of the author's points. The article by Jon Gertner, titled "True Innovation," describes how Mervin Kelly, a physicist who rose to chairman of the board at Bell Labs, was most responsible for its culture of creativity.

This was interesting to me because many clients we work with to help build Balanced Scorecards and manage their strategies establish some kind of strategic objective for their organization to "foster innovation," yet they often do not know how to do this, never mind measure it. Gertner says that to foster innovation, Kelly consciously established "a 'critical mass' of talented people to foster a busy exchange of ideas." He also required "physical proximity," believing that "phone calls alone wouldn't do."

Recently, I watched an interview (conducted by Andy Feldman of Gov Innovator) of Bryna Sanger, the deputy provost at The New School in New York City. Throughout her career, Ms. Sanger has been researching, evaluating, and proposing best practices for performance measurement and management systems in cities around the country. Currently, she is conducting a study entitled, "Does Measuring Performance Lead to Managing for Performance," which takes a look at nearly 200 cities across the United States, and explores the link between performance measurement and performance management. The findings of her study are interesting and thought provoking, especially for those of us involved in performance management, and I wanted to take this opportunity to share an overview of them with you.

The 2012 Mission-Driven Management Summit is just a few weeks away, so I wanted to offer ten reasons you should register today (if you haven't already):

We are reposting another Dan Pink Blog to get you excited about his upcoming presentation at our Mission Driven Summit. The original post can be found on his website, here. Sometimes when I'm stuck on a course of action, I use two techniques to help me decide.

One is what I call the "90-year-old me Test." I imagine I'm 90 and looking back at the decision before. What will I want to have done in this situation? In most cases, the 90-year-old me wants today's me to take an intelligent risk rather than to avoid one -- and to act nobly rather than like an ass.

What follows it a blog posted on Dan Pink's website and reposted here with permission. Dan is speaking at our upcoming Mission Driven Summit. Here is a link to the original post. Here's a tip for rounding out your summer reading. Pick up a copy of The Progress Principle: Using Small Wins to Ignite Joy, Engagement, and Creativity at Work. The book, which pubs today, is one of the best business books I've read in many years. (Buy it at Amazon, BN, or 8CR).