I'm all about the blog entries today. I hate the premise that the government should be run like a business. There are so fundamental differences between the two. Anyway, this article had some interesting thoughts. But my favorite tidbit came from the end:

In government you need to find ways to motivate people without dollars. In early 2001, Powell shocked his assistant secretary by informing him at the morning staff meeting that neither of them would be briefing the president on his upcoming trip to Mexico. The most junior officers on the desk would be. Powell, who liked to find small ways to send big messages, wanted to communicate that you could do important and interesting things early on in a Foreign Service career. It wasn't long before morale, retention and recruitment all improved.