You may wonder how a podcast and YouTube channel called The Government Mechanic arrive at Episodes 11 and 12 to talk about the activities of peacebuilding, the psychology of peacemaking, and international diplomacy among countries and peoples in conflict. The answer is that fixing broken Departments and Agencies means leaders in these government departments and agencies get out of their offices and out of their comfort zones and go out into the communities and hold Listening tours and townhall meetings and work with community-based people to come up with shared solutions to any number of problems. Once those conversations start to happen, then the activities of fixing government morph into community peace building. The Episode starts with some definitions and Dr. Kahn introduces 3 video clips from an interview with Ambassador John McDonald from 2010!

Definitions: Peacebuilding is active - it’s a ceasefire, or a gang truce, or a summit on violence. Peacemaking is internal, it’s psychological, it’s a change of heart, seeing something from another’s view. Diplomacy is another level; diplomacy is international and between cultures and countries. The US Department of State now accepts as true that diplomacy occurs along many different tracks not just government to government. Diplomacy can happen sports team to sports team or business leaders to government leaders.

Dr. Lynn Sandra Kahn, organizational psychologist in the federal government for more than 35 years and host of The Government Mechanic.

Episode 10 looks under the hood at the US Department of Veterans Affairs with Steve Sanson, Co-founder and President of Veterans in Politics International; Kathleen Monahan, an organizational consultant with 40 years of federal government experience and volunteer with homeless vets; and Dr. Lynn Sandra Kahn, organizational psychologist in the federal government for more than 35 years and host of The Government Mechanic. The conversation begins with a discussion of the new VA mission adopted in 2023. Since 1865 the VA mission has been to “to care for he who has borne the battle, his widow and his orphan.” The new mission seeks to fulfill President Lincoln’s promise to care for those who have served in our nation's military and for their families, caregivers and survivors. Sanson describes some excellent VA experiences and also calls on military men and women to gather updated medical records before leaving the military to expedite VA benefits. “Be an advocate for yourself” says Sanson.

VA Strategic Plan: https://department.va.gov/wp-content/uploads/2022/09/va-strategic-plan-2022-2028.pdf

Website: https://veteransinpolitics.org

YouTube Channel https://www.youtube.com/c/stevewsanson/videos

Episode 9 is the first of our special episodes called “Under the Hood” where we look at the key elements of any organization: mission statement, strategic goals, priority actions, performance metrics and even communication style. In this episode, looking under the hood of the U.S. Department of Agriculture is Brenda Cochran, a dairy farmer for 50 years; Kathleen Monahan, an organizational consultant with 40 years of government experience; and Dr. Lynn Sandra Kahn, organizational psychologist in the federal government for more than 35 years and host of The Government Mechanic. The conversation concludes that family farmers are not represented in the USDA strategic plan at all and the plan itself is poorly written. Where, we asked, are the performance measures?

USDA Strategic Plan

https://www.usda.gov/sites/default/files/documents/usda-fy-2022-2026-strategic-plan.pdf

Website - https://www.farmwomenunited.org