Josh Marcuse

Head of Federal Strategy, Google Cloud

Josh Marcuse believes you shouldn’t ask a leader what the good qualities of leadership are. Instead, you should ask the people on the teams they lead. “Gallup did superb research on this and found that what followers want most is trust, compassion, stability, and hope,” Marcuse said. “Sometimes we forget that what makes a leader isn’t authority; it’s followers. Being informed, decisive, or charismatic doesn’t hurt, but the most important qualities are empathy, humility, introspection.” And asked what his top IT priorities as head of federal strategy of Google Cloud are, he responded: “The most important thing is to not have IT priorities. We need mission priorities. Show me how tech is connected to the national strategy? Or organizational performance? I harbor lofty dreams of inspiring people to champion change, but I couldn’t care less about IT. We need to give public servants the best tools for impact, deliver services to families, secure our nation, and strengthen our democracy. Numbers really don’t do that for me. Dashboards surely don’t. I believe in telling true stories about real people making an impact, which happens to be the only thing people really care about.”