I just read a New York Times story this morning about the strategies that blue states are planning to use to resist what they considere to be overreach by the Trump administration. It strikes me that they would do well to use your ideas here as a powerful tool to increase their strength and resilience. Showing how to make government more efficient in a responsible way would be a very powerful statement.
I've been thinking a nice slogan would be: “Don't resist—deliver.”
Back during Trump Round 1, there was a huge emphasis on “the resistance”: trying to simply throw up roadblocks—either within the federal government or at the state/local level—to anything the Trump administration did. Which was totally understandable, and I think I agreed at the time! But it also meant generally clinging to a version of government focused on stopping (or severely slowing) anything from getting done.
I of course share the common concerns about illegal or dangerous stuff Trump might try to do during Round 2, and am not saying to ignore it... but I hope at least part of the energies, particularly at the state/local level, can instead be directed toward getting things done—doing a better job of service delivery—rather than stopping things from getting done. Especially given what has been highlighted in post-election conversations re: the sad state of governance in certain (though not all!) blue jurisdictions.
It's much more likely we will see more of the kind of operations that we saw in the first Trump administration, where procedures and bureaucracy are bypassed to facilitate graft, malice, and incompetence. The covid response is the perfect example. Hospitals couldn't get protective supplies and nurses had to use garbage bag improvised gowns. Vaccines were dumped at airports in states to be distributed by state governments that had no ability to distribute (and, for example, in Texas, deliberately limited allocation to poor people). Allocation was political - with blue state starved of supplies even while morgues filled up and scarce resources were given to Vladimir Putin. Supplies organized by desperate state governments were confiscated by the Feds and there was no accountability for where they went and a huge number of unmanaged no bid contracts were provided to friends of the family. Or consider the $10billion no bid VA computer contract that failed so spectacularly.
Just as a note - many of the problems of US government operations can be seen in the private sector in "at will" employment.
Firing half the people at random is something you do when you have no trust in your middle management. It is much better to delegate. Tell a middle manager their budget is cut by x%, and then let them figure out the least damaging way to cut their budget. The responsibility of upper leadership is then to set relative priorities - figure out which departments should be cut by a large amount, which by a small amount, etc.
But, if you are running an organization where everyone resists cutting budgets, you might have no choice. You come in to run an organization, you're over budget by 20%. You have six managers reporting to you, all of them insist that it's absolutely impossible to cut their budget at all in any way. You don't have the time to do all their jobs for them. What do you do?
Responsible leaders should recognize that sometimes budgets need to shrink and they should be able to help minimize the impact when that happens. Not just the one person in charge at the top.
I just read a New York Times story this morning about the strategies that blue states are planning to use to resist what they considere to be overreach by the Trump administration. It strikes me that they would do well to use your ideas here as a powerful tool to increase their strength and resilience. Showing how to make government more efficient in a responsible way would be a very powerful statement.
I've been thinking a nice slogan would be: “Don't resist—deliver.”
Back during Trump Round 1, there was a huge emphasis on “the resistance”: trying to simply throw up roadblocks—either within the federal government or at the state/local level—to anything the Trump administration did. Which was totally understandable, and I think I agreed at the time! But it also meant generally clinging to a version of government focused on stopping (or severely slowing) anything from getting done.
I of course share the common concerns about illegal or dangerous stuff Trump might try to do during Round 2, and am not saying to ignore it... but I hope at least part of the energies, particularly at the state/local level, can instead be directed toward getting things done—doing a better job of service delivery—rather than stopping things from getting done. Especially given what has been highlighted in post-election conversations re: the sad state of governance in certain (though not all!) blue jurisdictions.
Don’t resist- Deliver! Love this/ will use it!!
Absolutely! Watching w interest new mayor of San Francisco
It's much more likely we will see more of the kind of operations that we saw in the first Trump administration, where procedures and bureaucracy are bypassed to facilitate graft, malice, and incompetence. The covid response is the perfect example. Hospitals couldn't get protective supplies and nurses had to use garbage bag improvised gowns. Vaccines were dumped at airports in states to be distributed by state governments that had no ability to distribute (and, for example, in Texas, deliberately limited allocation to poor people). Allocation was political - with blue state starved of supplies even while morgues filled up and scarce resources were given to Vladimir Putin. Supplies organized by desperate state governments were confiscated by the Feds and there was no accountability for where they went and a huge number of unmanaged no bid contracts were provided to friends of the family. Or consider the $10billion no bid VA computer contract that failed so spectacularly.
Just as a note - many of the problems of US government operations can be seen in the private sector in "at will" employment.
Firing half the people at random is something you do when you have no trust in your middle management. It is much better to delegate. Tell a middle manager their budget is cut by x%, and then let them figure out the least damaging way to cut their budget. The responsibility of upper leadership is then to set relative priorities - figure out which departments should be cut by a large amount, which by a small amount, etc.
But, if you are running an organization where everyone resists cutting budgets, you might have no choice. You come in to run an organization, you're over budget by 20%. You have six managers reporting to you, all of them insist that it's absolutely impossible to cut their budget at all in any way. You don't have the time to do all their jobs for them. What do you do?
Responsible leaders should recognize that sometimes budgets need to shrink and they should be able to help minimize the impact when that happens. Not just the one person in charge at the top.
We need the willingness to do what it takes: fire half the staff or cut budgets in half, but those are probably NOT what it takes.