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.
That’s a great line, and a brilliant aspect of the overall strategy. I would add (though not pithily) that we need to not just deliver, but really message the hell out of the contrast. Some sort of consistent, drumbeat framing that breaks through the noise: “they’re fine leaving you to flounder. We are delivering xyz. We’ve got your back.”
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 think its safe to say the incoming administration's starting point will be no trust in management. Where it's possible to show major change already moving, public servants should try to demonstrate it and hope it builds trust. Where change efforts have been hampered by risk aversion, thoughtful public servants should use the urgency of the moment to accelerate them.
Even this requires a level of optimism that I think is past credulity at this point. As just one example in the news:
"According to people involved in the talks, the transition team is particularly eager to move forward with Mr. Trump’s vision of relocating tens of thousands of federal employees, starting at the E.P.A. Those discussions are in early stages, the people involved said.
During Mr. Trump’s first term, the administration moved the Interior Department’s Bureau of Land Management to Colorado and two scientific research arms of the Department of Agriculture to Kansas, resulting in an exodus of employees.
“Just as I moved the Bureau of Land Management to Colorado, as many as 100,000 government positions could be moved out — and I mean immediately — out of Washington to places filled with patriots who love America,” Mr. Trump said in a video on his campaign website.
Maybe there are good faith reasons for moving folks out of DC (...although EPA already has regional offices all around the country), but there are plenty of quotes from the Trump transition team and the intrepid leadership of DOGE that the goal of moving specific agencies is to cause "voluntary reductions in force."
In the past, and with most people, it might have been reasonable to stipulate at the beginning of a conversation that everyone wants good and effective public services. Civil service reform is desperately needed. This is true. But I don't think there's much of a plan beyond trying to cause pain to random people just trying to do their jobs and implement administration policy.
Right - the decisions should be made “locally”. If it’s possible to fire civil servants based on SSN, it should also be possible for to fire the under-performers. There’s also the problem of too many middle management tiers, which seems to be an innate tendency in government. Some of this comes from increased evaluation and budgeting chores assigned to management. But to what extent do teams doing the actual work do just fine on their own? In my job, we just expected our managers to help out with personal conflicts, or any nonsense from upper management that was interfering with our work.
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.
His primary point is that there may be good reasons to want to re-write code but that it's always something that looks better before you start than it does after you're done -- because the goal is to re-write it as something simpler but, more often than not, you end up having to re-build much of the original complexity because it did serve some purpose to deal with odd cases.
If there’s a mood for bold moves, what do you think of getting rid of open plan offices? I’m not sure there’s a larger source of distraction and inefficiency.
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!!
That’s a great line, and a brilliant aspect of the overall strategy. I would add (though not pithily) that we need to not just deliver, but really message the hell out of the contrast. Some sort of consistent, drumbeat framing that breaks through the noise: “they’re fine leaving you to flounder. We are delivering xyz. We’ve got your back.”
Absolutely! Watching w interest new mayor of San Francisco
Just want to say I really appreciate your writing. Your book was amazing, and your essays here are excellent. I hope DOGE asks for your input.
Thank you. It's very kind of you to say that.
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 think its safe to say the incoming administration's starting point will be no trust in management. Where it's possible to show major change already moving, public servants should try to demonstrate it and hope it builds trust. Where change efforts have been hampered by risk aversion, thoughtful public servants should use the urgency of the moment to accelerate them.
Even this requires a level of optimism that I think is past credulity at this point. As just one example in the news:
"According to people involved in the talks, the transition team is particularly eager to move forward with Mr. Trump’s vision of relocating tens of thousands of federal employees, starting at the E.P.A. Those discussions are in early stages, the people involved said.
During Mr. Trump’s first term, the administration moved the Interior Department’s Bureau of Land Management to Colorado and two scientific research arms of the Department of Agriculture to Kansas, resulting in an exodus of employees.
“Just as I moved the Bureau of Land Management to Colorado, as many as 100,000 government positions could be moved out — and I mean immediately — out of Washington to places filled with patriots who love America,” Mr. Trump said in a video on his campaign website.
“This is how I will shatter the deep state,” he said." (https://www.nytimes.com/2024/11/08/climate/trump-transition-epa-interior-energy.html)
Maybe there are good faith reasons for moving folks out of DC (...although EPA already has regional offices all around the country), but there are plenty of quotes from the Trump transition team and the intrepid leadership of DOGE that the goal of moving specific agencies is to cause "voluntary reductions in force."
In the past, and with most people, it might have been reasonable to stipulate at the beginning of a conversation that everyone wants good and effective public services. Civil service reform is desperately needed. This is true. But I don't think there's much of a plan beyond trying to cause pain to random people just trying to do their jobs and implement administration policy.
Right - the decisions should be made “locally”. If it’s possible to fire civil servants based on SSN, it should also be possible for to fire the under-performers. There’s also the problem of too many middle management tiers, which seems to be an innate tendency in government. Some of this comes from increased evaluation and budgeting chores assigned to management. But to what extent do teams doing the actual work do just fine on their own? In my job, we just expected our managers to help out with personal conflicts, or any nonsense from upper management that was interfering with our work.
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.
I'm interested but I'm a little skeptical (while saying up front, that you have much more knowledge of the condition of the bureaucracy).
In my own work, I often think there's a lot of wisdom in this short essay about the temptation to do a re-write from scratch: https://www.joelonsoftware.com/2000/04/06/things-you-should-never-do-part-i/
His primary point is that there may be good reasons to want to re-write code but that it's always something that looks better before you start than it does after you're done -- because the goal is to re-write it as something simpler but, more often than not, you end up having to re-build much of the original complexity because it did serve some purpose to deal with odd cases.
If there’s a mood for bold moves, what do you think of getting rid of open plan offices? I’m not sure there’s a larger source of distraction and inefficiency.
I really appreciated the needle-threading approach of this article.
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.