One aspect to Donald Trump’s presidency that almost no pundit, analyst, or media type ever seem to discuss is the 180° shift in executive branch administrative objectives from all prior modern presidencies.
President Trump is a life-long businessman, with 100% of his focus in the area of Main Street capital. Real estate, building construction, resorts and the industries of service and hospitality (a multitude of holdings) is where Donald Trump made his empire; later expanding into media and entertainment.
The important aspect here is that businesses survive and/or grow based on action toward material objectives.
Successful business is not a process; it is a series of planned events with specific action toward a financial goal.
The purpose of a business is based on action, not process. This is generally the opposite emphasis of government which is based mostly on a never-ending process that only rarely actually delivers an action. If the industry of government had to be efficient (or profitable) in order to sustain itself, everything about the entire system of government would be fundamentally different.
Process, as an objective of/unto itself, produces no actual results. However, the valuation of process, what we call political effort, is entirely connected to the ceremonial duty of government. In many ways; heck, in almost all ways, the process of ceremony, the absence of any functional action, is the exact opposite of what’s needed in successful business.
The reason I mention this is to think about how the administrative offices of government; those career line-level system operators; must be reacting to a Chief Executive who expects their process to deliver an actionable result. The systemic shock is almost unfathomable.
Imagine having a president taking over and bringing the CEO perspective to the operation; who asks, at any given moment in time, entirely unanticipated by those in the middle of the system, for updates on their function?… When is “X” going to happen? Where are we with “X”? How soon before “X” is delivering a result? Who is measuring “X’s” result?… and let the “X-er” group know know I want to talk to them tomorrow, at 9:15am, for 18 to 23 minutes, so I can evaluate their success.
Now imagine that common sense question; a business review/inquiry toward achieving an actual measurable goal; happening for hundreds of simultaneous “X’s” on any given day or week… amid a system of process administrators… that have never delivered an actionable and quantifiable result?
In the big picture, we can only imagine how foreign that would be to thousands of people who have absolutely no concept of private sector accountability or efficiency.
Imagine how those who built a career on never-ending process must feel about a system-wide shift in priority toward achieving a result.
Really quite stunning if you think about it.
“It must be remembered that there is nothing more difficult to plan, more doubtful of success, nor more dangerous to manage than a new system. For the initiator has the enmity of all who would profit by the preservation of the old institution, and merely lukewarm defenders in those who gain by the new ones.”
Carry on…
