“It Is Evident There Is No Policy”: Trump Governs By Vacuous Platitude

3 thoughts on ““It Is Evident There Is No Policy”: Trump Governs By Vacuous Platitude”

1. > Sooner rather than later, the Trump team will need actual objectives and policies aimed at obtaining them. In the meantime, we risk having no settled policy when an adversary calls our bluff.

   As an engineering consultant, when I came onboard with a new client I discovered quite often that the stated objectives of a program had been implemented within a culture that worked at cross-purposes toward the stated goals. More precisely, expediency (usually) over time had introduced processes and procedures that were objectives in and of themselves. The result was often that not only were many of the participants unaware of the goal, those that were aware were typically unsure how their activities dovetailed into those objectives. The objective is to complete a task, not assure that the task accomplishes the goal. For simple example, running the vacuum over the carpet is not the objective, cleaning the carpet is the objective.

   Now, if I was solicited, it means that management understood they had a problem and needed assistance to solve it, and invariably the first question I was asked was “What is the recovery plan?”. The first thing I had to do was to get rid of the “First 100 days” expectation. The interview process was at best just an indication of how management thought things were working, which was invariably wrong (or else they would be able to solve it without my help – it was never just a “need more manpower” bolt on effort as often thought). The interview process and walk through (transition period) just revealed the tip of the iceberg.

   In politics, the executive is changed and the new guy is expected to hit the ground running. If he (or she, I’ll use the masculine term to represent the role, irrespective of actual gender), is a previously-embedded manager, the culture is understood, and it’s rare to see any fundamental change – things are done as they are done, with alterations and improvements around the edges… worst case, polishing the turd.

   But if the executive is changed and the new guy comes from a completely different high-performance culture, it’s going to take time to understand what is actually going on – you just don’t step in and start drawing up new organization charts, rearranging offices and reallocating or replacing leadership and management. You do that and you might as well just shut the company down for a few months – you’ll lose less money and customer good will that way.

   So you have to keep operations going so that approach doesn’t work. and the upshot is that the first six to twelve months while the culture is being understood and an effective alteration approach is developed it is going to look like “there’s no settled policies or procedures” to rely on. Nothing changes all at once, certainly nothing as huge, bureaucratic and convoluted as the Federal Government executive branch, never mind the other branches.

   To the uninitiated, this lack of settlement looks bad. It’s not – it means that an “off-the-cuff” hastily-concocted “recovery plan” has not been thrust upon the organization (or abandoned). But the new executive DOES have different objectives, or at least different approaches to achieve them, and he will face resistance, even sabotage – change is typically the hardest thing to accept, particularly where the status quo was working to the “oppositions” benefit. It’s not unusual for the executive to be forced to launch a few missiles, drop a bomb or two, and buy time (and credibility) to make the changes that may not yet be fully understood.

   In this context, nothing I see Trump actually doing gives me alarm (yet) – I recognize both the monumental task facing him, and the criticisms that tell me he’s basically on-track. Folks may not like his superlatives – he’s definitely not a “speak softly and carry a big stick” guy that we’ve been taught to highly value, but it works to his (and our) advantage to be considered unpredictable and even feared at this point. Particularly so by our traditional advisories. They all know we still have the loudest bark and the hardest bite in the neighborhood, and “calling our bluff” is ignorant. And we certainly shouldn’t be alarmed by their bluffs. Nobody wants our undivided, hostile attention. Nobody.

   Over time, a new culture will be implemented (assuming the concerted effort by the statists to derail the changes Trump was elected to implement ultimately fail), and I’m quite sure as national and international metamorphous is completed the narrative will be that “while it was shaky at first, his learning on the job was ultimately successful”. Once those new policies and procedures are in place and we accept it as the new normal, I’m sure everyone will look back and say he settled down a lot.

2. surely, you jest.

3. Steely, I have a different take. We’ve seen this Trump situation before. It was portrayed in the 1979 Peter Sellers movie “Being There”.

   If you haven’t seen it, check it out. It will explain everything.