Anyone who has managed a large organization to success knows that job one is getting the right people on the leadership team.
That means people with deep knowledge of the business sector, extensive experience, good judgement, high energy and a strong track record at running previous organizations.
Donald Trump’s picks for cabinet posts and other high-level positions mostly lack those qualities.
Ergo, a prediction: there will be some mighty screwups on Trump’s second watch. My further guess is some of the snafus will happen in the first two years, because the president-elect is in a hurry to get results. Decisions will be made by inexperienced leaders/managers who got their appointments by loyalty to Trump, not because of their expertise.
They will be rookies at large-scale management. They will be driven by ideology, not by seeking out what works at solving big-time problems, like illegal immigration, high food prices, soaring housing prices, escalating prices of health care and the Ukraine war.
Some of his opinionated loyalists may be smart enough to seek counsel from experienced professionals in the agencies, but it is more likely they will disdain and disrespect government workers “in the swamp.”
I worked in the federal poverty program in President Nixon’s first term and came to respect many agency managers. They worked hard and intelligently to carry the anti-poverty mission within the Nixon prospective.
There are enormous opportunities in the agencies that sprawl across the country, opportunities for things to go right and for things to go wrong.
As just one example of things going badly recently, the application process for federal student subsidies and loans got completely mucked up last summer and fall. Many students got-side-tracked in their educational pursuits as a result.
There is a huge distinction between good leadership and competent management. The effective organizational heads are good at both.
Let’s take the Trump nominee for Secretary of Defense as one scenario. Pete Hegseth is a decorated veteran. That helps, but he was never an upper-level military leader. His highest post was major in the Army National Guard. That means he may have managed up to a thousand soldiers. But the defense secretary manages an active-duty force of 1.4 million men and women, 1.4 million more in the National Guard and reserves and 700,000 civilian personnel.
Hegseth does have an Ivy League education, but I knew a lot of ineffective smart guys at Yale. That university didn’t teach much about leadership. Yale turned out a lot of bright professionals: lawyers, doctors, teachers, researchers, writers and artists. A small proportion learned leadership during distinguished careers.
Hegseth’s personal life has been extremely messy, but so has Trump’s. In my experience, people with stable personal lives are generally more likely to be stable and reliable leaders.
Matt Gaetz and Pete Hegseth
Obviously, Matt Gaetz failed in that dimension as well and ended up losing Trump’s nomination for Attorney General. Who knows how Hegseth will fare? He can only lose four Republican senators to get the job.
In Jim Collins’ renowned business book, “Good to Great,” he came to this conclusion from his research on many big company successes and failures. His great leaders say, “Look, I don’t really know where we should take this bus. But I know this much. If we get the right people on the bus, the right people in the right seats, and the wrong people off the bus, then we will figure out how to take it some place great.”
I don’t much like the bus metaphor. People in the seats aren’t driving the bus. But Collins’ research findings made sense for a lot of organizational leaders.
Trump’s bus is our country.
He looks to have a bunch of inexperienced quacks on his bus.
I’m taking bets that his picks will steer his bus off a good number of political cliffs in his first two years. What if his billionaire duo, Musk and Ramaswami, mess clumsily with either Social Security, Medicare or Obamacare and their multi-millions of members — as they have suggested they might?
Millions of voters would not be happy campers or voters, and the Trump MAGA movement would be on the exit ramp in the House elections in 2026.
P.S. The Wisconsin GOP congressional delegation supports whomever Trump nominates.
