I vividly recall walking through the corridors of Saddam Hussein’s palace in the Green Zone in Baghdad in 2006. I was there as part of a team helping to develop a strategy to reinvigorate Iraqi businesses that had been decimated by war and the dysfunction of Iraq’s state-run economy. The palace had been occupied and renamed the temporary U.S. Embassy in Iraq. The wide corridors and ornate offices were occupied by U.S. government employees and military personnel.
As I walked down one of the corridors, I came across a startling sight. Adorning the wall outside an office door was an official photograph of a U.S. State Department official. Above the photo was this inscription: “Welcome to U.S. Embassy Baghdad, our new Embassy Diversity Officer.” The incongruence of what was happening outside the Green Zone with what was happening inside it was depressing — insurgents were attacking and killing U.S. service members and civilian aid workers on a daily basis — yet enlightening. In that moment, I thought, we may fail to bring peace and stability to Iraq, but we haven’t failed in planting our bloated bureaucracy right in the heart of it.
Recently, many have been buoyed by the appointment of Elon Musk and Vivek Ramaswamy to lead something named the “Department of Government Efficiency” (DOGE). The name immediately recalls the Monty Python sketch about “The Ministry of Silly Walks.” The promise of an empowered set of fresh eyes, taking a hard look at waste and inefficiency in our federal government is certainly something we should all cheer.
But as a two-time veteran of such efforts during the Bush 43 and Trump 45 administrations, I offer this unsolicited advice to Messrs. Musk and Ramaswamy: don’t create the DOGE!
Creating a new federal government agency to facilitate this effort is a waste of time and will be counterproductive to the mission that must be performed. All that is needed is a small team of highly motivated and smart people who are used to doing things at the pace at which the world is changing — not the pace at which government moves. No offices, no H.R. department, no financial management system or ERP, no department logo, no invitations to Cabinet meetings, no Senate advice and consent requirements, no department coffee mugs or ID card lanyards, no federal advisory commission rules, and no diversity officers.
Please take the advice of someone who has tried this before: creating a new federal agency to cut bureaucracy is itself a bureaucratic exercise that will only frustrate, delay, and ultimately stymie the effort. It is best not to do it. Otherwise, the organization itself will become mired in the rules, laws, regulations, and inefficiencies governing such entities that it has been tasked with eliminating.
As has been proven over and over in the private sector, a small team with tight, uncompromising timelines is the best bet for success with this endeavor. Frankly, finding inefficiencies and waste in the federal government will be the easiest part of the task. Without an ounce of sarcasm or flippancy, I can tell you that finding the bulk of any potential savings should take this team about 24 hours, including coffee breaks. My confidence is based on the fact that the entire government, and its concomitant spending, is not designed to be efficient or cost-effective. They are designed to meet political objectives, which in most cases are neither.
Finding waste and inefficiency will be easy if judged against private sector standards, but that’s where the easy part ends. The real challenge will be in realizing those potential savings — and that could take a lifetime. The obstacles are fierce, unyielding, and deeply entrenched. The bureaucracy these gentlemen intend to tackle has proven over and over to be adept at waiting out the mandate for change. Eventually, the people who counted stop caring, and the new people stop counting.
As most highly effective CEOs understand, the most important part of any CEO’s job, beyond establishing a clear vision, is moving the biggest impedimental “rocks” out of the way so that their people can unleash their full potential. In government, these rocks are big, and in most cases they are rolling downhill with a lot of momentum. Allow me to offer my opinion on the five biggest ones (in ascending order of importance) that this team will encounter in this quest. I trust that sufficient effort will be focused on altering their paths before they crush the people who will be responsible for implementation. It would be wise to find the savings quickly and then focus the creative energies of leadership on saving the true believers on the team, and those who follow them, from being crushed.
5. Employment Protections provided to the Civil Service and the Senior Executive Service. Ultimately, the government is a service business with the citizens as its customers. No service business worth its salt can thrive without the ability, to quote Michael Hammer, to “put the right people on the right seats on the bus,” or to hire or fire them to meet standards and performance objectives. Civil service rules that govern H.R. policies for government employees severely restrict the ability to reduce or increase the workforce as required for efficient and effective provision of services. It will be impossible to make lasting improvements to efficiency and cost with significant reforms to these rules.
4. The Budgeting Process. The federal budget process is a multi-year marathon of inputs and analysis that produces sub-optimized outputs that satisfy competing constituencies. It is not a rational process seeking to increase a bottom-line financial return to investors. It is a rationalization process that seeks to assuage interests. Asking this process to deliver efficient outcomes is reminiscent of the comedic description of a camel as a “horse designed by a committee.” No serious efficiency and cost reduction effort can be achieved without a serious change in this process.
3. Entitlements. This one should be obvious. A large portion of the federal budget is locked into entitlements and wealth transfers obligated by law. Cracking the costs and inefficiencies in these line items carries tremendous political risk. It will be important to tread lightly in this area as the congressional majority in the House is slim, and suggested reforms to these programs are politically radioactive. Suggested cost reductions and efficiencies to these line items are easily vilified and could jeopardize the viability of the entire effort with the public.
2. Turnover. Successful private-sector realignments and restructurings have one thing in common: consistent and persistent senior-level engagement and continuity. To accomplish this in our government will require no less. My question is, who is the person or team willing to stick to this effort for ten years or more? How can there be such a person, given our political volatility and high politically driven turnover? This must be addressed. The “Efficiency Czar” needs a mandate of a long tenure with corresponding authority.
1. Congress. This will be the biggest rock to face, with the most mass and velocity. Every dollar cut from the federal budget has implications for someone’s congressional district and political contributors. Most have implications for his political party’s agenda and priorities. Much lip service has been and will be paid to the virtue of creating a more efficient and cost-effective government. However, budget dollars equal power, and the biggest job will be convincing members of Congress otherwise.
As most experienced leaders understand, proclaiming an inspiring vision like “we are going to Mars” is the easy part.Making it happen is what takes senior-level engagement, imagination, grit, determination, freedom of action, and most importantly time.Driving inefficiencies and waste out of our federal government is perhaps as noble and critical to our survival as exploring space, but it is probably much harder to do. I guarantee that it will be a lot less fun.I wish Elon and Vivek well, but I respectfully ask that they heed this advice:“Don’t add to the bureaucracy in order to cut it.Don’t DOGE.Just DO.”
Thomas Modly is the former under and acting secretary of the Navy and the former co-director of the Defense Business Transformation Agency.He is a graduate of the U.S. Naval Academy, Georgetown’s Graduate School of Government, and Harvard Business School. He is the bestselling author of Vectors: Heroes, Villains, and Heartbreak on the Bridge of the U.S. Navy.
Image: JD Lasica via Wikimedia Commons, CC BY 2.0 (cropped).
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