Subjecting Donald Trump's War against the Administrative State to Management Science

• Author: Stephen Heidari‐Robinson
• DOI: http://doi.org/10.1111/puar.12836
• Published date: 01 September 2017
• Date: 01 September 2017

Subjecting Donald Trump’s War against the Administrative State to Management Science 641

Public Administration Review,

Vol. 77, Iss. 5, pp. 641–642. © 2017 by

The American Society for Public Administration.

DOI: 10.1111/puar.12836.

Subjecting Donald Trump ’ s War against the

Administrative State to Management Science

Stephen Heidari-Robinson heads

Quartz Associates, a firm focused on

reorganizations. Previously he served as

energy and environment advisor to the

U.K. prime minister and as vice president of

Schlumberger, among other roles.

E-mail: sheidari-robinson@

quartzassociates.com

Perspective

P resident Trump has declared war on his own

administrative state. As of this writing, ninety

percent of 1,100 top-tier administrative

positions remain unfilled. Only 14 of the top 55

positions in the State Department have even been

nominated. This is not just a political outsider

learning the ropes. Trump told Fox News, “A lot of

those jobs, I don ’ t want to appoint, because they ’ re

unnecessary to have. . . . We ’ re running a very good,

efficient government.”

I am an author on organizational change ( Reorg – How

to Get It Right , published by Harvard Business Review)

and a former government advisor (in 10 Downing

Street in the United Kingdom). My company, Quartz

Associates, recently analyzed 2,200 reorganizations,

including 86 in government institutions. So what did

we learn about the Trump approach?

It is worth saying that some of the issues exercising

the president are real: administrative officials do often

favor the status quo; they can create red tape and be

unresponsive to business needs; they tend to vote

for more left-wing parties; and—a very few—leak

information for their own purposes.

But what of Trump ’ s remedy to all this?

With government reorganizations—of which an

administrative transition is a gargantuan example—it

is critical to be clear on the objectives. It is not enough

to dislike the status quo. Our analysis shows that “a

leader ’ s desire to change things” is statistically the least

successful rationale for a reorganization. For private

companies, objective-setting is easier: everything

ultimately translates into revenues and costs. It is

much harder to set clear-cut objectives for a public

sector reorganization—which may have multiple,

competing outputs: for instance, putting up barriers

to foreign trade and creating jobs. But, that makes

it even more important to be specific. For example,

if the president wants a different foreign policy, it

would be a good idea to define it first, then choose

leaders and shape the State Department to deliver it,

rather than simply leave leaders ’ seats empty and hope

that the staff work out what you want from reading

Twitter.

It is also clear from our analysis that longer

reorganizations are much less successful. The average

government reorganization takes over 14 months

(compared to 11 months in the private sector).

But only 10 percent of reorganizations that take

over a year are successful. Those that take over

18 months have almost no chance of success. The

majority of successful reorganizations are delivered

in less than 6 months. The reasons behind this

are commonsensical: you do not get the results

you wanted from the reorganization until it has

been implemented, and while the reorganization

is dragging on, folks get distracted from their jobs

and do not deliver effectively. In three quarters of

government reorganizations, the disruption caused

by the transition causes performance to drop. At the

current rate of momentum, Trump ’ s transition looks

set to be a very lengthy and, hence, unsuccessful affair.

Interestingly, our analysis shows that, whether you

change out a few leaders or many, it makes no

difference to the success of your reorganization. This

is good news for the U.S. system, where so many

leaders are swapped out, in contrast to the United

Kingdom, where the administration stays the same

between governments. But a certain quantum of

management energy is required: a third of government

reorganizations suffer from a lack of leadership

resources, and reorganizations where leaders spend less

than a day on the transition are less successful. With

a depleted leadership bench and multiple, changing

priorities, Trump ’ s administration will find it hard to

deliver change successfully.

Surprisingly, given common concerns about

burgeoning state bureaucracies, only 15 percent of

government reorganizations are driven by cost-cutting

(although this proves to be a more successful rationale

Stephen Heidari-Robinson

Quartz Associates