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These People Don’t Know What “Efficiency” Means
Why slashing the federal workforce won’t make the government more efficient
I’m a huge fan of efficiency. I appreciate elegant solutions to complex problems, and I like to see the inventive ways organizational leaders manage to do more with less. So you might think I’d be thrilled with Elon Musk’s Department of Government Efficiency, right? Well, not so fast.
I like the idea of DOGE in the abstract, but what about the execution? Is Musk actually making government more efficient? An organization is more efficient when it’s able to deliver the same or better services, with the same or superior quality, at lower cost. But is that what’s happening now?
The flurry of activity coming out of the White House over the last month and a half has convinced a lot of Trump’s supporters that he is indeed Making America Great Again. But we need to be clear about a couple of points:
First, doing things isn’t the same as getting things done. Getting things done means (1) enacting changes that make a substantive difference in how organizations operate and (2) making changes that are durable, that you won’t just abandon or reverse because they aren’t legal, practical, or popular. In terms of efficiency, your efforts are just wasted energy if they don’t lead…
