Not surprisingly, the announcement of Donald Trump’s appointment of Elon Musk as Minister for Government Efficiency has unleashed passions, leading to incomprehension and criticism. Especially on this side of the ocean.
Incredulity which then turned into a trial for incompetence and illegitimacy, given his inexperience in the specificities of the public sphere, and even open criticism of the announced method.
An epidermal fear and criticism which, I’m afraid, will prevent us from reflecting on the substance, because the substance exists. But when a cultural bias prevents us from understanding the substance, we only comment on the form. The point here is not to judge anyone or to comment on the outcome of the election: a people votes according to its context, its problems and its culture, and if it doesn’t have the same intellectual software as us, it will arrive at a different result in all logic and rationality. But if you’re even slightly connected to a country, if you know it and spend a bit of time there, you can anticipate and understand it, even if you don’t appreciate it. Ditto in the other direction, in terms of our votes and convictions.
But let’s get back to the heart of the matter: the creation of the post of Minister of Government Efficiency, the fact that it falls to Elon Musk, the Musk method and what we can learn from it or even expect from it.
Government effectiveness or efficiency
I don’t want to reopen the never-ending debate as to whether a country can or should be run like a business, but if you want to know my position, it’s “not always, but there’s always something to learn from it ”, because both are organizations that share organizational problems. And, first and foremost, problems of effectiveness, or rather efficiency.
What are we talking about here?
Effectiveness is the ability to achieve a set objective or result successfully, regardless of the resources used. It is measured by the degree to which an action, process or organization achieves its intended objectives.
I don’t think this is what Trump and Musk have in mind, but in French we tend to translate “efficiency” too systematically as “efficacité”, whereas more often than not the correct translation is the rarer word “efficience ”, and that’s not the same thing.
Efficiency consists in achieving the objective while optimizing the means used, and therefore concerns the quality of the process, whereas effectiveness focuses on the end result.
Of course, the new powers-that-be want both, but I have the feeling that it’s mainly the former that’s being targeted, as it conditions the means needed to achieve the result.
Everyone has an efficiency/effectiveness problem
Let’s use the analogy of a car: effectiveness means going fast and/or far, and efficiency means doing so with as little fuel as possible.
Consider the cars of the 60’s, 70’s, 80’s… they didn’t go that fast, they didn’t go that far, and they consumed a lot of fuel. And the faster you wanted to go, the more often you had to refuel.
That didn’t matter until the oil crisis, when “using less fuel” began to take precedence. We started to work on efficiency to get the same performance with less fuel, then always more, but never with more fuel.
Gasoline became the constraint, and we worked on the engine, gearboxes, transmissions, on-board electrical systems and tires to improve efficiency.
To put it caricaturally, the question of efficiency is “what speed and range, not at any price, but with a given quantity of fuel”.
A company also asks itself the same questions. “What value do I produce with my salaries, investments in equipment, raw materials and overheads?“ with the underlying question of ”where are the areas of energy waste “ that mean that not all the fuel is transformed into energy delivered to the wheels…or that not everything that is spent directly creates value.
We know that we’ll never achieve zero friction, zero waste, that some are indispensable, but we’ll optimize them as much as possible.
It’s exactly the same for a government and the public apparatus in general, and the budget debate in France is a harsh reminder of this: it’s all a question of knowing how much tax to pay for what public service.
The efficiency of public service and, indirectly, of taxation, is based on the idea that what counts is the maximum service provided, regardless of cost, on the assumption that taxes and debt are unlimited (which is what many people wanted to believe for a long time).
The current debate ignores efficiency: all we talk about is increasing or decreasing results or means, without taking an interest in the immense machine, the engine, that transforms means into results.
This seems to be Musk’s mission, and for this reason alone he deserves our interest.
Government, a moderate-impact playground for seeking efficiency
Once again, let’s avoid the sterile debate about “whether a government should be run like a business”: it’s an organization like any other, with means, an organization and results to achieve, and therefore necessarily with potential for optimization.
I’d even go so far as to say that it’s perhaps the best place for this exercise!
Companies have a culture of regularly questioning what value they produce versus what they spend. Of course, over time, they tend to become overweight and inflict themselves on a drastic diet, unlike the start-up that goes to the gym every day and does intermittent fasting, but this questioning is not foreign to them.
It is much less so for governments and public services, which have made undeniable efforts in recent years, but are still a long way from private companies in their quest for efficiency.
And make no mistake: the American administration is sometimes no less dusty, better equipped or optimized than its French counterpart (for good examples, look at the Baltic States or even Georgia…). It’s a safe bet that, in these countries at least, that’s where you’ll find the most significant organizational debt (How to Tackle the Biggest Threat to Your Team’s Growth ), and even if we consider that AI will be the solution to everything, it won’t dispense us from first tackling the organization (AI Reasoning Is Cool, But First How Can We Tackle Organisational Debt?), because accelerating a dysfunctional organization only leads to it dysfunctioning faster and without any savings.
So, should we expect the gigantic impact we’re hoping for? I’d be more circumspect.
Of course, impressive things can be done in terms of efficiency, but, I’m afraid, with a more limited impact on citizens, as well as in terms of savings. Savings that may be impressive in percentage terms, but less so in dollar terms.
Let’s not forget that the United States is a federal state, and that the President’s power only extends to the federal level, not to the areas under the jurisdiction of the member states (management of education, local police, healthcare, infrastructure and elections). This leaves “only” the regal: the US federal government is responsible for national defense, foreign policy, interstate and international trade, currency, national taxation and the protection of civil rights. It also oversees federal crimes and the courts, while collaborating with the states on shared areas such as public health and the environment.
In terms of headcount, that’s 2 million people, and 19 for local government, with a budget for the member states and administrations that cumulatively exceeds the federal budget.
So if Musk can have an impact on many things, he won’t have power over everything, with a huge number of areas and sources of deficiency remaining in the hands of the states.
It could even be said that if there are reforms, some of them will remain blocked halfway.
What is the Musk method of government efficiency?
Musk is being asked to import methods that have worked in the private sector, particularly in the start-up mode.
Musk aims to simplify bureaucratic processes, eliminate wasteful spending and introduce an entrepreneurial culture into government. He plans to recruit highly qualified talent ready to work intensively on cost-cutting initiatives, while emphasizing transparency and accountability. This strategy includes online publication of the department’s actions and the creation of a dashboard highlighting government spending deemed excessive (Elon Musk, Vivek Ramaswamy start recruiting for new Department of Government Efficiency – but there’s a catch).
In practical terms, this is innovation by subtraction (Jon McNeill’s lessons on innovation through subtraction): an approach that consists of improving a product, service or process by removing elements deemed superfluous, inefficient or a source of complexity. Rather than adding new functionalities or resources, this method aims to purify and simplify in order to maximize efficiency, reduce costs and improve the user/citizen experience.
That’s all well and good, but can it be applied to an existing, unwieldy organization with a substantial pre-existing organizational debt? And a fortiori to administration?
The limits of the Musk method
Because that’s the main challenge: applying to government what has worked in startups!
Can it work? Yes. Can it fail miserably? Yes.
And that’s what makes following the work of this new ministry so exciting.
But the first limit is already Musk himself , with his style and unpredictability, which we don’t know if he’ll get through to civil servants unless we think he’ll sack all recalcitrants as he did at X, formerly Twitter, because a civil servant in the USA can be sacked for misconduct, poor performance or downsizing.
But perhaps he underestimates the capacity for resistance and nuisance of this social body.
Then there’s the very mission entrusted to him, more that of a super consultant than a real, full minister. He is asked to make recommendations to improve the efficiency of government operations, not to decide or implement them. What’s more, his mission is limited in time: a priori 16 months.
What will become of his recommendations, which may well be filtered through a cohort of more conservative civil servants, who may well strip them of some of their substance?
Finally, it seems that the president-elect, aware that his new sidekick could be difficult to control, has decided to install a sort of sanitary cordon around him.
Despite its name, the DOGE will not be an official federal executive department, and will not require Congressional approval. Instead, it will be an advisory body operating outside government, collaborating with the White House and the Office of Management and Budget to drive structural reforms. So, while Musk will have an influential role, his powers will be limited and he won’t hold official cabinet status (How Elon Musk’s Department of Government Efficiency could actually work).
It wouldn’t be the first time to appoint a commission and then bury the results of its work, even if we can assume that Trump intends to get things moving.
Was Musk the right person?
In terms of legitimacy, there’s no question. If you’re going to implement a model, you might as well recruit its guru! If he wants to go that way, we can’t blame Trump for choosing Musk.
What’s more, in the United States it’s not unusual for people from the private sector to join a government to bring their experience to bear.
But can his divisive personality be soluble in the highest spheres of government? Only time will tell.
In any case, Trump had no choice: given what Musk had invested in him, literally and figuratively, it’s fair to say that if he didn’t buy the election, he bought his place in government (The Billionaire and the President).
And that’s where it can and will certainly hurt: a number of laws may be passed that will benefit Musk’s business, starting with the taxation of electric cars produced in China, but that can only be the beginning.
Could the sanitary cordon mentioned above limit his influence? His power, yes, not his influence, and it’s even worse than that.
Not being a real minister allows him to continue running his companies, and obviously doesn’t subject him to conflict-of-interest regulations (Elon Musk’s “Department of Government Efficiency” Is Just a Temporary Advisory Group with a Corny Acronym).
That leaves the worst problem of all for a person of influence, whether in business or politics: the gray zone of things you’re not forbidden to do, but you’d be better off not doing. It’s called ethics , but there’s nothing to say that it’s likely to stop this kind of person (Elon Musk says he and Trump have ‘mandate to delete’ regulations. Ethics laws could limit Musk role).
Could one step too many bring down the house of cards and ruin his credibility and ability to make an impact? For those of you who think the corporate world is tough, you’d be wise to know that compared to politics, it’s the world of Care Bears.
Why is Musk so disturbing…especially outside the USA?
It was impossible to end this overview without asking why this appointment is causing such a stir, especially outside the USA.
Of course, there is a cultural bias. Of course there’s the very personality of the character and his ambivalence, which makes me call him an “admirable asshole”.
But shouldn’t the possibility of seeing a full-scale experiment in startup methods applied to a government make us happy, and say “now we’ll know if it works”?
Perhaps because many would like it not to work, for fear of seeing their own inaction come back at them like a boomerang?
In any case, given what is being done in terms of administrative and public efficiency, we may well be witnessing a giant A/B test between old Europe and the new continent over the next few years.
Bottom line
Once we put aside the buzz and personal judgments, we can only look at Elon Musk’s appointment with a mixture of curiosity, interest, fear and detestation.
Forget detestation, it has no place in an in-depth analysis.
Interest and curiosity, because we’re about to witness an initiative never seen before by a government, or even by businesses that dare not be so radical.
Fear for some that it will work and send them back to their own fears and renunciation, that people will say to themselves “it works, it’s the way to go”.
As far as I’m concerned, I don’t know what to expect and I’m curious. Very curious.
How about you?
Image: Elon Musk by Frederic Legrand – COMEO via Shutterstock
