AMERICA NEEDS A SMARTER GOVERNMENT, NOT JUST A SMALLER ONE / PROJECT SYNDICATE

America Needs a Smarter Government, Not Just a Smaller One

Elon Musk’s Department of Government Efficiency has prioritized performative stunts over meaningful reform, relying on crude measures that produce more disruption than savings. If the US is to remain globally competitive, it needs an accountable, innovative, and agile federal government.

Michele Zanini, Gary Hamel

BOSTON/LOS GATOS – Elon Musk’s four-month run leading the Department of Government Efficiency (DOGE) has ended amid a predictably public and petty feud with US President Donald Trump, leaving behind an estimated $160 billion in federal spending cuts over the next year. 

The actual savings are likely much lower – and even if taken at face value, that figure falls far short of the $2 trillion Musk promised to cut from the nearly $7 trillion federal budget.

Most of DOGE’s cuts have come through blunt-force downsizing: mass layoffs and buyouts, wholesale cancellations of government contracts, and across-the-board spending freezes. 

Critics view DOGE as “efficiency theater,” rather than a serious effort to improve government performance. 

Many of the savings, it is feared, will be offset by unintended consequences, such as reduced productivity, increased employee turnover, and lost tax revenue.

One thing is certain: DOGE won’t solve the United States’ structural problems, such as runaway entitlement costs, crumbling infrastructure, substandard schools, an eroding middle class, and sluggish productivity growth. 

Addressing these challenges will require a federal government that is not just smaller, but smarter: entrepreneurial, agile, and accountable.

Before dismissing the idea, consider this: In the 1950s, the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) – then staffed by fewer than 1,000 people – eliminated smallpox in the US, averted a polio crisis, and helped contain the Asian flu pandemic. 

In 1961, just 30 months after its founding, NASA launched the first American into space. 

And in 1963, some three years after being greenlit, the A-12 prototype of the SR-71 Blackbird became the first aircraft to fly at Mach 3+. 

Unfortunately, such feats have become exceedingly rare. In recent years, the federal government has been responsible for a string of high-profile failures, most notably the CDC’s initial mishandling of the COVID-19 pandemic. 

NASA’s Space Launch System (SLS) is six years behind schedule and projected to cost $4 billion per launch. 

Similarly, the F-35 fighter jet is a decade late and $200 billion over budget.

Much of the blame lies with outdated, industrial-era management systems that prioritize compliance over performance, rules over reason, and analysis over action. 

Inevitably, these practices have produced bloated bureaucracies. 

According to our analysis of data from the US Office of Personnel Management, the number of federal employees in managerial and administrative roles grew by 262,000 between 1998 and 2023, while the number of employees in all other categories shrank by 18,000.

As a result, US government agencies now have one manager or administrator for every 1.3 non-supervisory employees – down from a ratio of one to 2.2 in 1998. 

The ratio in the private sector is one to five.

As decision-making authority shifts away from scientists, engineers, and frontline operators toward managers, analysts, and accountants, those trying to get real work done are increasingly stymied by risk-averse supervisors and a culture of buck-passing. 

The problem, therefore, is not that the government employs too many people – it’s that it employs too many overseers and not enough doers.

But bureaucracy isn’t invincible. Donald Trump should follow the example of Bill Anderson, the former CEO of Roche’s pharmaceutical division. 

During his tenure (2019-22), Anderson halved the number of managers, reassigned hundreds of employees to customer-facing roles, eliminated top-down budgeting, shifted from annual planning to 90-day cycles, and made every employee accountable to physicians and patients. 

The result? A 30% increase in revenue with 30% fewer resources, even as the company lost patent protection on its three best-selling drugs.

If the Trump administration wants to revitalize America’s federal agencies, rather than simply dismantling them, it must launch a focused, strategic effort to make them work better. In practice, this would require several key steps.

First, agency heads must reduce bureaucratic bloat. 

Every federal agency should be required to track and report the cost of administrative rituals that add little or no value – such as the time and money wasted on pointless box-ticking, redundant reviews, and needlessly tortuous approvals. 

Agencies that fail to show measurable progress should face targeted funding cuts.

Second, the federal government must dramatically shrink its managerial and administrative ranks. Agencies should be required to double their spans of control – the number of employees reporting to each manager – and enforce a five-year freeze on new administrative positions. 

The number of management positions should be reduced by at least two-thirds. 

Overall, managers and administrators should account for no more than 20% of the federal workforce, in line with the private sector.

Third, agencies should be encouraged to pursue “moonshot” goals. 

The success of Operation Warp Speed – the ten-month sprint to develop and deliver COVID-19 vaccines – demonstrates the potential of committing to ambitious targets and giving teams the freedom to devise the most effective solutions. 

The Defense Department, for example, could aim to reduce the development time for major weapons systems by half. 

Likewise, the Department of Housing and Urban Development should commit to eliminating America’s four-million-unit housing shortage within four years.

Fourth, every part of every agency should operate as a laboratory for new ideas. 

The US Army’s Transforming in Contact initiative offers a useful model: By giving three brigades unprecedented freedom to experiment, it unlocked innovations like specialized scout teams and sped up equipment repairs through 3D printing. 

Similarly, the Navy’s principal R&D unit has introduced innovative personnel practices that enabled it to increase productivity and retain top talent, such as performance-based pay and flexible job descriptions.

Fifth, every government program must be required to demonstrate its real-world impact. 

The Trump administration should build on the George W. Bush-era Program Assessment Rating Tool, which evaluated nearly 1,000 government programs and created a comprehensive framework for linking funding to performance.

Lastly, Trump should make every federal appointee spend the next 100 days listening to frontline employees, asking questions like “What slows you down?” and “What stifles your creativity?” 

In every organization, there are deeply frustrated people who know what needs to change. 

As one National Institutes of Health (NIH) scientist recently put it, “I would be lining up at the front of the line to help with a rational process to help improve this place.”

To maintain its economic and geopolitical preeminence, the US must recover its capacity for derring-do. 

Achieving this will require a federal government that works better, not one that is merely smaller.

Michele Zanini is Director of the Management Lab and the co-author of Humanocracy, Updated and Expanded: Building Organizations as Amazing as the People Inside Them (Harvard Business Review Press, 2025).

Gary Hamel is a visiting professor at the London Business School and the co-author of Humanocracy, Updated and Expanded: Building Organizations as Amazing as the People Inside Them (Harvard Business Review Press, 2025).