[January 14, 2017] One daily practice leaders should make a habit of is to follow important (and open) conversations at the senior leader level. We are fortunate to get that very opportunity and every 4 to 8 years in the United States when a new president transitions to the job. To witness how leaders make changes in a large and complex bureaucracy will improve our understanding of leadership.
President-elect Donald Trump will be the new U.S. president in less than a week and he has promised, among other things, to repeal and replace the Affordable Care Act (more commonly known as ObamaCare). The laws governing ObamaCare are among the most voluminous, complex, entrenched, and politically polarizing passed by Congress in the past 50 years.
To make major changes to those massive laws will require superior skills in economics, psychology, politics … and, of course, great leadership. Despite what is being said Trump, it will take time to create and implement significant changes. It will be much harder than most people think because large bureaucracies, especially government-dominated bureaucracies, have tremendous staying power.
To illustrate one keen observer, when asked about Pentagon bureaucracy by reporter Lou Dobbs, U.S. Secretary of Defense Donald Rumsfeld said of making changes, “It is an enormous task. It’s like turning a battleship.”1 Rumsfeld has experience with bureaucracies, good leadership skills, and stamina. He needed it during his time as SECDEF and yet accomplished much less than he anticipated.
I think we will witness some of the most aggressive resistance to change in ObamaCare than any other set of laws that our politicians are willing to attempt. Many laws don’t get improved upon because simply opening the topic brings swift and painful resistance from entrenched government bureaucrats and a host of voters who make their desires known.
The arguments pro and con regarding the impact of ObamaCare will be debated endlessly over the next few months. But let’s not overlook what leaders should be closely studying this debate. We should look at how the new president (and his Republican Party) is a capable of resilience in the face of other important issues and Democrat Party resistance.
In another blog post later, I will lay out some of the key things that leaders should gain from this open conversation on repealing and replacing ObamaCare; whether it was a success or not, why, and who were the key leaders making those arguments.
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