I largely agree with Kalil’s assertion that the White House is mostly about coordinating other actors.
I think it is mainly a terrible failure in this regard, chiefly because it fails to account for the fact that coordinating other actors is a plan that requires execution. The 15-minutes-of-attention standard only works for cases where everyone doing what they would normally do except under the same banner this time is the right answer.
So what do we do when we need something that is currently wrong to change? What about cases where it’s a difficult challenge that has an exacting standard for success? These are cases where the normal things other actors do is either specifically wrong, or not good enough; how is the White House supposed to coordinate them against themselves with a press conference and an executive order?
So while the coordinating-actors and dividing-attention frames are useful, both for us and from within the White House (or other country’s leadership), I also feel like they could easily do a much better job approaching coordination as a strategy that requires execution, and chunking their attention to that end.
nods FWIW I think it’s plausible I exaggerated the levels of competence in government and could be persuaded to edit wording; my main intention with the post was to discuss what type signature the top of government in fact has.
The White House spends the vast majority of its resources putting out false press releases. My impression is that that’s what Kalil did, too. Probably he shifted things in a positive direction, but the shape of the marginal effort doesn’t have much to do with the shape of the total effort. That is, how much time he spent shaping the CDC actions vs NIH funding vs conferences of outsiders doesn’t tells us much about how much of his useful actions fell in those categories. He had practically no direct power, so in a sense the CDC and NIH were outsiders to be coordinated, too.
Cummings burnt a lot of bridges by saying important negative things. I’m suspicious of Kalil sounding so positive. The first hour of the podcast gave me an extremely negative view of him, but then he mentioned a lot of trade-offs and strategies that seemed valuable regardless of the average level of government function. Still, I worry that he sold his soul to function in this environment and lost the ability to tell good projects from bad.
Thx! And what’s your impression—that the White House mostly focuses on innovation and execution of plans rather than coordinating other actors?
I largely agree with Kalil’s assertion that the White House is mostly about coordinating other actors.
I think it is mainly a terrible failure in this regard, chiefly because it fails to account for the fact that coordinating other actors is a plan that requires execution. The 15-minutes-of-attention standard only works for cases where everyone doing what they would normally do except under the same banner this time is the right answer.
So what do we do when we need something that is currently wrong to change? What about cases where it’s a difficult challenge that has an exacting standard for success? These are cases where the normal things other actors do is either specifically wrong, or not good enough; how is the White House supposed to coordinate them against themselves with a press conference and an executive order?
So while the coordinating-actors and dividing-attention frames are useful, both for us and from within the White House (or other country’s leadership), I also feel like they could easily do a much better job approaching coordination as a strategy that requires execution, and chunking their attention to that end.
Before asking how something happened, we should ask if it happened.
nods FWIW I think it’s plausible I exaggerated the levels of competence in government and could be persuaded to edit wording; my main intention with the post was to discuss what type signature the top of government in fact has.
The White House spends the vast majority of its resources putting out false press releases. My impression is that that’s what Kalil did, too. Probably he shifted things in a positive direction, but the shape of the marginal effort doesn’t have much to do with the shape of the total effort. That is, how much time he spent shaping the CDC actions vs NIH funding vs conferences of outsiders doesn’t tells us much about how much of his useful actions fell in those categories. He had practically no direct power, so in a sense the CDC and NIH were outsiders to be coordinated, too.
Cummings burnt a lot of bridges by saying important negative things. I’m suspicious of Kalil sounding so positive. The first hour of the podcast gave me an extremely negative view of him, but then he mentioned a lot of trade-offs and strategies that seemed valuable regardless of the average level of government function. Still, I worry that he sold his soul to function in this environment and lost the ability to tell good projects from bad.