As Dick Cheney was finishing his tenure as President Ford’s chief of staff in 1977, his colleagues gave him a curious going-away present: a bicycle wheel mounted on a piece of plywood. Every spoke connecting the center of the wheel to the rim was broken, except one. It was a metaphor as well as a joke: a symbol of the administration’s poorly conceived management style, in which Ford initially had rejected hiring a chief of staff. Ford’s motive in trying to be his own chief was to send a signal that his presidency would be different from that of Richard Nixon, whose chief of staff’s zealous sequestering of the president from certain staff and information was seen as one of the contributing factors to the Watergate scandal. Yet Ford’s creation of a system in which too many people (the spokes) reported to him directly, rather than through a chief of staff, was a huge mistake. Predictably, disorder reigned, and an old comment of President Eisenhower’s was vindicated: “Organization cannot make a genius out of an incompetent. . . . On the other hand, disorganization can scarcely fail to result in inefficiency.”

Ford’s creation of a system in which too many people (the spokes) reported to him directly, rather than through a chief of staff, was a huge mistake.

Eventually, Ford reversed his stance and appointed Cheney as chief of staff. When Cheney left the White House in 1977, following the election of Jimmy Carter, he gave the wheel to his successor, Hamilton Jordan, and attached a note: “Dear Hamilton. Beware the spokes of the wheel.” Cheney intended to convey that having every spoke (presidential staffer) tie directly to the president (the inner part of the wheel) was bound to fail. Sadly, Carter repeated Ford’s mistake and attempted to function without a chief of staff. This was a mistake, said Carter aide Jack Watson. “It pulls the president into too much; he’s involved in too many things.”

My early weeks in the White House in 2017 were similarly full of confused lines of communication and reporting. It felt like an Odyssean voyage, as the new staff explored overlapping power centers and the perplexing mechanics of getting things done in the modern White House. For instance, we spent a lot of time and energy on patch disputes such as who had “walk-in privileges” to the Oval Office, who would be entitled to membership on the National Security Council, whether or not the Homeland Security Council would be part of the NSC, and whether the newly created Office of Trade and Manufacturing Policy would stand on its own or become a part of the National Economic Council.

It felt like an Odyssean voyage, as the new staff explored overlapping power centers and the perplexing mechanics of getting things done in the modern White House.

These problems are best solved before an inauguration and not after it, when all efforts should be directed at governing. The Year Zero team can design a new architecture well ahead of time that reflects a closer alignment of structure with achievement of the president’s goals.

This chapter proposes an approach to organizing the White House that ties structure to the core decision-making processes. This model is intended to overcome a fundamental shortcoming of White House design—it must be able to be replicated in an “evergreen” fashion, no matter who is president.

 START WITH AN (ALMOST) CLEAN SHEET, AND A SET OF PRINCIPLES

 Given the many components that must be brought together to carry out effective processes within the White House, a systematic approach to an organizing set of principles for a productive structure is essential. While no human entity operates strictly according to organization charts, they do bring some clarity to the guardrails of activity.

Most studies of organization design have focused on private sector organizations. There are some similarities between private sector entities and the White House—for example, both involve a large number of tasks to be performed, limited resources, and organizational hierarchy.

While no human entity operates strictly according to organization charts, they do bring some clarity to the guardrails of activity.

Most organizations, whether private or public, need to assign specialized tasks and then coordinate multiple activities, often with insufficient resources. Hence arises the need to set priorities and make trade-offs. There is also generally a hierarchy of roles. Assuming the organizations are larger than one person’s effective span of control of approximately 10 to 15 people, the roles need to be organized in a logical fashion. A hierarchy with span-breakers is the normal model in the private sector once a company gets to a certain size.

However, successful private sector models, while potentially useful to some extent, cannot be applied in their entirety to the White House. There are considerable differences between public and private sector entities in general, and the White House in particular.

In the public sector:

Objectives are often less clear.

Very few decisions are binary yes/no choices.

Decisions require much more consensus building.

There are more shared and overlapping responsibilities between organizational actors.

There is a mix of elected officials, political appointees, and civil servants executing on policy.

A political body has a finite life span defined by elections.

Differences for the White House in particular include:

The whole team is formed very quickly (they come together on “Day One”).

Presidents are central to everything (in theory everyone reports to them, and they are the only ones who can make policy decisions).

Its staff may consist of only a few hundred people, but it is at the center of an organization that employs several million people.

It has no “competition” existing at the same time—the White House has a constitutional monopoly on the federal executive branch. This means that innovations in design must be self-generated.

The White House has a constitutional monopoly on the federal executive branch. This means that innovations in design must be self-generated.

To add to the complexity, there are dozens of units in the Executive Office of the President with differing organizing principles. As an analogy to the private sector, some can be thought of as being designed around “functional” areas, such as the lawyers in the Office of Legal Counsel. Others can be seen as “product” areas, such as the National Economic Council, which organizes itself around economic themes such as taxes. Still more can be thought of as the equivalent of “customer” areas, such as the Office of Legislative Affairs, which organizes itself around its customers—Congress. Others have geographic subunits. And some can be a combination of the above or a matrix. For example, the current National Security Council has a mixture of all the above—geographic (Middle East, Russia and Central Asia, Western Hemisphere, etc.), product (cybersecurity, international economics and competitiveness, technology and national security, etc.), function (strategic communications, strategic planning), and customer (partnerships and global engagement).

There are dozens of units in the Executive Office of the President with differing organizing principles.

Some functions can be distributed across multiple domains. Responsibility for technology policy, for instance, can sit with any or all of the National Economic Council, the National Security Council, the Domestic Policy Council, and the Office of Science and Technology Policy. The result of such multiple owners and overlapping jurisdictions can be patch disputes, poor coordination on policy delivery, and a lack of accountability.

The problem is compounded by the dozens of people who technically report directly to the president, from more than 20 cabinet members to about 25 assistants to the president. This is a theoretical span of control that is totally impractical, which no organization would consciously choose.

A good chief of staff can handle some of the resulting turmoil and be, in the words of President Clinton’s chief of staff, Mack McLarty, “the javelin catcher.” However, effective management is extremely difficult.

This is a theoretical span of control that is totally impractical, which no organization would consciously choose.

Many businesspeople who come into staff roles at the White House often struggle to adapt and succeed (e.g., chiefs of staff such as William Daley and Donald Regan). They are used to a clean hierarchy of reporting that doesn’t exist in a defined way in the White House. Sometimes they have tried to control the whole White House in a hierarchical fashion, acting more like a “chief” than “staff.”

The Year Zero team should take a “clean-sheet” approach that involves a broader reimagination of White House structure and management but is based on the same core principles. One of the benefits of the 100 percent turnover of top White House staff from one administration to another is that the Year Zero team can take a first principles approach, and there is no need for “change management.” The White House can be designed for maximum impact, with people hired into that structure as it is designed. A conscious choosing of priorities can and should also inform the level of resources allocated to each office.

Creating an Evergreen Approach

A commonly accepted, reflexive approach to designing the White House holds that its design must be customized to reflect a unique president’s background, management style, and method of decision-making. Although this approach makes intuitive sense, it is not an organizing principle, and it comes with no “evergreen” guidelines for implementation in the White House. Ironically, in practice in recent White Houses, most of the actual structure looks very similar to previous ones, mainly because a lack of a conscious design causes the president and White House staff to simply copy what has come before.

In trying to design an evergreen approach, it is important to differentiate structural factors that are common to all White Houses and personal factors that are particular to the president, and then balance them in the right way. 

In recent White Houses, most of the actual structure looks very similar to previous ones, mainly because a lack of a conscious design causes the president and White House staff to simply copy what has come before.

More fundamentally, letting the president’s style alone dictate the structure of the White House is a mistake. If presidents are chaotic in their decision-making approach, that doesn’t mean the White House should be chaotic. Alternatively, just because the president is very structured and prefers detail doesn’t mean the White House should become overly bureaucratic. Just because the president has a preference for preagreed solutions doesn’t mean that the White House should try to seek consensus on every issue. The trick is to customize those elements of the White House where it is important to reflect the president’s style and standardize the rest.

Excerpted from Year Zero: The Five-Year Presidency, published by University of Virginia Press ©2024