Trump Management Style, Year 2: See Year 1
“It’s much worse than I expected,” said Jeffrey Pfeffer, professor of organizational behavior at Stanford University
and the author of “Power: Why Some People Have It and Others Don’t.”
“The most important thing you need as a chief executive is the ability to hire and retain talent,” Mr. Pfeffer said.
Throughout his presidential campaign Donald J. Trump extolled his business acumen
and management skills, and just before his inauguration he insisted the transition to his administration was going “very, very smoothly.”
Yet so chaotic was his first year in office that in January, after publication of the Michael Wolff tell-all, “Fire
and Fury,” the president had to publicly defend himself as a “stable genius.”
The White House suffered a staff turnover rate of 34 percent during Mr. Trump’s first year, a rate
that would be unfathomable at nearly any for-profit enterprise.
Now at least one White House faction wants Gary Cohn, the chief economic adviser
and National Economic Council director — and a relative island of calm and stability — to replace John F. Kelly, the chief of staff, who was widely criticized for bungling the Porter affair.
Mr. Trump, he said, “seems to have no interest in science, social science or data,” citing White
House initiatives to repeal Obamacare and to rescue the coal industry as glaring examples.
