No, Donald Trump’s “management style” was never successful
by digby
The New York Times’ James B. Stewart, the man who brought us the ridiculous Whitewater scandal, is back with an analysis of Trump’s White House that is equally off the mark:
Donald J. Trump’s highly personal management style as a businessman — impetuous, impolitic, sometimes immature — worked. At the very least, it wasn’t publicly discredited very often.
Mr. Trump ran his own private company. It was small and largely hidden from the prying eyes of shareholders and government regulators. He was surrounded by longtime loyalists and family members. His main public exposure unfolded in staged settings, on softball talk shows or his own reality-TV show.
Now President Trump is running a much larger enterprise. Two years into the Trump administration, it’s increasingly apparent that while the management traits he developed in the private sector may have propelled him into the White House, they’re not serving him well now that he’s there.
Really? They didn’t serve him well in the private sector either. We know, via the New York Times by the way, that he only survived the consequences of his monumental and repeated failures because his daddy, and then shady bankers, repeatedly bailed him out.
This is ridiculous. He was a terrible businessman even on his own terms, whose “traits” were dancing away as fast as he could from one disaster after another. He was an heir to a fortune, a hype artist celebrity who created an image of business savvy to con investors and the public.
He does point out that his tactics and style haven’t worked for him. But really, the whole article is nonsense, especially this:
That’s not to say Mr. Trump hasn’t displayed some effective management techniques, albeit ones that are rarely discussed in America’s business schools.
As Mr. Pfeffer told me this week, Mr. Trump exhibits several qualities that are prevalent among many leaders, including narcissism and dishonesty.
“We claim we want nice people, but we don’t,” Mr. Pfeffer said. “Studies show that people want to associate with people who win.”
“I’ve always won, and I’m going to continue to win,” Mr. Trump reportedly said in 2016.
And Mr. Pfeffer noted that the “reality distortion field” that Mr. Trump deploys — ignoring the truth and creating an alternate set of facts — was once associated with the Apple founder Steve Jobs and remains prevalent in Silicon Valley and among entrepreneurial start-ups.
Paul Glatzhofer, director of talent solutions at the consulting firm PSI International, agreed that Mr. Trump displayed some positive qualities of effective leadership, such as decisiveness, setting ambitious goals and self-confidence. “You may not like the idea of a wall, but it’s an ambitious goal,” Mr. Glatzhofer said.
It’s not a goal. It’s completely infeasible and inane. It’s a talking point that he’s stuck with because his idiot base thought he really meant it.
Please. He’s a blowhard and a criminal who bluffed his way into the presidency (with a lot of help) and he shows every day just how inept and ignorant he is about everything.
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