There are a variety of accounts on the progress and success of the first days of the Trump Administration. Some put special significance on a new administration’s first 100 days, but is this the first 100 days or four years + 100 days?

In particular, appearing April 21, 2025, in The Washington Post, there is a report tracing what has happened to the “Five Things” mandate coming from Elon Musk and the DOGE (Department of Government Efficiency) effort. This was a “mandate” to report every federal employee’s work achievements at the risk of losing their job. Apparently, that reporting mandate has now withered away into a range of requirements widely varying by agency.

Some employees are reported to respond with repetitive boilerplate or curt (and sometimes offensive) language. An earlier Bergeson & Campbell, P.C. (B&C^®) blog post provided advice about how one might respond to the requirement. Some agencies have told employees to ignore it, some have continued the requirement but do not appear to do anything with the information, and a few continue to mandate reporting and claim to make use of it in employee evaluations.

So catchy phrases (“You’re fired”), props (chainsaws), Executive Orders (take your pick), and even 900-page blueprints (Project 2025) may not be enough to impose fundamental change on “the system.” More benign is the realization that the workforce of two-plus million federal workers is hard to manage with only the 1,000 or so most senior appointees arriving with the new Administration.

One lesson from the President’s first term might have been to realize the utility of fostering some level of confidence (or even trust) in the employees of any agency or program, even if seeking fundamental reforms or impactful budget and staff cuts. Instead, the DOGE effort has seen what appear to be ad hoc personnel cuts without following required procedures or a semblance of planning (example: getting a notice that you no longer have a job when you try to enter the building on a Monday morning), and has raised even more distrust and contempt beyond that which was widely reported during the first Trump term.

Change is difficult even among friends, perhaps more so if you are trying to be a demanding boss (especially one demanding program and staff cuts). Respect for the person, respect for the program’s mission generally, and some semblance of process might reduce some of the upset. In another time and place, a reform plan might have included suggestions from the staff about what should be changed, or even how a significant cut (say 25-50 percent) could be imposed and still maintain the organization.

Such a suggestion box would include everything from old grievances, ode to the status quo, and “cuts for thee not me” ideas. The advantage that may be among the suggestions could be ideas from those employees who “know where the bodies are buried” — outdated practices or procedures, staffing imbalances, or program areas in need of trimming (at least with a pruning saw, however less fetching on social media).

Viable suggestions coming from the incumbent staff are impossible when the staff is afraid and confused by the swirl of e-mails from questionable authority. Surprise cuts to your program or the end of your career coming from press releases and reports of the latest Executive Order is not good for morale. The apparent rationale for the chainsaw metaphor is a “move fast and break things” approach. This is evocative of some strategies used in the Vietnam war, summarized as: “burn down the village to save it.”

Even if big moves and fundamental changes are the order of the day, the private sector and government functions are different in ways that matter. Failed mergers resulting in a drastic drop in stock prices are impactful in different ways than a drastic impairment of important government functions the public depends on — including clean water or safe food and social security checks delivered on time (and that do not bounce).

More respect for the staff and more understanding of the agency mission and how procedures or budgets evolved into today’s program (warts and all) would have served the reform taskmasters more effectively than the progress reported until now.