Loyalty vs. Merit

A Patriot's Dilemma: blind loyalty to a fault, and how to fix it

Donald Trump clearly loves his country and is trying to do everything he can to save America. He has done more to save his beloved America than any other President. He belongs next to Washington and Lincoln; everyone else pales in comparison. Trump is fighting like few have ever done.

But he has two faults. And they may have ended his fight.

He is loyal to his friends. And he is really loyal to his decisions.

Brilliance, surrounded by loyalty

Trump surrounds himself with two kinds of people: the loyal and the truly brilliant. Sometimes they are the same people. Often they are not. And when the two collide, loyalty always trumps merit.

That is blind loyalty to a fault.

Loyalty without merit or results is so self-destructive.

It is an unseen and unrecognized management problem. Nobody puts it on an org chart. Nobody measures it. But it shows up in the results, every time. Trump is always the last one to figure out that his loyal friends and associates have either failed or, worse, betrayed him.

His two terms show this fault time after time. His second term was built on loyalty and merit together. But his decision-making still puts loyalty first, even when his meritorious associates are telling him the truth.

What it looked like this week

On November 4, the day after the midterms, a reporter told the President that Vice President Vance said the reason Republicans lost was the war in Iran. Trump answered:

"Well, I think it's largely true, because it drove gasoline up a little bit short-term… But at the same time, if I had to do it again, I'd have to do it again, because long-term, it's the only answer. You can't let Iran have a nuclear weapon." (Mediaite; ABC News)

There it is in one breath: he admits the cost and stays loyal to the decision.

And the warning was there from the start. According to The New York Times, Vance warned the President inside the White House that a war with Iran could cause regional chaos and break apart Trump's political coalition, and that many voters who bought the promise of no new wars would see it as a betrayal. On November 4, Vance said that is what happened.

The boy who cried bomb

Loyalty to the wrong advice has a long history here. Benjamin Netanyahu has warned that Iran was about to get the bomb for more than thirty years:

  • 1992: As a member of the Knesset, he said that "within three to five years" Iran would be able to produce a nuclear bomb on its own. (Al Jazeera)
  • 1995: He repeated the three-to-five-year prediction in his book Fighting Terrorism. (Al Jazeera)
  • 2012: At the United Nations, he held up a cartoon bomb and drew a red line on it with a marker. (The Guardian)

A good manager asks a simple question: what is this advisor's track record? Loyalty never asks that question. Merit always does.

Rule Number One: bring the solution

My Rule Number One is this: if you want to criticize an idea, you must also present a solution. So here is mine.

Build merit into the structure, so loyalty can't override it.

  • The Slate and Promise Contract. Every candidate signs one written Contract with clear, dated promises.
  • A public quarterly scorecard. It judges results, not loyalty. Did prices come down? Did the promised bill pass? Did the corruption get prosecuted?
  • Reward those who deliver. Primary those who don't. Friendship doesn't save a seat. Results do.
  • Speak up early, and fearlessly. Many of us held back our concerns to play the game, and the truth came out anyway. A loyal friend who stays silent is no friend at all. I wrote about this in A Voice Unafraid.

A scorecard doesn't care who your friends are. That is the point. It protects a leader from his own blind spot, and it protects voters from finding out too late.

Loyalty, earned

I am not against loyalty. Loyalty is a virtue. But it must be earned with results, and checked with honest scoring. Loyalty to people and to decisions should never outrank loyalty to the voters who were promised results.

Read The Shot That Changed the World and the Contract. Then hold every candidate to it.

Stop touting. Start scoring.

~ge~

From Cricket: Every quote and date above links to its source. Merit starts with the facts.

~cricket~

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