Separation anxiety: Trump’s management
style poses challenges in Oval Office
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[December 01, 2016]
By Emily Flitter
NEW YORK (Reuters) - It has proven one of
Donald Trump's greatest strengths in building a worldwide luxury brand:
An obsessive attention to detail, down to the curtains hanging in hotel
rooms and the marble lining the lobby floor.
As president, it may prove one of his major liabilities, presidential
historians warn.
Interviews with a dozen people familiar with how Trump conducts business
reveal the president-elect as a micromanager who regularly spars over
details about decor in projects across his real estate and branding
empire.
"I'm very much involved in the details," Trump said during a June
deposition in a lawsuit stemming from his development of a Washington
hotel. "I was involved in the design of the building and the room sizes
and the entrances and the lobby and the marble and the bathrooms and the
fixtures and the bars and a lot of things."
Trump announced on Wednesday that he would leave his businesses "in
total" so that he could focus on the presidency. But those who have
worked with him say a lifetime habit of micromanaging may be difficult
to break, providing ammunition for critics who say his decisions as
president will be driven by his private interests.
A former employee of the Trump Organization who has worked closely with
Trump was skeptical that he could leave behind his beloved company after
spending decades building it up. "I can't picture him stepping aside for
the presidency," the ex-employee said.
![](http://archives.lincolndailynews.com/2016/Aug/26/images/ads/current/pacesetter_lda_041116.png)
Even if he does make a clean break, Trump will have to guard against
getting bogged down in the bureaucratic minutiae inherent in the office.
He should avoid the example of President Jimmy Carter, another famous
micromanager, who spent his first months in office poring over the White
House tennis court schedule, said Ross Baker, a professor of political
science at Rutgers University.
Micromanagers rarely make successful presidents, said Rick Ghere, an
associate professor of political science at the University of Dayton in
Ohio. To be effective, presidents must delegate authority to members of
their cabinet and rely on a range of expertise, he said.
"Being a decisionmaker in a high-level public position is a lot
different than being a CEO," Ghere said.
RUINED WINDOWS
Trump has said he will turn the Trump Organization over to his three
adult children, who are already deeply involved in real estate projects
around the world.
His daughter Ivanka, for instance, was charged with overseeing the
renovation of Washington's Old Post Office Pavilion, a $200 million
project to turn the historic building into a luxury hotel. In cases
where Trump has delegated authority, he still demonstrates a deep
reluctance to let go, even when it comes to seemingly trivial details.
Two people who participated in an inspection of the Washington hotel
with Trump shortly before he announced his candidacy in June 2015
remember the businessman growing incensed over a detail: The restoration
of exterior windows.
Trump said the windows looked terrible, though one of the sources
recounting the story said there didn't seem to be anything obviously
wrong with them. He demanded the contractor not be paid but was told the
work had been done for free in the hopes of getting more business from
the Trumps, according to the source.
That source and two others on the project also recalled hearing Ivanka
say she needed her father's approval before signing off on some
decisions she wanted to make on the project. The sources said it was not
uncommon for her to say she would "run this by my father" or "check with
New York."
Trump spokeswoman Hope Hicks said Trump is "incredibly detail oriented
as any great developer is, something he shares with his adult children
including Ivanka."
Trump's reluctance to step aside from his company was apparent in a New
York Times interview last week in which he said, "in theory I could run
my business perfectly, and then run the country perfectly."
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![](../images/120116pics/news_a1.jpg)
Republican presidential nominee Donald Trump walks through the
atrium of his new Trump International Hotel in Washington, D.C.,
U.S., September 16, 2016. REUTERS/Mike Segar
![](http://archives.lincolndailynews.com/2016/Dec/01/images/ads/current/modern_brake_lda_christmas_2015.png)
HOW TALL ARE THE TREES?
Trump's reputation as a micromanager dates back to some of his
earliest building projects.
In her 2013 book 'All Alone on the 68th Floor', Barbara Res, who
oversaw construction of Trump Tower in Manhattan, described her boss
in 1983 agonizing over the height and thickness of decorative trees
in the building's atrium.
Three decades later, Trump would bring his management style to the
presidential campaign trail. Three sources who worked on the
campaign said Trump made almost all the decisions on spending,
strategy, and messaging.
According to the sources, senior campaign officials were desperate
to get aboard the candidate's plane early on in the presidential
race, fearful if they were left behind he would change course on
strategy and they would be shut out.
When Paul Manafort, who was helping run Trump's campaign, secured
the candidate's authorization to spend $20 million hiring field
operatives, he was triumphant, according to a Republican National
Committee member, recounting an RNC meeting with Manafort in April.
The committee member though was perplexed - why had Manafort needed
Trump's approval for an expenditure on such an essential part of his
campaign, and why was the amount so small? At that point in an
election year, past candidates had already begun spending upwards of
$80 million on the same thing.
Manafort told Reuters that while it was true most candidates simply
signed off on a budget rather than reviewing each expenditure, Trump
was different because he was partly funding his campaign. "I
understood it and totally agreed with that approach," Manafort said.
Later in the campaign, Trump was still agonizing over details. In
October, he insisted on reviewing the script of a radio ad that was
to be broadcast on stations with predominantly black audiences,
according to a source inside the campaign.
Micromanaging is not necessarily a recipe for disaster - presidents
like Abraham Lincoln, Carter and Barack Obama gained reputations as
micromanagers, said Nancy Koehn, a professor at Harvard Business
School who studies the history of leadership in the United States.
![](http://archives.lincolndailynews.com/2016/Dec/01/images/ads/current/johnsonrealestate_lda_CHRISTMAS_2016.png)
But Koehn said a micromanager with a lack of any government
experience was a potentially toxic combination.
"I think it is highly likely that diving into areas in which he has
very little experience without an extraordinary cast of experts
around him will result in poor policy decisions which will have
large unintended consequences," she said.
Only two of Trump's nominees so far have U.S. federal executive
branch experience, although the lineup does include a state
governor, several U.S. lawmakers, and a former Goldman Sachs
executive.
(Reporting By Emily Flitter, editing by Paul Thomasch and Ross
Colvin)
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