Jeremy R. Shaffer

Once upon a time, centuries ago, a massive corporation called United States, Inc. was established.
Most think it currently has around 349 million stakeholders, no unified org chart, and a mission statement that everyone agrees is “important” but no one can recite.

The company’s defining feature?
It changes CEOs every four to eight years, whether things were going well or not.

The CEO

Each CEO arrives with a bold strategic plan:
- New slogans
- New branding colors
- A reorg deck titled “Make blah blah better”

For four years to eight years, the CEO pushes the company hard in one direction:
- New initiatives launched
- Old ones buried and discredited
- Metrics redefined so progress can be declared and credit taken at every annual meeting

Half the employees wear the company swag proudly.
The other half threaten to quit and relocate or strike.

The Transition

Then, right as things start to simmer down...
Security shows up and walks the CEO out.

In comes the New Boss...

The New CEO

The new CEO’s first move is always the same:

“After a thorough review, we’ve discovered that everything the last leadership team did was reckless, expensive, and morally suspect.”

Entire departments get renamed.
- Same people
- Same desks
- Same roles
- New acronyms

Projects launched a few years ago are now labeled:

“Risks we must urgently unwind.”

PowerPoint decks are recycled, so the arrows get flipped the other direction.

The Workforce

The employees react predictably:
- 50%: “Finally! Adult leadership!”
- 50%: “This company is doomed.”

Meetings beome ideological battlegrounds:
- Someone quotes the original employee handbook from 1787
- Someone else says it is “outdated and problematic”
- HR asks everyone to please stay on topic because they need new sensitive information to leak

Career civil servants, the ones who actually kept the lights on, learned the golden rule:

“Nod politely and keep at least four months pay stashed away."

Middle Management (a.k.a. Congress)

Middle management insists they are in charge of strategy, but spend most of their time:
- Holding hearings about everything
- Arguing over anything
- Taking accountability of nothing
- Seeking credit for successes they previously voted against

They schedule endless meetings about “alignment,” then leave early to attend fundraising events or go on extravagant vacations.

The Board of Directors (a.k.a. the Voters)

The Board checks in every few years, furious that:
- The company is moving too fast
- Or not fast enough
- Or in the wrong direction entirely
- Most board members are indoctrinated by a daily dose of performance data from competing news outlets with their own hidden agenda's on the company's strategic direction that aligns and is influenced bi-laterally with half the workforce.

They fire the CEO, hire a new one, and one half expresses deep optimism that this time things will be different, while the other half plots on how to keep everything the same.

Despite everything, the company survived 250 years:
- Because the building is sturdy
- The processes are redundant
- No single CEO can break it
- And it's never a perfect 50/50 split of board member values

And so United States, Inc. has continued on...

Not because everyone agrees,
but because the system was designed to keep functioning even when half the company is mad and the other half is convinced they’re finally winning.

God Bless America 🇺🇸

“A father’s courage isn’t just in the battles he fights, but in the love he gives, the values he teaches, and the example he sets—every single day.”