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If President Donald Trump and Elon Musk are serious about making the U.S. government more efficient, then Trump needs to reinstate the dozen-plus independent inspectors general who were recently fired from his administration. These independent inspectors were tasked with uncovering waste, fraud, and abuse, and they did it irrespective of White House partisanship and party control. Not only did the firings break the law but this move also goes against what Americans say they want. Americans overwhelmingly want a more efficient governmenta reality made possible with independent and apolitical inspectors general in each department, versus loyalists disinclined to blow the whistle on their boss. For background, inspectors general have been around for almost 50 years. They were created when President Jimmy Carter signed into law the Inspector General Act of 1978. Carter described the role of inspectors general then as “perhaps the most important new tools in the fight against fraud. Hes right. With direct access to all department records and agency heads, inspectors general can conduct investigations, issue subpoenas, and hire and control their own staff. Its their independence that makes them so effective. Currently, there are more than 70 inspector general offices across the federal government. And while a U.S. president is, in fact, allowed to fire an inspector general, terminations have to be communicated to Congress 30 days in advance. Congress strengthened the law recently, requiring any White House to provide detailed reasoning for a firing. Before Trump places loyalists in these positions, as he did with his cabinet appointees, we must protect the integrity and independence of these inspectors. There are three reasons why we need politically unbiased inspectors who are emboldened in their task of keeping the U.S. government accountable. 1: An independent inspector general is essential in identifying and recovering misspent U.S. taxpayer dollars These watchdogs are working on Americans behalf. In the most recent annual report by the Council of the Inspectors General, which represents the 70-plus inspector general offices across the federal government, more than $90 billion was identified in potential savings as part of its annual audit. If and when Congress acts on those recommendations, thats a return of $26 for every $1 spent on the inspectors general. Beyond their recommendations for savings, over the last 10 years inspectors general have been able to claw back more than $140 billion in receivables and recoveries through criminal and civil cases. At the departmental level, the returns from investigations can be substantial. A recent report from the inspector generals office in the Department of Health and Human Services cited almost $4 billion in investigative receivables. In addition to the permanent inspectors within federal departments, so-called special inspectors can also provide an immediate and targeted review of a government operation. The special inspector general for pandemic recovery, for example, spearheaded 42 indictments and 33 arrests and recovered more than $60 million. The special inspector general for Iraq reconstruction, as another example, identified nearly $2 billion in financial benefits, including nearly $645 millio in direct savings and more than $192 million in court-ordered recoveries. There are many examples like this, all across the federal government. 2: Government accountabilityand the act of rooting out waste, fraud, and abuseis historically very bipartisan Theres a history of bipartisan efforts in Congress to minimize unnecessary federal spending, identify poorly planned and poorly executed programming, and claw back on behalf of the taxpayer wasted dollars by government departments and private industry consultants. That bipartisanship was on full display shortly before Trump was inaugurated. A week before Trumps firings in January, a bipartisan Inspector General Caucus was launched in Congress to support inspectors in their effort to root out waste, fraud, and abuse within the federal government. And immediately after Trumps firings, members of the Senate Judiciary Committee submitted a bipartisan letter to the White House demanding an explanation. U.S. polling by Gallup further backs up this bipartisanship in Congress, showing how both Republican and Democratic voters want the U.S. government to be more accountable. Theres bipartisan support for this work, to be clear. 3: Accountability is an essential next step in rebuilding Americans trust in government Trust in national government in the U.S. is at historically low levels. Any effort to reduce federal inefficiencies and waste will be essential in restoring American voters faith in the system. Having a set of independent watchdogs helps ensure that every politician legitimately walks the campaign talk when elected to office. Yet Trumps government efficiency campaign promise cant be taken seriously when firing the very independent watchdogs hired to help recover taxpayer dollars, improve efficiencies, reduce redundancies, and zero out waste, fraud, and abuse. Without independent inspectors, we can expect more misspent taxpayer dollars and, as a result, more mistrust. Going forward, whats clear here is that independent inspectors general are essential to every aspect of a healthy American democracy. To remove them not only reduces citizens trust in government but allows waste, fraud, and abuse to continue unchecked. Its time to reinstate the watchdogs. American taxpayers want it, our democracy demands it, and our trust depends on it.
Category:
E-Commerce
I once hired an executivewell call her Alicewho elevated our company overnight. She helped shape our strategy, built a great team, and brought instant credibility to our brand. Our growth accelerated. The board respected her. The team loved her. I felt lucky to have her. But five years later, things had changed. Alice looked exhausted. She was short-tempered in meetings. One of her best people left. The teams performance stalled. She wasnt making obvious mistakes, but she was slowing the business down. Looking back, the signs were there, but I looked past themlike many CEOs do. When an executive has been a major contributor to success, its easy to let loyalty, optimism, or past achievements cloud your judgment. When I finally sat down with Alice and told her I thought it was time for a change, she seemed hurtbut also relieved. She knew it, too. The conversation was difficult but necessary. If youre a CEO, this moment will come for you, too. Changing executives isnt about whether someone is capable or not. More often, its about whether the executive who was right for yesterday is still right for tomorrow. The hardest part isnt making the call when the numbers are bad, the team is frustrated, or the board is raising concerns. By then, the answer is obvious but the damageto both the business and the individualhas already been done. The real challenge is recognizing the early warning signs before failure happens. Here are five signals to watch for: 1. They Hire for Yesterday, Not Tomorrow Great executives hire people who push them, challenge them, and bring new capabilities into the organization. But when an executive stops scaling, their hiring reflects it. Instead of bringing in talent that stretches the companys future potential, they hire for what they already knowpeople with skill sets that made sense in the last stage of growth, not the next one. Even worse, they may avoid hiring people who are more experienced than they are, fearing theyll be outshined. This is one of the subtlest but most telling signs that an executive isnt evolving with the business. Strong leaders arent threatened by A-players; they seek them out. 2. Theyre Getting Caught Flat-Footed Early in a companys growth, a strong executive is ahead of the curve. They anticipate problems before they arise and see opportunities before the competition does. But as the company scales, things get more complexmarket dynamics shift, operations grow more intricate, and leadership requires a different level of execution. An executive who once led with foresight can suddenly find themselves constantly reacting, caught off guard in ways they never were before. Often, its not that theyve lost their strategic instinctsits that the business has entered a stage theyve never navigated before, and their previous playbook no longer applies. 3. Their Team Doesnt Know Where Theyre Going A key role of any executive is ensuring their team understands the companys strategy and how it translates into their function. In a small company, this is relatively straightforwardthe strategy is narrow, and the CEO is often close to employees, reinforcing the vision directly. But as the company grows, that changes. The strategy becomes more complex, and executivesnot the CEObecome responsible for making sure their teams understand how their work connects to the bigger picture. If employees seem unclear on the companys direction or their role in it, its a sign that their leader isnt effectively setting strategic clarity. And its not just about communication; its about an executives ability to process complexity, distill it into actionable priorities, and inspire alignment. 4. They Struggle to Translate Strategy into Execution Similarly, in a companys early stages, translating strategy into action is relatively simple: The organization is smaller and the steps to execution are clear. But as the company grows, the gap between strategy and execution widens. Success requires more than just understanding company goals; it requires breaking them down into operational plans with clear milestones, defined ownership, and built-in accountability. An executive who once thrived in a lean, fast-moving environment may start to struggle as the organization becomes more complex. If they can no longer connect long-term strategy to day-to-day execution, teams lose focus, decisions get delayed, and momentum fades. 5. Theyre in Nonstop Operational Meetings Great executives elevate themselves over time. They move from being operators to being leaderssetting direction, aligning the team, empowering their managers, and ensuring execution through others. But when an executive cant scale, they get pulled deeper into the weeds. Instead of creating an environment where the strategy, expectations, and processes are in place for the team to operate, theyre stuck firefighting. If theyre constantly in meetings troubleshooting operational issues, solving tactical problems, or micromanaging details, its a sign that the business is running themnot the other way around. What Do You Do When You See These Signs? These are the warning signs Ive learned to watch for, but spotting them doesnt always mean an executive needs to go. If an executive is struggling to translate company strategy for their team, for example, it could be a sign that the strategy itself isnt well-defined. And if theyre micromanaging, it may be a reflection of the expectations, culture, or tone set by the CEO. Thats why the first step should always be feedback and coaching. But if the same patterns persist despite candid conversations and support, waiting longer wont fix the problem. It will just delay the inevitable. Companies dont move backward. Some leaders recognize these gaps and rise to the challenge. Others dont. And when they dont, its not a failureits simply that their strengths align with an earlier stage of the companys journey, not where its headed next. Making an executive change is disruptive. Its expensive. It can be risky. But failing to make a change is often exponentially more so. The CEOs who scale companies successfully are the ones who make these calls earlybefore the business, the team, or the results force their hand. When it comes to evolving the executive team, like many other areas of leadership, knowing what to do is rarely the hardest part. Knowing when to act is.
Category:
E-Commerce
The Fast Company Impact Council is a private membership community of influential leaders, experts, executives, and entrepreneurs who share their insights with our audience. Members pay annual membership dues for access to peer learning and thought leadership opportunities, events and more. Los Angeles is our home and living laboratory. For four decades at RIOS, we’ve pioneered design that confronts complexity, believing that every urban challenge carries profound opportunities for transformation. The recent catastrophic fires aren’t just a crisis, but a critical inflection point for reimagining resilience. Our landscape practice, led by Katherine Harvey, has always understood that urban design is an act of collective imagination. This moment demands we move beyond survival to radical reinventiona challenge that resonates deeply with our founding ethos of designing for dynamic, adaptive futures. Katherine’s background in landscape architecture, academic research, and residency in downtown Los Angeles provide her with valuable insights into the citys future. She offers thoughtful perspectives during this moment of sorrow and hope for the city we cherish. The following reflection from Katherine emerges from our commitment to Los Angeles, a city we’ve helped shape and continue to believe in, evenand especiallyin its most vulnerable moments. Los Angeles 2025 This year arrived with unimaginable devastation for the Los Angeles region. The catastrophic fires present a test for how we will address our citys future and the generational challenges and opportunities we have before us. As we move from shock to recovery, the debates have already begun on how, what, and where we rebuild. Immediate momentum addresses the human impacts, which will continue to unfold in the coming months. How we sustain that momentum and act deliberately toward our future is more uncertain. This recovery will be a massive work of city remaking and reenvisioning. This unanticipated moment grants us a window to address Los Angeless past and present challenges as we confront our global climate reality. Territory, governance, and collective recovery Most major acts of city-making have denied the complexity of existing communities, history, or environment in the service of narrow motivations and achievements. Los Angeles, on the other hand, has historically been plagued by the incremental and individual motivations of capital, resulting in a dispersed and decentralized city. Can we learn from these historic dichotomies of singular grand plans versus incremental individualism and define a collective recovery urbanism? One where we build back a city that reduces further harm to our residents and environment. One where we do not accept the inevitable results of extreme weather ending in disaster, but instead lay out ambitious plans for adaptation to build back more brilliantly. Many have speculated that our distributed jurisdictions and centers of power have held us back from a collective vision for the basin. Even the citys Mayor Bass has acknowledged our lack of comprehensive planning and fragmented governance as recently as October, when tackling street improvement initiatives. Could this event induce enhanced cooperation between disparate places: Altadena and Pacific Palisades, county and city, mayor and supervisor? With the appointment of a chief recovery officer for the city, Steve Soboroff, we now wait to hear if the county and city will find a method for shared cooperation. What may be needed is an agency that collates across these governances to address the kindred struggles and the unique geographies. Despite our snarled infrastructure, our LA Metro public transit system has been a remarkable model for what is possible when we remove the friction of inter-urban territories and support cross-agency planning. Design a collective vision There are many who will continue to say these events were inevitable, in the face of a warming climate. Yet we have a chance to change the next inevitability. As a landscape architect and creative director at a global design collective I am part of a design community where envisioning the future is integral to our daily work. This event has opened questions for us that would have gone unasked without this disaster. Can we rebuild our neighborhoods as places that will evolve from serving our immediate resheltering needs to more robust buildings? Can these new buildings be fire-hardened and passively coexist with the environment? Can we address equity and ongoing displacement more aggressively, in what will no doubt be an aggravated housing and affordability crisis? Can we amplify and restore the wildland urban interface and bring back our former basin ecologies, grasslands, and coastal sage scrub, as ecological buffers from intense weather? A wealth of ideas, research, and plans have been brought together under the Governors Wildfire and Forest Resilience Task Force. Yet this work needs to become actionable and translated to our region and the urban context of these fires. For the design community, the translation of this expertise to scalable solutions for communities, neighborhoods, and buildings will be essential next steps. Allowing ourselves to dream in this moment of collective pain and trauma is imagining ourselves in a place beyond catastrophe. If we can do that, we can sort out the steps to get there. It will require invention and retooling, no different than what has already been initiated in hundreds of Californias climate initiatives to mitigate our projected climate future. It is the work our generation needs to do anyway. This is our moment to decide whether we will play a major role in defining that trajectory towards reduced vulnerability and increased resilience for future extreme weather as a city and region. Pacing ourselves It will not be an easy time to choose a collective vision over the instrumentality of executive orders or the facility of individual decisions. As of writing this on January 28 it is clear there will be a larger resistance to such a path from both a dismissive federal perspective and those that see the climate crisis as a fate we cannot change. Yet there are many more voices, from community members to experts, that will contribute to these questions and optimism about our future if we commit to this generational shift in city-making. Institutions, universities, community members, and storytellers will need to be engaged and empowered to move us imaginatively toward our future. Ultimately, a collective vision will need an engaged citizenry to imagine a different future that is invested in enhancing our regions livability and vitality. In this process we will revive the waning histories of these places, in combination with the nascent futures that were just beginning and are now emerging after this event. If we choose this as a generation, then the process we design will be as vital as the outcome. Jessamyn Davis is co-CEO and Katherine Harvey is creative director and landscap architect at RIOS.
Category:
E-Commerce
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