Bain on Romney/Ryan '12: Three Key Mistakes
Okay, I'm sort of reaching here, but over at the Bain & Co. blog -- and yes, there is one, but it's for the consultancy, not the private equity outfit -- they offer some advice for companies (and, I suppose, for campaigns) on how to avoid making bad decisions. They identify three key areas.
First, "stale operating procedures:"
A utility company learned that its forecasts of daily demand were often off the mark. So it began tracking the percentage of forecasting decisions that, with hindsight, turned out to be right. The process helped the executives responsible for forecasting see where their procedures were strong and what could help improve them.
Could have used that attitude with the polling operation at Romney HQ.
Second, too many meetings:
A semiconductor company, for instance, tracked its R&D forums—groups charged with developing new products—to determine the number of decisions each forum made, the number of decisions it delayed, and the number it revisited over a given time period. The company also tracked the frequency of escalation to a decision maker higher up in the organization. The data helped people learn to increase decision speed, cut back on reconsiderations and reduce escalations.
Not sure if the Romney campaign had too many meetings, but they certainly had a sluggish September.
And third, living in a bubble:
Companies can assess individuals’ decision-making skills in their regular performance evaluations. They can also track the behaviors that are central to effective decision making and execution, such as people’s willingness to engage in open and constructive debate or their willingness to commit to a decision even when they disagree with it. Several companies link executives’ bonuses to a range of decision metrics, including overall quality, speed, yield and effort. The measurements and incentives encourage individuals to develop their own decision skills and to build organizations that make and execute decisions well.
Okay, like all consultant-speak, this stuff is pretty obvious. But on a purely strategic level -- and I'm not talking principles or policy -- the Republican operation needs to rethink everything.
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Sep '12
Re: Bain on Romney/Ryan '12: Three Key Mistakes
Interesting...I don't think that everything has to be rethought, but a couple things are becoming clear:
-We must get things right with more Hispanics - no more xenophobic histrionics from presidential wannabes for instance;
-More outreach. The liberals are much better at vote herding than we are;
-Consider an embrace of Simpson-Bowles: Too many of our citizens think of government as a personal revenue source. If there's less water coming out of the spigot, then that will benefit the GOP.
Edited on November 12, 2012 at 3:39pmMar '11
Re: Bain on Romney/Ryan '12: Three Key Mistakes
Rob,
Non-insiders have been saying this for years. There have been many a marketing expert who are conservative that try to help the party and just get ignored. Maybe the party offical in marketing don't like being told they suck at their job or maybe the fees to consults are to high, or maybe it is because these experts don't know the right people. I am not on the inside to know but any person with half a brain for marketing and advertising could tell you the Republican parties marketing and branding is pathetic.
Maybe another major reasons is many of the middle managers are young highly inexperianced 20 somethings who care more about being near power players than brand names.
Or how about the Republican brand being tanished when party leaders still allow politicans such as Bloomburg to be called a Republican.
However, all of this is typical short-term political thinking. We have a bunch of politicans running around with only a few statemen and women. It would be nice if the leaders were statemen(thoughs who think and act longterm) not politicans, but I guess that is asking for to much.
Edited on November 12, 2012 at 3:19pmDec '10
Re: Bain on Romney/Ryan '12: Three Key Mistakes
Sarcastic, but true.
Jan '11
Re: Bain on Romney/Ryan '12: Three Key Mistakes
I'm not a Republican. I'm a conservative.
If the Republican Party can get more votes by promoting an elegant theory of government, great. If they can do it with girls in bikinis, that's great, too.
As we analyze the election, we need to make distinctions between whether conservatism "lost," and on what arguments, versus whether this was really a political party loss. I mean, if the reason Romney lost is because his "ground game" mis-identified the proper voters to focus on, that shouldn't make conservatives re-think ObamaCare.
Jan '11
Re: Bain on Romney/Ryan '12: Three Key Mistakes
The other thing to consider is that we don't need to change minds on any particular issue.
We just need to weaken the intensity of people willing to vote against us because of the issue, and to increase the intensity of people who are willing to vote with us.
Dec '10
Re: Bain on Romney/Ryan '12: Three Key Mistakes
We need a better ad firm for conservatism. The GOP just isn't really cutting it anymore.
Re: Bain on Romney/Ryan '12: Three Key Mistakes
The King Prawn
Sarcastic, but true. · 1 hour ago
I love this!
Dec '11
Re: Bain on Romney/Ryan '12: Three Key Mistakes
Rob Long:
Could have used that attitude with the polling operation at Romney HQ.
The thing about daily demand forecasting is that at the end of each day, you know how close you were. With polling, you don't know the accuracy of your forecast until you see the actual election results, and then it's too late to readjust. Take it from a stats guy, both the pollsters who turned out to be correct and those who turned out to be incorrect made reasonable assumptions, and there wasn't any way of knowing who was right until the election happened.
Nov '11
Re: Bain on Romney/Ryan '12: Three Key Mistakes
A consultant's job is to tell you what you want to hear, and to say it in a way that sounds better than the way you would have said it yourself.
This is why consultants hire so many other consultants.
Nowadays, it's not "turtles all the way down."
It's "consultants all the way down."
Apr '11
Re: Bain on Romney/Ryan '12: Three Key Mistakes
The Republicans lost because they are losing their base! Conservatives are tired of being taken for granted. Look how the Tea Party candidates were treated after giving the Republicans a historic victory in 2010. If you can't turn your base out you aren't going to succeed by focusing on Hispanics, single women, or gay men in monogamous relationships. You have to have your base locked down first and then grow your numbers. Did anyone notice that the Democrats after their '04 loss moved left and won. This is not a center left country. This is not Romney's fault, per se, he was just following the direction of the Republican party. He was a good candidate but Conservatives have had enough of moderates, the country is circling the drain, and promising to work with the other side is not helpful. We need someone who will defeat the other side and fight for our values. The Republican party's chickens have come home to roost. Mike Murphy is not the answer.
P.S. Interesting
Edited on November 12, 2012 at 5:56pmFeb '12
Re: Bain on Romney/Ryan '12: Three Key Mistakes
Rob Long
The King Prawn
Sarcastic, but true. · 1 hour ago
I love this! · 46 minutes ago
Despair.com, my friend.
This is one of my personal favorites:
Sep '12
Re: Bain on Romney/Ryan '12: Three Key Mistakes
I agree with Give Me Liberty: the Republican Party elites have spent the last 2 years trying to marginalize the Tea Party movement. As has been noted elsewhere, moderate Republican candidates actually fared worse in 2012 than conservatives.
We have a word for centrist Republicanism: Losers.
Nov '11
Re: Bain on Romney/Ryan '12: Three Key Mistakes
The King Prawn
Sarcastic, but true.
I love these "devmotivators" so much, I even thought one up myself:
Sep '12
Re: Bain on Romney/Ryan '12: Three Key Mistakes
Rethink everything? I disagree. Romney failed to turn out approx. 500,000 voters in four states. He was that close to unseating an incumbent president of a party expert in stealing elections. Not bad for a consultant who has nothing near the political talent our beloved Reagan demonstrated when he blew out Carter in a landslide.
So what's to rethink? We didn't have the talent or the organization or the skill or the information. Let's work on developing them.
Regarding ideology and policy and demographics, I think we're way beyond the left vs. right paradigm because voters seem to care more about freebies, bennies, pigmentation and the bits and bobs between their legs than they do about justice, propriety and ordered liberty. This is of course utterly perverse and a reflection of a culture of like kind that can't be changed by exposure to better conservative arguments.
When Obama voters are standing in soup kitchen lines surrounded by urban war zones, they'll have time to think about how the country got this way. Until then they can only comprise part of the problem, never the solution.
Sep '12
Re: Bain on Romney/Ryan '12: Three Key Mistakes
Rush just now: "Conservatives will be blamed because we are the only ones left who do not orient our lives around government."
This is why the Beltway crowd despise Tea Partiers: politicians and consultants are government-oriented creatures who desire supporters who will increase their power.
Edited on November 12, 2012 at 6:41pmApr '11
Re: Bain on Romney/Ryan '12: Three Key Mistakes
Astonishing
The King Prawn
Sarcastic, but true.
I love these "devmotivators" so much, I even thought one up myself:
8 minutes ago
Good idea--
hot off the presses.
May '10
Re: Bain on Romney/Ryan '12: Three Key Mistakes
Three key mistakes:
Sorry, couldn't resist a little snark, even though I think the Romney campaign handled itself just about as well as could be expected (and I suspect much better than any of the other primary choices would have).
I think we have to face the fact this has become a center-left country addicted to free stuff.
I don't expect we're going to see much leadership out of the GOP, so it will be up to us to figure it out for ourselves in places like Ricochet.
Feb '11
Re: Bain on Romney/Ryan '12: Three Key Mistakes
That is painfully true. What we have here is an utter failure to execute. Our current crop of political professionals needs to go back to the minors. They are not up to the big game. They had a great pair of candidates and blew it. Utterly. Ugly incompetence.
Feb '11
Re: Bain on Romney/Ryan '12: Three Key Mistakes
Nick Stuart: Three key mistakes:
Sorry, couldn't resist a little snark, even though I think the Romney campaign handled itself just about as well as could be expected (and I suspect much better than any of the other primary choices would have).
I think we have to face the fact this has become a center-left country addicted to free stuff.
I don't expect we're going to see much leadership out of the GOP, so it will be up to us to figure it out for ourselves in places like Ricochet. · 2 hours ago
Item 0, How the second and third quarter were handled.
Dec '11
Re: Bain on Romney/Ryan '12: Three Key Mistakes
1) Nice guys (re: campaign operatives) finish last. Coulda used a little Lee Atwater here.
2) Women's vote... anybody? Janna Ryan... anybody? Didn't see hide nor hair of her during the campaign; she was most definitely an underutilized asset.