Government efficiency without cutting jobs?

Elon Musk has been told to make the federal government more efficient. The vision of making organizations more efficient almost always includes cutting jobs and speeding up processes to reduce costs. This requires optimization and implementation thinking styles which are different from the thinking styles that made him successful in business: generation and conceptualization. This is an important distinction. Research proves that effective organizations require not only optimizing routine processes and implementation but also generating and conceptualizing new possibilities and opportunities. Successful generators and conceptualizers engage employees to create new routines to make the old ones obsolete and optimize their ideas into practical solutions with implementation plans. For example, many engineering schools are under pressure to turn out graduates who believe their job is to optimize. Moreover, they learn a handful of solutions to a predetermined set of efficiency problems that they may encounter in the real world. Many new leaders jump directly into cost cutting and efficiency when faced with the objective of turning the organization around. Great leaders do more than just cut jobs to reduce costs. They know how to engage their employees in a culture of innovation which takes advantage of all four thinking styles, generation and conceptualization as well as optimization and implementation.