ABSTRACT
Shortly after departing the Carter administration, former Secretary of Defense Harold Brown summarized the lesson of his and many other secretaries’ tenure with a speech entitled “Managing the Defense Department: Why It Can’t Be Done.” Brown argued that the department’s immense size, politically complex environment, diverse activities, and unique mission made it very different from a typical business or large organization, creating management challenges that were not simply more daunting but fundamentally distinct.1 Defense policy was not just hard to manage, Brown explained; it was inherently unmanageable.
