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Danny Werfel recently served as the 50th Commissioner of the Internal Revenue Service. He led the US tax system twice, and in his most recent stint he was in charge of a dramatic transformation, launching more digital solutions in a two-year period than in the previous two decades combined. Werfel joins us to talk about leadership, organizational change, and how a broader understanding of what the government does – and gets right – could have a profound impact on political polarization and democracy itself.
Danny Werfel earned a Master of Public Policy at Duke, and is now serving as a distinguished fellow with Polis, Duke Center for Politics.
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Conversation Highlights
Responses have been edited for clarity.
On leadership and change
I think the mistake that a lot of leaders make is the biggest part of their portfolio is, "Break glass," and the smallest part is, "Get out of the way." And the reality is that in most organizations there's a lot going on under the surface that's fine. It may not be perfect, but it's directionally effective and doesn't really benefit from a leader intervening and driving a course correction. And by signaling that to the workforce, you're signaling trust, you're making a bargain with them. You're saying, "Look, I am not going to reset the entire portfolio of work, I'm not going to throw all the babies out with the bathwater, I'm going to have respect for the work and the direction that you've been going. But in exchange, there are going to be areas where I am going to break glass, a small number, high stakes, and I'm going to need your support there." I think that philosophy, laid out like that, resonated and allowed me to get buy-in with key leaders at various levels across the IRS, because they relaxed, they took a breath, knowing that the change that was coming would be clear, manageable, and that there were going to be many areas where I was not going to make change for change's sake.
On how a broader understanding of what government does might help democracy
When things go well, when the trash gets picked up on time, when the plane lands safely, when the water that comes out of the tap is safe to drink, it doesn't make a headline. And it's only when there's a failure that there is a headline. And so, we start to get a bit of a distorted view of government. We only hear about it when it's failing. And so, when we hear someone say, "I'm going to take a chainsaw to the government. I'm going to break this thing apart. I'm going to rip it out, root and stem." You're like, "Well, yeah, why wouldn't you? It's so broken." But if you don't understand that 9 times out of 10, or sometimes 99 times out of 100, or sometimes 9,999 times out of 10,000, it's not broken. Those planes land, that food is safe, that 911 call gets answered and the list goes.... And so, the idea is, "How do we make that case, not intellectually, but emotionally, to the broadest set of people?" [about what government does]. And that's part of the journey that we're on, is figuring out how to [communicate this better].
On the urgent need for civil discourse
I happened to be on campus the week Charlie Kirk was murdered, and it was a remarkable set of moments for me to learn from students, seeing their reactions. There was a meeting at the Sanford School with students. I found the students to be genuinely concerned about the future of civil discourse. It was really inspiring. And there were questions raised by the students in terms of, "There are so many things we disagree on, how are we going to create civil discourse in a world in which we can't even start the conversation around a common denominator?"
And I was thinking, "There are common denominators, though. We do want the trash to be picked up on time, and we do want safety in our airlines. And if the baby is trapped down the well, you're not going to call General Electric, or Cisco, or Google, you're calling the government." Right?
And so, one of the things I took away from being at Duke that tragic week was how urgent and important it is to start building areas of consensus, even when these two people are never going to agree on gun control, these two people are never going to agree on pro-choice versus pro-life, these two people are never going to agree on LGBTQ versus not. Understood. But can we add the areas where they do agree? And lead people to those areas of agreement, rather than assume there's no areas of agreement.
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About Policy 360
Policy 360 is a series of policy-focused conversations hosted by Manoj Mohanan, interim Dean of the Sanford School of Public Policy at Duke University. New episodes premiere throughout the academic year. Guests have included luminaries like Nobel Peace Prize Winner Maria Ressa and former director of the World Bank Jim Yong Kim, as well as researchers from Duke University and other institutions. Conversations are timely and relevant.
This episode is part of a month-long focus on democracy policy.