Several weeks ago, I wrote a post on an excellent article by Harvard Professor Amy Edmundson is which she said in a crisis transparency is job one for a leader.  Here is her definition of transparency

Be clear what you know, what you don’t know, and what you’re doing to learn more.

Simple to do right?

Actually, no.  As Professor Edmundson observed

It takes courage to choose transparency — and wisdom to know that the choice is the right one for achieving the goals that matter to all.

Which brings us to the daily Trump Administration Covid-19 press conferences.  The press conferences represent the perfect opportunity for Trump and his team to tell Americans what they know, what they don’t know and what they are doing to learn more.

An opportunity the Trump Administration squanders every day.

Instead of transparency, the Trump Administration engages in spinning a narrative and rewriting the history of its response to the virus.

Most of the press isn’t interested in either the narrative or the historical rewrite.  This part of the press asks questions to find out what the Administration knows, when did they know it, what doesn’t the Administration know and what steps it is taking to find out the answers.

These are the exact questions Trump does not want to answer.

The result was predictable when the press refused to be sidetracked by Trump’s evasive answers and pointed out he was busy golfing and holding political rallies when he and his Administration could have been preparing the US for dealing with the virus.

President Trump engaged in the type of meltdown my sons did when they were two.

Of course, all of this was avoidable if the Trump Administration has just pursued Professor Edmundson’s formula for providing transparency during a crisis.

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Under the category of you cannot make this up, during today’s press conference, President Trump observed

Those tasked with protecting us by being truthful and transparent failed to do so. It would have been so easy to be truthful. And so much death has been caused by their mistakes.

Turns out someone on his staff understands Professor Edmundson’s and my call for transparency.