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With just a handful of days left until Donald Trump's inauguration, one question on many minds is how the government might operate under an Elon Musk-led Department of Government Efficiency (DOGE) landscape.

One of Musk's former Tesla (TSLA) direct reports offers up some clues.

“I think it’s the best chance we’ve had in years,” DVx Cofounder Jon McNeill said to Yahoo Finance executive editor Brian Sozzi on the Opening Bid podcast (video above; listen below).

McNeill knows a thing or two about Musk’s leadership style, having worked up close and personal with the CEO. Although he's now a board member at General Motors (GM) and Lululemon (LULU), McNeill served as a president at Tesla (TSLA) from 2015 to 2018. During that time, revenue at the EV maker grew to $20 billion from $2 billion.

As a businessman, Musk is “super disciplined,” said McNeill. “He figures out the one or two things that matter in each of his businesses and he spends time on that. Outside of those things, he leaves it to the team.”

Read more: inside GM CEO Mary Barra's 2025 growth plan

Those will be key skills to apply to getting government spending under wraps, McNeill reasons.

DOGE was proposed during Trump’s campaigning days and looks to curb wasteful government spending through the elimination of redundancies and money pits. Proponents of the department think it will be a success if given time.

In a prior episode of Opening Bid, Trump's former Commerce Secretary Wilbur Ross cited overstaffed departments and “programs that don’t do what they should do” as places DOGE could address. 

Joining Musk to tackle the project is former presidential candidate Vivek Ramaswamy. 

“Getting rid of programs that do not have good cost controls — that’s where the real big money comes [from],” Ross told Sozzi. “Musk and Ramaswamy with their helpers have clearly identified a lot of these, I would call them abusive situations.”

More recently, Oklahoma senator James Lankford unveiled eight bills aimed at furthering the agenda. The bills contained measures including the scrutiny of telework for federal employees. “It’s time to put government waste in the doghouse and let DOGE get to work,” Lankford told Fox News in an interview. 

"We’ve seen it in our own experience how wasteful some of the spending is and how inefficient some of the spending is. Just go spend an hour at your local DMV,” said McNeill. 

Musk taking on the task has fans like him excited at the prospects. 

“I do think this is a once-in-a generation, maybe once-in-a lifetime opportunity for us to make government more efficient,” said McNeill. “I’m really hopeful they can make a big dent here because I think this is the best shot we’ve had in a long time.”

Three times each week, Yahoo Finance Executive Editor Brian Sozzi fields insight-filled conversations and chats with the biggest names in business and markets on Opening Bid. You can find more episodes on our video hub or watch on your preferred streaming service.

Grace Williams is a writer for Yahoo Finance.

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