 One of the first rules of performance management is that performance is measured by results, not by what you do. Commercial results only come about when you commit the necessary resources to productive work. Billy has enough money to take Betty to the movies. When she notes that she is famished, he spends some of it on a few slices of pizza. He won't be able to take her to the movies after all, as he no longer has enough money to buy their entrance. This is financial reality. Once resources are expended on one purpose, they are no longer available for direction elsewhere. If resources are expended on administration, on running the organization, then they will not be expended on performance. And likewise, resources expended on performance will not be available for running the organization. The commercial business needs resources to generate and deliver products to customers, and needs resources to maintain and operate the organization while it accomplishes this. How do we address division between these two valid purposes? Is there some way to sort this out? For the business of government, the technique to make sense of this is to return to the commercial purpose, to what our government and laws are to accomplish through its management of commerce. This has already been addressed, and it is to promote economic welfare of the people. We also have three segments of the people who are identified with commerce. We have business owners and investors. We have business employees, and we have business customers. You, by your valuation of what is available, and by your purchase decisions, are the customer. You are the one who will select business products by your own decisions. You will also be the employee or a person who commits your time and effort to gain income. Even those who inherit their wealth still inherit from their parents and grandparents on what they accomplished by committing their commercial efforts. You will also take some of what you have, and will save it or put it into retirement efforts, or commit it to stock and bond ownership. You will be the owner and investor of businesses. The answer is that you are the one who is to benefit from the operation of our commercial efforts. Ownership is in you and everyone who is like you in purchasing an employment and an eventual ownership. It is we the people who give purpose to our businesses, and we the people who are owners of our government, which is supposed to be managing our commerce for our benefit. As noted, there is only one party in interest, and it is we the people. It is most definitely not some American aristocracy that is supposed to survive and prosper on the labor and investment of others. Our personal prosperity is not different than the prosperity of us as we the people. Neither is our personal prosperity different than we are as employees or customers. Both personal and public prosperity are the same human purpose. The question of who is neatly answered by what we value, and it is generally in terms of prosperity. Prosperity different than what we value. Prosperity defines performance, and it is further defined by what people receive from our commercial efforts and by what people must commit in time and effort in order to gain what they value. Prosperity is that personal sense of value in our time and effort and in what comes to us. It is we the people who receive and value what our economy is able to provide us. It is we the people who commit our personal time and effort to productive use as businesses and employees. It is we the people whose investments and ownership in commercial businesses is our means of store wealth and maintaining value. We are both as individuals and as a body, the only party in interest. Our universal question is how we maximize the value we receive from the time and efforts that we commit to economic pursuits. We also have two management answers to this universal question. The administrative management answer is that we improve what we are doing. If we do it more efficiently and more effectively, we reap benefits from improvement of our commercial performance efforts. The performance management answer is that we eliminate waste, that we stop doing things that do not contribute to the desired performance. As a general rule, 80% of all improvements come from ceasing to spend our time and energy on non-productive efforts. This is the basic reason that focus on performance management doubled the performance gained by the straw boss. When performance managers direct coordinated efforts, the focus is on people working together. It is elimination of the wasteful efforts that arise when people cannot rely upon each other doing their part in a larger performance. There is a performance cycle to any commercial effort. The business receives income from the sale to customers and it uses the income to generate goods and services that it delivers to its customers. The customers, in order to gain what they value, buy the output from the business, giving it what it needs to continue in operation. This defines the performance purpose for any commercial effort and it is delivery of goods and services to customers in order to gain the income it needs to continue in operation. Customer decisions are based on how much they value the commercial outputs and what it will cost them to gain these. If you raise the prices of goods and services, say by requiring your customers to wait an idleness for 20 minutes before you are willing to sell it, then fewer customers will decide to buy your products. Type 1 waste is requiring additional resources from customers and it weakens the performance cycle. Then there is the potential for donating corporate output to charity or other non-customers. These donations produce no income for the commercial effort. The only way to pay for these outputs is to gain additional income from the customers. It is in terms of higher prices, which again discourages customers. Type 2 waste is delivery of output to non-customers. To where is management in this? Management is a cost of gaining performance through those who are doing performance. The internal purpose of management is supporting the corporate performance effort that completes the performance cycle. Expending on management is an internal investment and good management can remarkably increase what performance efforts can produce and what they can deliver to customers. Administrative management addresses running the business to a purpose. This requires the time and effort of employees but does not produce any output that goes to customers. It involves type 1 waste. Administrative management addresses effective use of authority to structure the organization. This often requires internal services that do not yield any increase in productive output. Administrative management brought order out of chaos in the development of corporate commercial efforts. But it is of questionable value now that we have a potential for focus on performance. By law, the incorporation of business efforts now supports administrative management, shielding a corporate aristocracy from responsibility for wasteful practices. By law, government efforts have raised the prices of labor through regulation, increasing the cost of performance without contributing to corporate output. By law, the government taxes what corporations earn, which is its output capacity that does not go to customers type 2 waste. By law, the administrative interference of sovereign government has limited the choices of citizen customers by assisting the product requirements do not universally be valued by customer citizens. Many such interferences as in the product safety requirements have recognized value, but there seems to be few who address what such interferences cost the public and whether the regulatory requirement is a support for or detriment to we the people. Taking for the choices away from citizen customers is misconduct in office. It is a failure to represent the public or the sovereign citizen. The government services that would have value is empowerment of citizens so that they recognize the value and is empowerment of citizens so that they can hold the corporate effort and corporate leaders personally responsible for any damages that they caused by their decisions. The difference is between taking economic freedom from we the people and providing support services to we the people so that they can manage their economy more effectively. We also have a corporate government and it generally operates on the principles of administration. It is a corporate effort that consumes more than 30 percent of everything that U.S. citizens earn even as it requires the efforts of many to be non-productive. True to administrative thinking, the concept of managing is one of improving what various elements of government are doing. It yields little real benefit. Performance approach would identify and eliminate waste. Having 125 million taxpayers spend eight hours a year doing their taxes equates to a billion man hours per year in citizen expense. That produces nothing. It is about half a percent of the total productivity of the American people. It is not the cost of operating the IRS nor the cost in taxes collected dumped into the treasury. It is type one waste that this process puts on we the people so that the government can take what it will use up by the operation. This is wasteful government process that can be eliminated by more sensible approaches. The general rule for bureaucracy is that purpose of government is serving we the people and where there is no service, the entire bureaucratic structure can be eliminated without reduction in what people receive. And this is why empowering people is so scary to leaders. Having to serve the public instead of functioning as an aristocracy adds responsibility for what leaders do. It is not that these organizations can be terminated. Many have functions that contribute reasonably to the support of we the people and some do deliver value. It is just that the value is not being delivered to the people. The focus of modern administration is on running the government, not on delivery of goods and services to the sovereign citizens. Our investments in change should address what the people value and how government is going to provide it. The empowered citizen focus will be on goods and services that people receive, not on authority structured and internal government operations. This course is a study in law and government and it is an application of this empowerment effort. My function in preparation of this course is not to provide guidance and change but to empower you, tomorrow's citizen owners of this nation, to see to the needs that you have and to come together with others to see that this need is made happen. Then there is nobody who can tell we the people what will have value beyond the general categories of freedom, prosperity, and support for family. The changes that will increase the value of government and legal management of commerce are otherwise for you to determine. Is there more value in resetting the EPA to serve the public instead of the environment or more value in directing the Department of Justice to serve the public instead of government leaders? Nobody can tell you where you will find focus with others on improving the corporate business of government. Finding when and where you can achieve agreement is what you will learn as you work your way through these classroom discussions. You will learn it as you seek to find agreement with other U.S. citizens with whom you share ownership of this nation and its government. The burden of commercial law and government is on we the people, even if it is applied to the business entities that we own or that employ us or that generate goods and services for us to buy. We are the only party in interest and we are also the ones who are entitled to receive the benefits of both commerce and of our government. We are the ones who can, wherever we are agreed, step into management over our economy and government to direct benefit for ourselves. As a special case, we have the business of government. What the government costs comes out of our productivity, but we as owners can step into management whenever and wherever we are agreed. We as owners can initiate such changes as will increase the value we receive in government goods and services and decrease what it costs us to gain that value.