 There is a cultural challenge in political governance. It is not one of specific problems to be solved, so much as recognition that humanity has divided itself into effective political units defined by territorial borders. The subject of this lesson is your empowerment arising from and limited by a shared ownership in a politically defined unit we call a nation. For us it is the United States. Our specific unit exists in the presence of other like units, each with people who are basic owners of their nations, even if denied by political leaders. While all authority is ultimately human, our nations function as political units with sovereign political authorities assumed by leaders and generally tolerated by citizens. Our exercise of citizenship is a real potential. We are the owners and can see to our own interests and purposes whenever and wherever we, as citizens of the nation, come to effective agreement on assignments to our leaders for their action. In today's common authoritative model, we have an intensive educational and political effort to promote acceptance that our political limit is voting the right people into office. We are sold an expectation of how they will behave once hired into positions of authority. This educational and political training has an effect on our perception of our place as citizens of the nation, but does not change the reality of our ownership. We, as individual citizens, are discouraged from even trying to affect our massive government. But then our true empowerment is from us, citizens being the in fact nation. Our political involvement is not limited to hiring the right people to rule. We are the owners. We are the people who have set purpose for our public leader activities. It is also our cultural reality that education and orientation to the contrary has been generally effective. Our leaders generally accept their personal party goals and objectives as supported through election, through contests with other potential rulers as a basis for their action. These are generally accepted as a basis for the right things to do when applying the authority of office and directing the use of public resources. Our citizen owner challenges in the general failure to get things done. What we have been and currently are doing serves us very poorly. Much of what we have covered to date indicates the challenge and it is lack of ability in authority-based management to get things done. As a side matter I have often felt a relief among citizens when government does not accomplish what leaders consider to be their political goals and objectives. Many of them seem more harmful than beneficial. As owners we hold the ultimate authority. Whatever we choose to direct becomes the purpose to be served by those in authority. To identify that effectively we have to actually come to agreement as a people and that will require a significant change effort to be effective. We have discussed techniques for efficiently and effectively entering into those change efforts but each has real costs. They involve the personal investments of citizens assuming charge and defiance of those cultural restrictions that are now generally accepted. In this lesson we are more intensely focused on our personal investment the basis for any corporate investment that will establish agreement. We are addressing investment accepting an expected cost in order to gain something we expect to be of greater value. It requires a personal decision based on our expectation of value. In making that investment we as human beings are the only party in interest. It is our personal valuation that can bring us to agreement. For human agreement we have personal freedom, prosperity and trust relations most generally approached as family when it comes to personal matters. These have value only as we value them and we do have general agreement based on being human. We should spend a bit more time and energy addressing trust relations and most specifically that associated with human family. It is a set of values that are associated with bringing up the next generation of human beings to be effective people. It is preparing for our human descendants to take our place in the world when age and health removes us. It is the value we place in them that provides a basis for human agreement. It is agreement on matters such as leaving an improved civilization for them to enjoy. With authoritative orientation this has continued as a vague incentive with every issue seemingly based on some commitment by political leadership based on goals and objectives on doing the right things as a basis for cultural improvement. To say that our approach has failed to work to our benefit would be an understatement. We have as a nation become increasingly stressed, threatened, harder working and more abused as a people. If we continue what we are doing it will almost certainly get worse. If we do it more intensely the effect will not be toward improvement. If we are to actually improve our nation's services to our following generations we are going to have to change things. The only question is one of what changes will accomplish what we can value. This should provide a certain level of relief. It is going to cost us even if we continue doing things that are not working. This is part of our personal incentive to discover and implement beneficial changes. Even more on point the greatest effect is from eliminating waste not from improving what we are doing. It is spending less of our resources to gain more of what we value. In this case it will almost certainly include changes that eliminate interference with bringing up the next generation to be effective adults. It will also include a general push to decrease what it takes to live comfortably in our nation. It will increase our chances for what we can gain with what we earn by spending our time and effort. Whenever and wherever we can address changes in terms of these general values we can appeal to the humanity in us all increasing our potential to discover and publish our agreement. These provide potential for public mandate. And then we have an additional from professional efficiency work a rule that is utterly ignored by authoritative leadership. An improvement costs us less. This is why the focus on investment authoritative leadership will consistently avoid investment as leaders would spend to meet leader goals and objectives. Such efforts will always incur costs and rarely will result in actual benefits. They are focused on what is done, not on what is accomplished. So which leader presented alternative is going to be less expensive? We are addressing something very different not doing either alternative unless they actually generate some increased value that we as the only party in interest can receive. Our focus will be on eliminating waste rather than improving what we have. It is a huge change for those who now accept their privilege as a way to influence activities. It is your grasp on potential agreements and eliminating waste that provides direction for real citizen empowerment. We almost always have a few open hands pushed our way to collect for one wonderful thing or another and all of them come with the promise that this will somehow make this a better world for our children and grandchildren. We have politicians presenting their goals and objectives in terms of the wonderful future they want to provide for the benefit of our children. And all you have to do is support others giving up what you have today. If you withhold your miserly hateful wretch you deserve all the shame they can heap on you. Your first realization should be that the people who are accosting you those trying to make your commitments for you are not going to be benefiting your children and grandchildren. The same sort of hucksters will have their hands out to your following generations still making the same demands. We have the basis for empowered humanity. If you give because you value that giving it is charity. If you give because you are bullied into it then it is waste. You are the only party and interest. There is no society other than the one you are a part of. If the benefit is not coming to you then it is not really coming to humanity no matter how the salesman presents it. If you are able to take care of yourself and the people you care for you are taking care of humanity, taking care of your nation and taking care of human civilization. Charity only has value as you and people who are like you value it. Even I am amazed to see how much of what we now call charity is absolute waste. Consider our government giving relief to the government of Haiti following a major storm so that it can better serve the people. Unless you have personal value in the government of Haiti it is waste. If it is people you have compassion for then it is people who should receive your charity. And if the government of Haiti won't let you give to the people demanding that they be the ones who do the right things you even have a definition for that waste. We have our own government to implement what we value and other governments should only be recipients of charity when we would give charity to those governments. Public charity is waste as it is spending without benefit coming back to us as citizens. We are the United States and our government is a corporate creation that only exists to serve our purposes. If it is doing something else it is waste and potentially subject to elimination. Our government is to serve us collecting from us by coercion and then giving benefit to others goes beyond misrepresentation. It is embezzlement. We stop that criminal behavior and the money no longer gets wasted. Either the government takes less or spends it serving the citizens who own the government. Think how much value you have in government borrowing with the intent that your children will pay it off. These are criminal acts not simple misrepresentation. If you want to sell your children into involuntary servitude you certainly won't want to pay your congressman to do it for you. Is that the good of the nation? You are the nation. There is no nation except that owned by the citizens. If it is not for your good it is not for the good of the nation. Will we continue to make bad investments? Of course we will. The difference is we won't have to pay our public officers to make bad investment of our resources for us. It will be our decisions. It will be exercise of freedom. The business of government is services to us and only we get to value what we receive. Where we insist on leaders actually representing our decisions we become a free people instead of those ruled over by elected officers. As an empowered citizen you can understand this. You can share it with other citizens. You can even share it with the public officers and they will largely understand it as well because they are also citizens. They also have families of citizens and children who will be effective citizens. We are all in this nation together and we can come together to steer in a direction that does benefit us all. To understand the importance of basic management consider the family. It is the social unit of humanity as well as the universal source of potency. Our focus here is on the family as a performance unit with family management defined in terms of gaining a valued result through the efforts of those in the family. In the sense of performance we have that wonderful tool of the black box. This is an odd sort of black box as it has a corporate family as the operating entity and the individual family members as the owner customer of that same family. Family members have ownership in the family and they are the only ones who can truly value what family does for its members. They are its effective customers. And when we look for what the family converts into services for its members it is the time, effort and attention of its members. It is a microcosm for humanity. It is our source as youngsters in learning to be effective even as it is our base for knowledge of family management. We learn by being members in a family. This brings us to the concept of family management. It is both personal for parents and a team effort for those same parents. The direction for our attention is how you as a member of a family are able to gain valued results through the efforts of others in the family. Even more on point for us, the question is how we find agreement within the family so that the efforts of family members are teamed. It is here that the concept of ownership and the value we share with others who are joint owners becomes a working tool that we can see in action. To go back to our bully in the school yard, the older siblings are generally protective of their younger sibling. There is a possessive interest in assuring that the younger child's comfort and welfare are taken care of. It is something that family members share. There would be bully knows this too and will avoid actions that would call the intended victim's family together. The family is effective even though there may be harsh competition within the family. They come together when addressing those outside the family. There is almost always a level of personal trust involved. The focus for us is on empowerment and more specifically how we as family members are able to find agreement with other family members so that we can bring the potency of family to bear. We do it all the time. Family acts to support what other family members do even if it is just to gain their support and what we might more personally value. It is a trust relation and the ability to trust others is a source of human value. Consider the impact of role-playing in the family. One parent being the breadwinner who works outside the family to provide income. The other being the center of nurture within the family. It works and it works to very good effect. Well every family is unique due to the variability that we share with all humanity. We know there is effectiveness in assuming a set of duties in cooperation with others in the family. It increases what we can accomplish as it increases our expectation of what others will do within the family. It is a basis for teaming. This is performance management not directing the efforts of subordinates through the exercise of authority. While we have had experience with families that function based on authority even they fail unless the family members actively support one another. They work when authority is the role that is effectively assumed by one family member just providing a different basis for teaming. Attempts to assume that role in relations to external to the family is likely to destroy the potency of the family by disrupting the very trust that empowers family members. And that brings us to the concept of waste. To member efforts that do not contribute to the operation of the family and services that do not go to family members. Consider parents who stir up conflicts between their children as a way to force them to seek protection from each other. We know the results. It is loss of family performance, loss of ability to trust one another, to work together. Step away for a moment and consider social impact. We have teaching how some people in our society despise other people and then encourage them to enter into conflict. That is the type of management that disempowers everyone. It is a lesson in defiance of basic human empowerment. With family as a human foundation, we can look at our education in terms of performance. Instead of looking at a school, we are looking at a public education system in terms of performance. We have already examined the function of what we have but have not addressed performance as something where a family is the customer and the public of families is the owner. It is with this vision that you can be personally empowered. It starts with the family purpose, which is also the family purpose of bringing up students to be effective people. That purpose is your personal empowerment. Just letting things continue with the system setting you into friendly competition with others is disempowering for everyone. It is time to consider your own management over your education. It is taking part for the purpose of your being effective and that involves grasping the knowledge of what people value and how you can enlist them based on the results that all can value. It is focused on your own skill development in not only seeing what is commonly valued but communicating effectively with others so that they can see it also and see potentials for seeking shared values. It is a very conscious learning about performance and better assimilating the lessons of family as a way to develop trust relations with others, both students and educators. It is carrying what you learn home to family, sharing what has been accomplished in terms of your learning and skill building. The attention that they too can benefit from an increased trust in your abilities to gain through the efforts of others. Gaining through the efforts of others, by the way, is the definition of performance management. What we are addressing in this part of the course is an active and intentional increase in your own ability to manage performance. It is your accomplishment of an increase in your own ability to gain results. This is also in stark conflict with the common direction of authority supporting education where that approach is focused on entering into influence over others. Performance is not based on doing the right things and doing them correctly. It is based on accomplishments. In that, your own educational effort will face considerable resistance. It will incur a cost that is likely to be reflected in a vision that you are not the right person. Authority does not reward accomplishment and your empowerment will be denigrated by many. The upside is that authority based activities are very poor at getting anything done, even things of negative intent. Personal empowerment is real. A recognition of what can be accomplished by human effort. Any in opposition to your empowerment will be able to add costs to your efforts, perhaps even causing damages. But personal social empowerment also has a lure that even the most ardent authority merchant will still recognize. That comes with being human. How much will you join with others in your educational enhancement efforts? That is now a choice that you can make. By what we have been covering in this course, you are in a position to become a very effective business owner with potential to manage over the efforts of others. Our performance key provides a sharp focus on the value relations that serve your owner purposes. Your customers are parting with their dollars as a way to get food items and that is the current extent of our cultural understanding. But you have learned to look for product as what your business produces that these customers will receive in value. Your grocery does not grow or generate food. It buys these from others. The food items passed through your grocery business unchanged except perhaps in appearance or processed for convenience. Likewise most of the dollars that they provide get passed to those who produce the food items for you to sell. You provide a sales service to those who provide the food. You provide a convenience and vending service to grocery customers. These are what your business will deliver to those outside of itself to earn operating income. Just that quickly, you come to focus on what you must provide to attract paying customers to your business. You provide convenient access and parking for customer vehicles. You provide clean, comfortable and well-mighted facilities to present food products. You provide grocery carts and shopping baskets. You provide efficient checkout services to minimize the cost in time that is required of customers for your vending service. You provide training and direction to employees on polite and efficient support for your customers who use the facility. You support grocery workers by recognizing their value when employee efforts serve your customers. And then you know how to deal with your food stuff providers. You have the technical support to help them price their wares for effective sale. You know that your people will have to receive the food stuff and prepare it for your customer shopping experience. And it is not as if you have the skills to do the management. You may or may not have had opportunity to develop those skills. You know enough to have someone in charge who has the required knowledge and skill. The owner's focus is not on operating the business but on assuring its profitability. You know what to look for when you visit the store. Is a store offering what customers value? Are the employees skilled in dealing with customers providing a valued shopping support service? Is the vending service effective and efficient for customers? When you speak with the manager, you have hired to do that day-to-day operation of your grocery. You have that wonderful focus on performance that can support the manager in his or her productive efforts. You understand the value relations, the value of helping everyone in the business team in their efforts at delivering quality services that grocery customers value. In short, you are able to do owner management to effectively support those who work in the business as they accomplish their vending. Even more on focus, those in the business, especially the manager, will know that you are part of their support so long as they are doing the job for you. As I told you at the beginning of this course, your purpose is not one of giving you power. The purpose is discovering the power that is already yours with some technical support in applying it. You, as shared with others, have ownership of our national economy. Your power is realized through setting your purpose, the purpose of we, the people of the United States, upon those who work for you as the owner. You understand the value cycle that must be served if your economy is to accomplish what you and other citizens value from its operations. By our efforts here, you see the waste that current operations produce and how it ultimately reduces what operating your economy should provide for you. It is not so much the knowledge of this that empowers you. It is the vision of the economy's need for your owner management. It is a need for support for those who run the economy that you own for the purpose you and others put upon it. It is understanding that the only product that counts is what comes to you and others like you, and that every cost is a cost you, as owner, will have to cover. This is what provides you with a personal focus that you can share with others and incentive to come together for dealing effectively with those who operate what you own. And for even greater focus, you have been gathering information on where things are so remarkably wasteful that you have a basis for coming to agreement with others, finding the voice of the owner which can support economic performance. And when you are so agreed, all those who work in the economy are your effective employees. Those who run the economy work for you and you can support them in assuring the operation of your economy. You know where your power resides and you have knowledge concerning how to come together with others to be the ones who are empowered. And in this, you as the ultimate owner are the source of all power and authority. And you have the power of freedom. It is a power of choice, a personal potency that arises from being the one who ultimately chooses what you will and will not do in the role of owner. You can accept the waste, that is your choice and you can avoid having to do much of anything. Paying for the waste is just one choice available to you. And it has a value of stability. As humans, we do value that. Investing in change has to have such value that people will choose to come together to accomplish something. We have a like empowerment when it comes to the nation we own and to its government. We are the source of all power and authority. The nation is now being run by those who do not believe that they actually work for us, but rather that they rule over we the people. Without our central owner management, the operation of our government has degenerated into internal conflict and confusion. It is our place whenever we can agree upon the action to step into ownership, bringing our public employees to focus on serving us. To this end, we have identified massive sources of waste which we now support with our resources. Eliminating that waste can be a common purpose to bring us together. We have been learning the potential for finding the voice of the people. What this voice directs has no alternatives for those who would stay employed. Key to this study, you and others pretty much like you are the only party in interest. What you can agree upon becomes directive. In support of this, we have sampling procedure, a fairly efficient means for establishing agreement that can empower we the people as the in fact owner. Again, as already noted, power has always been yours as a citizen. The direction of this course is to bring you to see it and to accomplish owner management that has such personal value to you that you will choose to come to agreement with others and take such action as will accomplish this empowerment. You are free, your choice is power. You are powerful indeed.