 There is nothing recent about the subject of performance. It has been with us and pursued since earliest recorded history and certainly well before that time. Humans have been accomplishing things since the beginning of mankind. Demands for results are nothing new. People have always had needs that had to be satisfied if they were to continue living. We always needed shelter from the weather. We needed food and coverings for our human bodies. Doing what needed to be done has been an element of the human family where families fished, farmed, or hunted to support the family. Putting food on the table, having clothing and shelter, these were always important. They were not things to do. They were things to accomplish. We know that they were accomplished otherwise we would not be here. We also know that Superman is a myth. There is nobody who is so able, so powerful, that he does whatever he chooses to do. With him, accomplishment follows from desire to act. It is not so with us. We accomplish what we value by putting forth the effort that results in accomplishment. We are not so powerful that we can just do what we decide to do. And then we can bring this into our modern performance reference. Families did not accomplish things by overcoming the efforts of other families. People worked in the family business. That is how things were accomplished. It was family members doing what needed to be done to reasonably assure a valuable result. In general, family businesses accomplished things due to the efforts of the activities of those who were family members. It saw to the needs of the family through family member efforts, and these usually were directed by family leaders. Families survived. Families were effective. Families accomplished what satisfied the human needs of family members. Primitive families did not get what they needed by taking them away from other families, nor by being better or more successful at their efforts. They accomplished their own valued results by the work that the family members performed. That is right. They made their own candles. They may well have distilled their own kerosene for lamps. They made their own soap and fashioned their own clothes. They gardened or farmed for food and fished or hunted as necessary to survive. It is not that this works so well, but that they did not have to go to some store to buy food or rely upon the budget of processed meat for them. They did not have to rely upon some distant manufacturer to grind wheat into flour. There was another family, one just down the road away, that operated a mill for grinding grain into flour. If there was not, then it was up to the family members to do the work. This is not better or worse than what we have today. It is just different. What mattered to the people of the day was that they had food on the table, shelter from the weather and clothing to wear. Their basic needs and wants are not different than what we have today. They needed the basics of survival and did the best they could to secure what they needed. And when they wanted to deal with others, they operated what they had as a business. Like the miller who ground their wheat, the fisherman who sold his catch to others to give what his family needed and wanted. Families were common units of accomplishment right up to the time we know of as the Industrial Revolution. In our history, the family effort was expanded by the work of apprentices and slaves. The performance unit was still the family, but there were potential benefits from directing the efforts of those who were otherwise outside of families. These expanded what the family could accomplish. It is notable that the original apprentices were extended family members who came to learn valued skills by acting under the direction of more successful relatives. It was cousins and nephews who essentially sold their personal services as a way to learn a valued set of skills that could better serve families of their own. Early apprentices often lived with the family they served, eating with them at table and surviving within their living accommodations. Slaves just addressed people being used as intelligent animals of burden. Owning a slave was like owning a horse. They were generally valued. Like apprentices, slaves served the purpose of family welfare. Their efforts added to what the owner family could accomplish. From the efforts of both slaves and apprentices, there was an expansion of what the family could accomplish. They worked together under direction of a family leader. What we do best as individuals is invention, innovation, and creation of artistic expression. Other things are accomplished more effectively by people working together and in family applications that was family resources working under direction of the family leader. For our purpose, in personal empowerment, we are generally addressing coming together with one another or with others in our general vicinity to get things done. Accomplishment has not changed. We have not become more like Superman with time and progress. We still have to commit our time and effort if we are to gain accomplishment. We have to address ourselves as performance resources. What is it that draws the family members together to accomplish what they value? We will define this to be the family purpose. For perspective, it is nothing like today's common business purposes such as profit. It is personal with family members. Our family performance purpose is some end result that is so valued by members of the family that they come together to attend to the accomplishment. For us to work effectively with our families, we need to find something that is personally valuable to most of the family members. For us, it is that obvious family purpose. It is welfare of family members. The shared purpose is family taking care of each other's wants and needs. It is the value of coming together as a family and this has individual value to every member of the family that commits their time and effort and other resources to the corporate family efforts. Of course, this included operating the family business for the welfare of the family members. Family members always shared in this purpose. When the family bands together, when family members act as an effective unit, they are all empowered. It is every bit as true today as in the beginning. There has always been a natural teaming within the family unit. People generally know that you do not challenge a child in the presence of parents, not unless you want the parents to join their efforts in support of their child. They team together in response to any threat from non-family. They become us facing off with them outsiders. It is the effective unit facing off with those who are outside the unit. Family members taking care of each other defines a human characteristic. Family members can and usually do act as a unit when they are together. Consider the schoolyard bully. He picks on others who are smaller or weaker than he is. And that is what makes him a bully. But he does not pick on the same weaker child when in the presence of the child's older siblings. They are likely to join in the resistance or even act to turn the tables on the bully. They are family and are likely to see to each other's needs and wants before they see to the needs of others because they are family. Family almost always supports family over outsiders. Family is us and everyone else is them. And when it comes to running the business, family is likely to run it for the benefit of family rather than for profit. It is common for children of the family to take part as they are able with the understanding that it is being run for the benefit of all the members of the family. The children of the family that ran a business generally learned to run the business. That was a way to assure their own empowerment when they established their own family units. This is something that we all understand because it is human. This is human. It is who we are as human beings. And driving it all is that wonderful sense of unit. It is not I who is the family that cares for family members. It is us. There is us as family and there is them as everyone else. We have come to know this from family experience. We know better than to try and dominate or abuse some non-family child in the presence of that child's parents. Should we try, we will face that whole family as a team that sees to its own welfare and to the welfare of the members of the teamed family. When there was opportunity, the family business could take on other human resources. Originally it was in terms of slaves and apprentices. It is important to see that these additions did not share directly in purpose with us family members. As noted, apprentices were often younger cousins or nephews who could benefit from working with the more distant family to gain special knowledge or skills. They worked for an educational purpose, not for just the welfare of family members. They often were recognized as extended family, sharing table and housing accommodations with the families that owned the business. But they worked in the business under direction of family leaders. Such workers were like a step from being either us or them. They were considered resources that could be directed to the efforts from which us family could gain advantage. They were not served as family members. Apprentices worked for the value that they could gain by learning or by skill development and practice. They were expected to eventually leave and become family leaders in their own units. They joined in the family business for a purpose and would cease to be there when that individual purpose had been satisfied. Slaves were people used as intelligent beasts of burden. While they could be appreciated as people, they were often treated as whole different them. They were not commonly valued as part of the unit that was the family but simply put to use for the benefit of the family. Where slaves were directed to the personal care of family members, they could assume very personal value to the members of the family and be highly valued as both persons and as workers. It is notable that there was also a possessory relationship involved, a reference to the value of the slave to the one who owned that slave. Interrupting that ownership was handled as theft, like taking any other valued property. Slaves who provided personal services to family members would become like extended family and be subject to protection and support as such. I would like to pause here with time to handle any questions and receive comments on what we have covered in this segment of today's efforts. Our continuing discussion of expanded business has to note that slavery was not always as working animals. We go back to the Roman use of Greek slaves. It was common to receive well-educated Greek slaves as teachers for young Romans. They worked as accountants and doctors. They were honored for their culture and for their education. For the founding of our nation, we also have to consider the bonded servant. This was someone who was not a beast of burden, but one who had sold some of their time and effort in order to gain something that they valued. I note this as a founding purpose for the United States, as many of those who came to the American colonies did so under bond. Once they had fulfilled their bond, they would be free to go their own ways again, seeking to establish and enjoy their own family units. Until then they worked for their living under direction of one who held their bond. As early-moneyed interests were investing in colonial American businesses, they would even free potential workers from prison paying their debts with bonding as a condition for their freedom. This assured a relatively inexpensive and dedicated workforce in the colonies. Some of this development is tracked to our legal system. The subject goes all the way back to the foundation of the common law and recognition of slavery as a legal concept. The very name of this area of law is master and servant. It addresses the relation between someone who directs another to action and another who acts in general accord with directions. It addresses the legal relations between them and their relationship to others who come in contact with them. That area of law generally is applied to slaves but has little to do with apprentice relations. Apprentices were treated more like family and legal interference with family was slow to form. Master and servant law was forced to evolve with bonding. Their non-family would owe allegiance to someone in order to earn what they valued, often payment of passage or the like. It was also a way to get someone else to pay legal fees and fines and release from an imprisonment or legal debt. The law that addressed slavery changed to the extent of noting that the servant would have personal rights to legal protection of themselves so that they could not be damaged during their bonded servitude. They had a remainder interest in themselves. They could also have families that had to be supported during the period of indenture under that bond. As a later development, master and servant law was combined with the general law of contract as a way to address employment. That was where efforts of a person under another's direction were contracted for pay. In general contract law, the one who was paid would perform some task or render some service as agreed in order to secure the agreed pay. Employment was an open-ended relationship based on bond-like authority to direct the employee's actions during some stated time of employment. It involved a temporary loss of freedom surrendered to earn pay or other benefits. While there was employment of a sort, it did not become important as part of the law that it is today until well into the Industrial Revolution. It came with the growth of business due to the establishment of larger businesses larger than the family, larger than they could own and operate as a unit. One other important expansion that does not get reflected in our legal system is the tribe. This is a series of families that come together for common family purposes. An early example would be the clans. A number of related families who often willingly cooperated in community efforts for the good of all the families in the clan. Early American community efforts involved things like community barn raisings and gathering efforts where many farmers would come together to handle harvest rotating from one farm to the next. As gathered efforts, they could do things that one farmer could not accomplish by use of the individual's family participation. The tribe does not have authority over members' families and they are ultimately able to pick up and leave should it be advantageous. The tribe is subject to a council of family leaders and usually has a tribal leader as spokesman for the tribe rather than any separate authority. These groupings seem to function on value of shared efforts with the understanding that when one shares in work the other needs that other person will share their own efforts in return. There is also value in being able to so entrust each other. It is a personal bond of support. There has been an alternate development, one that is not family but based on an authority structure. In many ways this has been parallel to the family approach. It is based on granting of authority to some person or family. The key is authority. It was originally having voluntary leaders as followers because it was how to accomplish results that all could value. Over time and with growth into larger communities it evolved into hereditary authority with young children of leaders raised to continue the business of leadership. It was foundation for a form of privilege. There was an obvious challenge in granting leadership as a privilege. Leadership would have access to the resources of those who were followers directing their time and effort to where leadership saw the needs. It only worked for the benefit of all when there was no question of what would have value. It was based on some people being granted authority to make corporate decisions on behalf of others. There is an ongoing and immediate confusion with master and servant relations. The ability to direct people to what all value is very different than the ability to direct people to what the leader values. That difference seems far more apparent to those who are followers than those who lead. Hereditary privilege became the foundation for feudal government. Perhaps the earliest true book addresses corporate performance issues in terms of a military officer. It is The Art of War attributed to Sun Tzu, a Chinese military leader some 3,000 years BC. It is a treatment of the use of military authority to win extensive conflicts. This early work provides general advice for those who are engaged in leading larger gatherings of soldiers during military conflicts. It involves the use of larger corporate military bodies with knowledge of how they are to be directed to accomplish military successes. It deals only indirectly with performance purpose, being focused on how to take actions that will result in defeat of an enemy military force. The difference from family is the dominance of a leader for a general purpose. The military application addresses authority without the followers' personal valuation of the specific purpose pursued by the leader. It is a general authority, a trust-based relationship that sees to some political end. That end is valued by political leadership, and those leaders may not even be directly involved in the military action. Involvement of common people as those directed may be voluntary or conscripted, but is no longer free once they are part of the military effort. Obedience is enforced under the threat of severe punishment. In a light way, larger ships are not operated by families. They employ large numbers of sailor workers to perform a variety of tasks, with many having their own skill sets. Once a sailor signs on as a crew, they answer to the ship's officers. This is often the case when addressing hostile environments. Armies always have someone in charge to coordinate the efforts of soldiers in the dangerous environment of battle. Larger ships at sea always have someone in charge to assure the sailor's work as a team, giving the best chance for safety and a voyage, because the efforts of the sailors are coordinated. There is another teaming in smaller military groups where soldiers act as a unit. Such teaming provides a best chance for soldier survival in the dangerous environment of battle. Soldiers can then rely upon each other for life-preserving teaming, and they often form family-like relations. There is human value in this. Soldiers and sailors submit to the authority of officers, not only because they are paid to do so, but it is a personal value to have someone in charge of their coordinated efforts. Soldiers accept the authority of their team captain because it is a way to survive. Individual members also receive human benefits through assuming a subordinate or follower role. It is something they share with others in the group. The same can be addressed for early European city-states where people were put in charge of towns to coordinate efforts that could protect the town from invasion or criminal misconduct. The same was the foundation for feudal management, acceptance of the king as the ultimate owner of a nation. These were common arrangements where the privilege of rule was established to provide an important security service to those who lived in the territory that was ruled. As a tribe, it was a way to bring people together to do things that were more likely with coordinated efforts than the simple survival of a family. The town, city-state, or feudal kingdom could provide protective services or social services that a family was just too small to provide for itself. And to gain these benefits, the common family had to submit to that authority. For our American nation, our social foundation was centuries before in the feudal system of government as established in England. This set a pattern that is still part of our culture, even though it has grown into something quite changed. We still have remnants of feudal rule, such as the American common law that was derived out of this system. Feudal English government has its roots in land ownership. The English system was initiated through the King claiming ultimate ownership of all land in England. This immediately subordinated all land owners to his royal rule. Of course, land was the source of wealth at that time. Most performance involved agrarian pursuits, farmers working the land to produce crops or raise animals, hunters and trappers, harvesting wildlife, or fishermen who lived on the shores of water bodies. Tradesmen lived in towns and also needed land for their families. Government authority structure was based on land ownership. Those who had landed estates answered to the King's authority or they would lose their access to the land. The King, in order to manage this wealth, assigned land tracks to barons. They were like lease holders, with each baron owing their family wealth and privileged to the King as the one who ultimately owned that land. The barons were tasked with maintaining the King's source of wealth and keeping the people on the land as a way to harvest its benefits. The peasants being the source of wealth were well cared for and their harvest were taxed for support of the baron and the King. It was the King's privilege of being the owner of land that assured that privileged barons would stay in authority. It was the baron's authority over working lands that assured peasants with the benefits that came to them as productive peasants. An immediate note is that this was an extremely stable form of government and it continued in effect far longer than any other because everyone seemed to prosper under it. The idea that peasants were mistreated was largely myth. The baron who tried to abuse his own peasant population would find them moving to other feuds. Then the baron's family would either suffer poverty or have a feud given over to someone who would again take care of it to make it productive for the King. The English common law was not created by the English aristocracy even though it did serve their purpose. It was honored by the King and the barons because it kept the peasants productive. It supported their peaceful and fruitful commercial activities and it maintained the peace through minimizing what could distract them from their productive efforts. As one limit to the land-based feudal government the King insisted that each baron live on his assigned feud. They did not get to be independently wealthy but had to live there right along with the peasants who were the source of wealth. The aristocracy was tied to the land that the King ultimately owned. A baron had to take care of the peasants in order to enjoy the privilege of receiving their support. These leaders were in it for their peasants. They all prospered from the peasants making good use of the land. Of course this also contributed to the stability of the system. Everyone did fairly well under a system like this. The peasants were given a legal system appropriate to their needs and the price was supporting an aristocracy that had privilege in terms of taxes and personal services. The barons were secure in their positions as long as they acted in support of the King and made effective use of the feudal lands. The English King had significant wealth and could make use of peasants to do public works, military service and the like. The challenge was that it did too good a job and led to stagnation. There was little benefit from even seeking change or improvement. There was no reason to even challenge the status quo as everyone was there to address the changing feudal arrangement as a cost. Even with this shared source of wealth there was a challenge. Before going on, I opened the floor to questions and comments. What have we learned? As previously addressed, this was an amazingly stable form of government and we can attribute it to the common understanding that value came from the productivity of peasants. The King was careful not to disrupt what they did in such a way as to threaten their welfare. The barons owed their maintaining of the peace to both the King and to the welfare of their own families. The peasants did have to submit but the requests were not to the point of threatening them. What finally forced the change was a bad King, one who would upset the system by getting rid of many of the barons to replace them with his own favorites. King John threatened the barons and they reacted to protect themselves and their families. Being privileged feudal leaders was their way of life. It was how they had raised their children. In a nutshell, the barons were threatened with the loss of their family wealth and position based on the King's preference. They reacted by enlisting the peasants to form their own army, countering the forces that King John could raise. The story of Robin Hood is a good drama but it denies the history. The reality is it was the barons who revolted, not the peasants. The peasants had little to gain or lose and almost nothing would change with changes in who was feudal baron. In short, the feudal rule of King John was interrupted when the system of feudal privilege resisted his efforts to initiate a change. This was one of the few things that could upset such a system. He lost much of his privilege through the establishment of authority and the people's governing bodies. It was the barons who were represented in the House of Lords and common people in the House of Commons. The King was still the titular head of the government but no longer had the sovereign privilege of rule. Much of his former authority could only be exercised with the permission of the body of English citizens. Privileged continued but was somewhat decentralized. For our purpose we note that the year was 1215 when the King felt compelled to sign the Magna Carta recognizing many of the rights and privileges of common citizens and barons. It was well before the American continent was discovered by European powers. It was well before the first English presence came into colonial America. The English history affects our history. What had happened in England following the Magna Carta and revolt of the barons was a matter of history. The King was reduced from ruler to being the head of the government. The larger privilege of ownership of England was lost. The American colonies answered an authority to the English government not to some sovereign King. The effort that was populating the American colonies was not some attempt to create or expand a feudal government. There were no American feuds. There were no English barons who had to live on feudal lands who owed their privileged positions to harvesting what working people were able to gain by their use of these lands. There was also no regular governance in American colonies by English authority as it was a long and perilous journey just to get here. Government was local though it was set under authority of colonial governments who ultimately answered to England for their authority. England had issued land interests to special people and had claimed ownership of the land in America but did not maintain a real ownership. They did not exercise ownership rights over the plots of land that the colonists had staked out for their families. It was nothing like even the existing land ownership in England. English law was in effect but administered by colonial authorities who honored the English governors as established and provided to them. The general law was the common law of England as generally applied to citizens back in England. And then we have to address the modern myth of colonialists as immigrants and invaders. That was perhaps true of the later 1500s even though there was no American nation to be invaded. Later colonists came as English people and in English territory not as immigrants nor as invaders. By the time of the revolution there had been six generations of English subjects living in the colonies. The parents and grandparents of many colonial subjects had been born here. This was their ancestral home, the only home they knew. They were not immigrants. People had staked out farms and had constructed roads. They ran businesses and served customers. They displaced the people who were here first but the Native Americans were not like some recognizable nation. Being so distant the American colonies were effectively separate provinces under the ultimate authority of England but were otherwise like independent and self-governing bodies. Also many of those who were still coming to the Americas were coming under indenture. Their passage was paid to come here to work for business interests. At the payment of the bond they were legally free to pursue their own livelihood in the colonial society. America was an English investment. It was a place where English entrepreneurs could invest their funds in order to gain a profit by the work of those living in the colonies. It was not so much an expansion of the British Empire as an investment made to increase the wealth of those who remained in England. Before the American Revolution, England had entered a costly war opposing France. Part of this referred to as the French and Indian War was fought in America. While it was largely fought by colonial forces England had reimbursed some of the expenses. England had military victory. It also had large debts to pay and the American colonies seemed a reasonable place to collect some of the costs. Their technique was through taxation under the Townshend Acts. American people resisted the effort to tax them when English authorities insisted that they pay their part of the larger seven-year war that was mostly fought in Europe. The result was a declaration of independence, a passively hostile act. England reacted as expected. They sent the military to aid in collecting the taxes but found themselves not simply resisted but facing a ragtag army of colonial Englishmen, many of whom had already been seasoned by their participation in the war with the French. For a common sense to apply, we have to address the situation with England. It had one of the most significant military machines in the world and could easily crush this upstart revolution of malcontents. The challenge was distance. It was transporting sufficient military to the Americas. To understand why they did not, we have the economic purpose of paying off their existing war debt. The truth is nobody really wins a war. All who engage in the conflict suffer losses and winning doesn't really earn much of anything. England had spent part of its scarce resources shipping an army to the Americas to help collect taxes and that was expensive. They faced more and more costs as they tried to subdue the malcontent colonial resistance. The English government was most unlikely to gain much of anything from this conflict. They were spending money where there was little potential for even paying back for that action. Fighting Englishmen in America was just bad investment. They pulled the plug on the whole thing accepting the independence of the American states. And this brings us to the founding of the United States. The Americans, former British citizens now cut adrift, had already been divided into separate colonies and these continued. Each colonial territory claimed an independence as a new American state, continuing the general European model of sovereignty. And these American colonists were no longer the same sort of people as continued in England. There were many generations living in the colonies and a very different understanding of English authority. Americans were not just Englishmen who came to the colonies. There was also the challenge in state sovereignty. It was former English citizens who did not accept feudal rule and American colonists certainly did not accept continuing the authority that had been granted from England. The standing of state governments was not established. It was an important note that Americans did reject England but not as a fatherland. What they had rejected was England as a taxing authority. In our next lesson, we'll be looking at the development of performance potentials in the founding of the United States. This will cover the establishment of constitutional government and the development of a republic that would claim sovereignty over the states. It will bring us up to the national chaos created by our industrial revolution.