 The challenge I put upon you as citizens is the effective meaning of self-government. Just what is it? The final answer is the harsh one we have been developing through this course, and its self-government is most certainly not what we have now. The concept of empowerment is one of getting things done, and as to government, it is government getting things done that we can both receive in value. At present, we do not have a good performance in government. It is very poor at getting things done that we get to receive in value. Our working rule is that you cannot improve something that does not work. First, you must get it working, or replace it with something that does work, and then you can address improvement. The lesson from performance engineering is our challenge of a division between management and labor. It is a leadership challenge that arises from having two competing purposes for those hired into the business. It is inherent in the differences between hiring people into management and hiring people into production. It is inherent in hiring some people to work and others to be the right person for the job. Government is in the business of national management. People who work in government assume management authority with the concept of running the nation. Here we find the same dichotomy that we encountered in business, but this time it is the common citizens who are viewed as labor, as people who have to be ordered to their work. The division is between those who govern and those common citizens who are supposed to get the work done. We the people have this as a problem, that only we as owners are authorized to resolve. We have a current leadership that is firmly convinced that the process of election is to identify them as the right people for the job of running the nation. The product of this attitude is stagnation. It results in management by privilege. It promotes what we identify as the dark ages. The art and science of human performance is a rude interruption to our current culture. It did not exist as a coherent study until the early 1900s. Its principles being human can be seen in its influence on our nation's founding. But the structure and operation of the United States was arranged without the benefit of what we have today. Most specifically the common form of business was family-based with larger ventures being loosely associated and larger unstructured corporate endeavors. The very concept of exception management was unformed. It was mostly used in governance as hinted in Machiavelli's The Prince that appeared as only an advertisement for employing Machiavelli as technical support for a prince or ruler. The short version is that we created a government based on citizen self-government. It was implemented as a way for citizens to be in charge of their own government by common and frequent replacement of those who were set into authority. That failed with the development of professional political leaders. Our model for correction is pretty obvious. If you are a family leader of farms and you hire a bunch of local youth to help you bring in the crop, when they show up, you serve as foreman of the group, pointing to each what they must do to take on an effective part of getting their work done. The performance vision? The challenge is people who do not have any specific direction for their activities. The solution is to challenge and apply management and it is management based on the purpose for taking these workers on. If you are the one who has a purpose, your cure for lack of management is to apply the missing management. The challenge we face as we the people is the hired leadership who accept the election as a corporate coronation that they are being empowered to run the nation. It is a self-delusion that the purpose is doing the right things for the benefit of the people. This challenge is heightened by the fact that they are able to do what they feel are right things. They claim success. Our leaders generally feel that their efforts are ultimately successful. It's serving the nation that they run. Our solution is to apply the management that is missing. It is to set our purposes upon our leaders, empowering them to act in our name and to our purposes. Our challenge is found in the concept of ownership. Just what is it? What is the nature of human ownership? Can we really own an idea? Can we own a thought? That first and most fundamental concept is value relations. Ownership is a human value in itself. It is in its purest form seen in a young child's understanding, my parents. It is a concept of having personal value in what is claimed. Possession, ownership is ultimately human. The common law recognized the concept of ownership and its power and importance to common people. Concepts like my home or my spouse were protected by law. They were given legal protection and much of the common law handled disputes that arose due to conflicting ownership claims. The common law so attached duties and responsibilities to ownership. In the case of physical property rights, it supported the privileged leadership as duties to pay taxes and to accept authorities of those who held ownership rights to feudal lands. This was the origin of our law of agency. The owner of property had rights to control what they legally owned, even to setting demands upon those who were in immediate possession of that property. The concept of ownership made human was much older than feudal governance, but the English common law formalized it into officially recognized rights, privileges, and duties. In the land, the king owned it all but set barons and authority over the feuds. The barons were secondary owners implementing the king's authority and otherwise exercising their own limited authority. The land was effectively leased to the peasants who then had a place to live and prosper. This is foundation for our property law with recognition of three different ownership concepts. Real property is associated with land, personal property with physical things, and intellectual property with values created by intellectual or artistic human efforts. For practical application, we have an ancillary legal concept. That is the relation between an owner of property and someone else who was in possession of that property. Much of this is in the law of agency. The owner has legal rights and privileges associated with what they own. They have a general right to demand preservation of their property. The agent who removes the value of that property, say by selling it to someone else without permission, or by simply breaking it or otherwise making of lesser value, is subject to adverse legal action. By the nature of our founding, we the people own our nation and we own our economy. We do have to find legal rights and privileges in it. One of those is governance. A government created under our grant of owner authority was arranged to see to the citizen justice, implementing our common law, and welfare. For our performance purpose, we did not surrender our ownership to this government. We had a continuing challenge in government acting as though it is the ultimate owner of the United States. It acts under a follow-on sovereignty authority, even though it was never given the authority by us, the real owners. Electing a political leader has been treated as a watered-down coronation into a body of rulers. They claim sovereign powers over the people who live on the land that the government claims as its own. In point of law, this is supported only by adverse possession, but the government being an effective ownership for so long as leadership feels that it has overcome the right to the real owner, which is we the people. That is not in accord with our legal foundation. Those who are employed in the operation of our government are our employees and are legally responsible to we the people for preservation of our United States under instructions provided in our constituting document. They are our effective agents. They are authorized to serve we the people as agents, not as some sort of corporate king. The performance challenge we have in the current system is witnessed in the very act of competitive election of officers. If elected officer was acting as our agent, it would not matter which candidate was elected. The agent has duties and responsibilities to those they represent. They have no authority over those they represent, but have only such powers and authorities as are granted in the instructions that the owner issues on the care, maintenance, and use of what is entrusted to them. You are still the owner, not some federal commoner who is to be recipient of the blessings of rulers and the good intentions they have for us. There was no authority granted to change the nature or meaning of the Constitution, only to correct errors and update it as our needs and wants changed. Our government is not even a party to this agreement and has no legal authority to change the nature or purpose as stated in our founding agreement. That is a violation of agency, a lawless direction of action. So, for legal orientation, our federal government has been set into authority over our nation, the nation that we own, in accord with a written agreement by and among us. It is our existing agent for the purposes stated in the document, and with the duties and limitations we put upon them by our agreement. Elected leaders are our appointed agents for the purpose of self-governance. We are not subject to this government. We are free people who are legally and morally entitled to receive the benefits and services that our government creates under our instruction. We, the people, created this government to see to our corporate needs and wants and to support us as citizens. We know this because it is written right into the instructions we use to create this agency. Government officers and employees are required to swear to honor this agency, but we have a privilege-based historical leadership. It has been commonly accepted as a basis for governance, and the agency requirements were soon set aside as inadequate to support a government that did the right things. Privilege was assumed for government leaders and largely went unchallenged by we, the people. The cost of replacing agency with privilege can be very high, as in the piles of Americans destroyed in our civil war. That was no legal service to we, the people. That was a set of rulers who firmly believed that killing a large part of we, the people could be justified by the rightness of their political causes. What is most telling is that they still believe it and present this travity of misrepresentation as one of the more important accomplishments of our government. They managed to meet their goals without completely destroying the nation. We have duties that were placed upon Congress. These were not suggestions to where they might direct our money. They were congressional responsibilities set upon them by we, the people. They were given an instruction in what they were to accomplish through direction of our resources, of our nation. They were to maintain the postal roads. It was to assure that we, the people, could be in communication with each other with the means available at that time for writing to be delivered between us. Our leaders set up a postal service and they worked to support a system of roads. They assumed authority to run these through legislation. And when public communication became possible using telegraph and phone, our supposed agents answered, not my job. And when it was the internet and email again, it was not my job. Communication between citizens has been a matter of interest only as our leaders might be able to use their privilege to run these privileged systems to meet their personal grasp of the right things to do. And as to the postal service, they did what privileged leadership has always done. They put the right people in charge and told them to run the organization on behalf of leadership. When it came to service to we, the people, not my job. The leadership redefined their job to running the organization, to doing what was right and doing it properly. How about maintaining the currency, supporting the economic system of the United States by their management over our money system? They did do this for a time. But then we have the witness of inflation. The system is failing to provide we the people with the stable currency. So what have they done to manage our system of money? They have done what privileged leaders have always done. They put the right people in charge and set them to take care of it. How about setting up and maintaining a system of federal courts? They have done what privileged leaders have always done. They put the Supreme Court in charge of a system of federal courts who do not have to answer to Congress. They found someone else to do their job for them. Can you hear their answer to having constitutional duties and responsibilities? Not my job. But when it comes to taxing the public, our Constitution severely restricted what our leaders could legally do. So they changed the instructions that we the people set upon them using the corrective and updating feature we authorized to accomplish what we the people forbid them to do. This is the nature of privilege. It does not accept the authority of commoners. It is all too easy to point out the shortcomings that have become our currently accepted system of governance. The challenge is in we the people coming together to do something different. To direct our leaders to honor their agency and to accept the responsibilities and duties that the owner of the nation has directed to them. Even their almost universal denial of the authority of we the people is as cobwebs, an irritant but of no more consequence to us when we would decide how to proceed. Whenever and wherever we find our agreement, we are the only party in interest, the only real authority, and we hold ownership of ourselves, our nation, and its government. Our leaders are not doing what their assigning document tells them to do. They claim it gives them authorities that are beyond the authorities that we the people could even legally give them. And if you ask a privileged accepting leader why they are doing something else, the answer is uniform and consistent. They are doing the right things and doing them properly. You are to honor the efforts they take in your name as you get to enjoy what their best efforts have done. There will be a level of hostility if you challenge them in this. They are doing this for you. There is something missing here and we the owners of the nation seem to be pushed aside so that our privileged leaders can do what they see to be most important. We have a good working knowledge for saying what needs to be done. Consider a carpenter who is called up to make repairs on your utility shed. He, seeing the condition of your yard, gets out your lawn mower and proceeds to that task. Noting that the flutter beds are dry, he is watering those when you get home. He tells you he is more than halfway through his work for you. He will get to the carpentry work in a few minutes. We know what to do. This is not some sort of mystery as the owner-operator of a small grocery. You hire a temporary manager to take care of things while you attend to a legal matter. You come back and find him across the street sitting with a rather pretty farmer's daughter who drives in with fresh produce. On being challenged for not attending to the chores, he gets indignant insisting that it is important to have good relations with your suppliers. We know what to do. This is not all that much of a challenge. You are the owner of a manufacturing plant and have hired professional managers to operate it. On looking at the books, you find a substantial amount that was given to a political campaign for a candidate you personally dislike. On being challenged, they note that it was for the good of the business that he was a candidate that would do the most for the business. We know what to do if our employees spend our money where we would not. In a like manner, we have congressmen who do not perform the duties that the constitution requires of them, but set their own political and social goals and enter into conflict and contest among themselves over what they are to do. With the carpenter that mowed the lawn, you would probably tell him to pack up and get off your property that you will hire someone else to do the work you contracted for him to do. He does not get to do something else and still get paid. With the hired manager, he would be paid only 20% of the price agreed as immediate compensation with the rest held until the grocery is examined to see if his neglect has contributed to losses. He was not doing the job for which he was hired. When looking at the political donations made by the hired managers, it is likely they would be required on pain of dismissal to recover or repay what they had redirected from potential profits. If they refused, criminal charges would follow for their embezzlement under the funds entrusted to them to operate the business. Putting their hands into their employer's earnings to see what they determined to be best for the business is unlikely to be accepted as an excuse. The owner does not have to put up with such things. So what is so different with government and leaders who are doing what they firmly believe is right instead of what they are instructed to do? The answer is ownership and the answer is owner management. The homeowner has a purpose in hiring the carpenter. The grocer has a purpose in hiring the manager. The business owner has a purpose in hiring managers. There is a performance purpose that is set upon the people they hire. The homeowner sees that his carpentry purpose was not being filled. The grocer sees that his purpose was abandoned. The business owner looks at the books and there is his purpose and it has been replaced to see to other things. It is the purpose of the owner that is set aside by assuming privilege to run things. In these situations, the owner finds out that those who are given purpose substituted their own purpose and expect him to be the beneficiary of what they determined is the right thing to do. The cure is consistent. The cure for a failure in management is the owner stepping in and applying management. It is the owner insisting that those who are set into the task are actually doing what they were required to do in order to get paid. It is the owner taking charge when there is an obvious need for owner action in order to get things done. The owner is with the right to refuse to pay those who are doing something else. So here we are with the Congress that has hired others using our money to do what they were paid to do while they attend to more important things. Isn't the Constitution a document showing the authority of we the people? Refused. Leader orientation insists that the Constitution does not mean what it says. It means what government leadership believes it to mean. They have assumed authority to interpret the Constitution and their interpretation is based on having such a grant of authority to leaders that they are empowered to run the federal government for the benefit of the nation. Shouldn't we be pleased to find that the ones who interpret it are not the ones who claim the most authority from their reading? We are after all the ones who are supposed to benefit from having a balance of powers within our government. What is obviously missing is the voice of the owner. It is the owner who steps in on finding that federal employees are not doing the duties set upon them, but have turned aside to do what is right with what was entrusted to their authority to govern our nation in our name. Don't you know that it is your fault that this happens? You were given the right to vote, a chance to put the right people into office. The vote is your voice in government. And if you fail to put the right people into office, then you are the blame for what goes wrong. And there you have your answer to what has gone wrong. It is the open and consistent denial that the government answers to we the people. You get to put the right people into authority and positions of privilege. If you do not approve how they act in that capacity, you get to replace them in the next voting cycle. It is the carpenter demanding that you pay him for what he does and let him finish what he has determined to do. You can hire someone else next time. It is a temporary manager telling the grocery manager that he put in his time and expects to be paid promptly no matter what the results. It is the hired managers telling the owner that he has to support what they did because it was for the good of their business, even though that was not what he hired them to do. In this lesson, we are talking about the business of governance. We are examining the performance cycle between government and we the people who are both the owners and customers of that government. The constitution is the voice of the owner telling the government what we the people are to receive from those who are hired into public office. It is not some advisory list. It is an assignment. It comes with a purpose that we the people set upon public employees. That purpose includes unity and delivery of justice and welfare to us as customers. That is what our leaders are hired to produce and deliver. The constitution does not set parts of government into opposition to each other, but directs attention to how they are to work together to deliver what we value. It gives specific duties to our public leaders that such interference in each other's operation is to be an offense against government performance. Elect me and I will go to Washington to fight for you. This is in one short statement the nugget of privilege. It is a promise to enter into conflict with the rest of leadership and it is a leader seeking your permission and support in being ineffective in office. And how is this? There is no less effective way to attempt anything than to divide into opposing sides trying to prevent each other from succeeding. Are your interests really an opposition to the interests of other citizens? Is making them losers of such value to you that you would pay leaders to abuse other citizens? What is missing is owner management. It is the absence of the voice of we the people who step in and set people back to the tasks we have set upon them. It is our failure to step in and to set our public employees back to the purpose written into the constitutional agreement. What we are missing has been termed exception management. Assuming exception management over non-human organizations is a significant part of human empowerment. This shift from our popular culture is a major reorientation to citizen potency where our current government relies on issues enforcing the will of some of us in overcoming the purposes of others. The performance orientation addresses opportunities for citizens to so manage the United States that it accomplishes those ends that we as human beings value. These specifically include freedom, prosperity, and support for the human family. Our leaders can do other things as they will but only after they have accomplished the three primary value results. This is possible because the citizens of the United States are the United States. Without us there is no nation, no constitutional government, no common law. Without us there is no tax base, a fund government, or support representative leader privilege. Whenever we find our Pareto level agreement there is no other public authority, no effective opposition. Even the constitution under which our leaders have come to claim authority is just an agreement between and among we the people. It is what we agreed that it is. It authorizes what we agreed that it authorizes. It is the instructions we set upon those who would claim authority in the name of we the people. When this document was signed and agreed there was no performance science. That was not developed until the early 1900s. The authors did the best they could to empower the public with the model being a representative republic. Still there were some specific intrusions as in the startling concept of a grand jury presentment. This is a documented initiation by a sample of people indicating wrongdoing by public officers. It was an open and irreconcilable challenge to privilege in leadership that commoners might actually exercise authority to interfere with what privilege leaders did on their behalf. When we apply the concept of performance science it opens a whole new and almost scary capacity. The body of citizens represent all citizens by being a sampling of citizens. They are not elected. There is no little political or authoritative control over what these people choose to do. Modern privilege leaders put a privileged leader, a prosecutor, into authority over the body and try to restrict what these citizens do. Modern privilege judges exercise authority to accept or reject unauthorized directions from this body of citizens. They are called presentments. Modern privilege leaders only want to accept such bodies as they have personally authorized based on some purpose that they give to the members of the jury for their consideration. Such a body is a sampling of we the people where they come to sufficient, Pareto level, agreement. They represent we the people more directly and more purposefully than a Congress of elected leaders. What they agree at this level is the will of the people. We the people are the owners of this nation. The hired help does not get to make the rules on when and where and how we can address them or set assignments upon them or replace those who disagree with those who are willing to work for we the people. Those we hired to work for us as public officers answer to us whenever and wherever we can come to agreement as a body. Official secrecy from the owners is just one obvious place to find agreement. If leaders want to have an exception to representing us directly, they have to come to our approval and a grand jury can authorize exceptions. We are addressing citizens acting as exception managers over those who govern in our name, stepping in when and where government evaluation of our public services is in question or authority is exercised in our name without delivering services to us. Our opportunity is to arrange for people just like us to watch over government authorizing what needs to be authorized and stepping in when needed to see through the larger interests of we the people when it appears to be in threat. And that is called exception management.