 The harder part of the course is over. We are now moving into the realm of direct performance support. The purpose of this lesson is to add performance knowledge concerning change efforts to the many opportunities that we have been presented. It is time to look at cost and benefit specifics. It is time to examine available performance, manage and management processes for the efficient and effective performance of actions that yield those results we agree have value. Coming at this point in the course, we will be looking at how we, as owners, can effectively address those who would exercise privilege when we see advantages from redirecting them to our support. You own a yacht and are intent on visiting some friends of yours who work in the military in Haiti, gathering some friends who have similar interests you hire Captain Sherman, who has sailed in the area for many years along with two crewmen. You sail out of Miami, Florida. A few hours out, you realize that you have left the coast of waters and can no longer see Florida land. It isn't until early evening that you think on it again when the sun seems to be setting in the wrong direction. You are headed east. With that, you confront Captain Sherman, asking what is going on. He informs you that he has learned that there is a serious political unrest in the harbor you wanted to visit, and he is swinging to the Bahamas first, delaying the trip to Haiti. He has family in Freeport, and all will be welcome there for a few days while things settle down. When you try to redirect him to your original destination, stating that that is the only direction you gave him, he notes his responsibility for your safety and how he is doing the best he can to assure it. He is unwilling to put either you or the boat he captains at risk. This is not why you hired Captain Sherman, but he is a captain in a ship at sea. He is legally in charge. He is also claiming a good purpose for what he is doing, and it is very much within his responsibility to see to your safety. That is obviously within his authority over the boat at sea. You on the other hand are not that competent a sailor and are not comfortable taking over the duties of running the ship to your own purpose. It is just that you have no particular purpose to be in the Bahamas, and it is your boat that is being redirected to a purpose other than the one you set on the voyage. In this lesson, we are addressing options. True to the purpose of performance, we will be looking at your personal options, each with its own costs and benefits. You have options. You can attempt to fire Captain and immediately assume command on your own, even if you are not fully qualified to continue the initial voyage. You can wait until you reach Freeport and terminate the Captain there, seeking another Captain who is more interested in what you direct. You can accept the Captain's authority and responsibility and let him continue in what he presents as a best option. The first, just terminating the Captain borders on mutiny and would mount some threat to the boat as well as the voyage. This is a significant cost, not only immediately, but with future threat of cost if the Captain takes the matter up legally. The second demonstrates a displeasure you have with that Captain and what he did without consulting you as both the owner and customer of the Captain's efforts. But by the time you reach Freeport, the damage has already been done and there is no further reason to change Captains, that too has consequences. The third has the problem of advertising yourself as a victim of whatever the Captain decides to do. What happens when he decides to visit friends in Cuba or heads further south just carrying you along? And then there is the question of whether the Captain is really seeing to his own personal interests at your expense. This is like that general challenge we face as citizens of the United States. The Captain at sea has authority to operate the craft, including authority to redirect it to see to the welfare of passengers. He has a duty to preserve the boat and protect those aboard. Public leadership has been granted effective authority to operate our government and to redirect it to see to our welfare. The challenge and source of frustration is that we are the owners and we issued instructions to leadership that have been effectively set aside with the admonition that the leadership is saying to our best interests. Our public leaders seem to benefit greatly from their public employment. Are they seeing to their own personal interests at our expense? The difference is interesting that our nation is a not really a ship at sea nor did we direct it into some dangerous waters. Our leaders seem to be protecting us from dangers that only they really see. In some ways it even seems to be dangers that they are promoting so that they can stay in authority. What seems most dangerous is where the leadership has been directing us to go as a nation. What our study of performance has done to this point is to indicate direction for resolving the situation. We the people are the effective owner of the nation. We are also the only real customer for government. The ones who get to evaluate what our government would provide and deliver to us we are the only real party in interest. I am now able to present the challenge we face in a new way. What we can see is that we have a bully for a government. We have a government that is perfectly willing to threaten or damage people who do not do what leadership decides to direct us to do. Could it really be that simple? You, I need to write my essay and you better do a good job of it. How's this? You will send your children to our school for us to teach them what we feel they should know. Or we will send our police after you and haul you in front of our judges to answer for your failure to comply. Then again, give me your lunch money or expect a beating. You are going to pay taxes for whatever we decide to do. You don't have to like it. The purpose for this course is your empowerment. It is not based on resisting or even overcoming the bully. It is based on accomplishing what you value. As we noted at the beginning, the bully doesn't even have something to accomplish. The very purpose of bullying is to establish dominance to rule over someone else. Bullying is to proclaim oneself the winner at the expense of losers. If our effort is simply to overcome the bully, then we are the ones who will accomplish nothing. It is the conflict that damages performance. Not focus on who is in authority to run things. To put this into our boat example, it is getting to the intended destination that has value. Not somehow beating the captain into submission. For performance, it is all about the result being in authority may help one feel powerful, but it accomplishes nothing as a result. We have a political government that acts to prevent us from getting where we want to go. Our purpose is a more perfect union. It is justice, domestic tranquility, common defense, general welfare, and personal liberty. It is not like this is some strange and esoteric wish list that we hope to give purpose to our leadership. These purposes are written right into the instructions we gave to our leaders in our constituting document. What we are addressing in this lesson is the very purpose for which our national government was granted existence, and to which purpose every public employee is compelled to take an oath. What we are looking at here is our insistence that our leaders who we authorize to receive pay for services actually do what we instructed them to do and which they took an oath promising that they would do. Even beyond this, it is a requirement to do what they know they should be doing, and it is obviously beneficial to them and their families even as it is to us. Our challenge is the purpose of privilege, not the leaders as people. It is privilege that insists that they have been put in charge to handle even the most important matters that can only be addressed through establishing conflict among us and supporting those who are right and overcoming those who are just being contrary or misled. It is the captain of the craft accepting another responsibility, a duty that interferes with the owner's directions as so important that he will turn aside from any instructions from us that might redirect his efforts. Empowerment does not come from assuming authority over the captain or from firing and replacing him. Our power is inherent in having choices and in our election to act based on the personal costs and benefits. Our potency begins with being in charge of ourselves and what we do, and recognizing when and where there are others who can share in our priorities. You are empowered by stepping into ownership over your nation. You are empowered when it is you who decide what you will and will not do. It is you who are empowered when you look for the common costs and values that can bring you together with others to team on what you would all accomplish. As a basis for our action, we have ownership of our nation and ownership of the government in which our leaders have their authority. The benevolent ruler concept may have appealed to the vanity of leaders, but it does not have a legal support under the common law. Our elected leadership is not like parents of children. The citizens there to represent are those that are mature and relatively independent people. It is true that we have placed public leaders in positions of trust and authority. This was not authorization to become bullies. It was hiring them to perform the duties of the government as we gave it foreman instruction. There is nothing in our constituting document that authorizes government or our elected officers to be rulers over us. The very fact that it is created by our agreement denies that it could have greater authority than we have. We could not give it greater authority by our agreement. Being the owner and the source of government, we are also the only party in interest. Indeed, our purposes for initiating this government are set forth and listed in the preamble. It does not support the leadership as bully. It does not authorize doing the right things on our behalf. It only authorizes seeing to the purposes stated in the document. Our leaders are set into offices hired for pay for those set purposes and under the laws addressing their employment by our government, they are subject to the common law area we call master and servant. We are the ones who hire these leaders. They are legal masters. They are the ones who have sold us time and effort for pay, our public servants. The master-servant relationship is just strengthened by this being a representative of republic. Those leaders are to service we the people, and it is initially in accord with the stated purposes for which we created our government. This brings us to the conflict between what government has done in our name and what it was directed to do in the instructions we issued to it. In specific, supporting some citizens in overcoming the rest is an open and obvious violation of the purpose of union. Taxation in its current form is public abomination, violation of the purpose of an intent we set upon this government. Passing laws that are so complex, voluminous and confusing that we the people cannot even understand them is a denial of representation. Our leaders have avoided or even rejected the very idea of representation in favor of establishing a benevolent oligarchy, a collection of privileged leaders who are expected to see to our welfare through doing what is best for us. The difference between privileged leadership and agency relationships are great. The public employee as an agent answers to the authority of the ones they represent. The privileged leader demands that others answer to his or her authority. If that is not challenging enough, we have the performance history. Privileged leadership has always been focused on doing the right thing. Often with challenge of what they do being right for anyone but themselves. Privileged leaders accomplished little. Agency is a form of teaming where the agent is trusted to do what those who are represented would do if they were acting in their own. Agents who effectively team with the people they represent are able to accomplish a lot more. The concept of checks and balances is a different challenge. First of all, it is not written into our instructions given in our constituting agreement. Supporting unity is part of our stated reason and purpose for entering into this agreement. If those who would take action under this document have some sort of problem understanding what we require of them, they can come to us for resolution. We the people are the ones who set purpose upon their efforts. Our working subject is the public mandate. It is an order to those who would act in our name and it issues with our corporate owner authority behind it. And when it comes from us as a corporate body, mandate is the owner issuing an order to our public employees. As if the boat's owner finding the captain was not going to Haiti as directed took charge by telling him, I am paying you to sail to Haiti, not to the Bahamas. You will not be paid for going somewhere else. If I find that there is no good reason for my boat and I to be sailed to the Bahamas, I will be paying some other captain to do what we agreed was the purpose for taking you on. This sets what the voyage is to accomplish as a purpose for earning the captain's pay. There is no ambiguity except for actually convincing the owner that this side trip to Freeport is somehow necessary. Without that it is a promise that the owner will take charge when they get to Freeport when they are no longer a ship at sea. To put this simply, the captain may well be in charge of the boat at sea but that owner will hold him into account as soon as he make port. You should note that this does not disempower the captain or set new requirements upon him. It notes the apparent division of purpose between the owner and the captain and they need to be resolved. It makes that a duty of the captain who would direct the planned voyage. Redirecting the voyage to the Bahamas is going to be treated by the captain by the owner not simply as a proper exercise of captain authority over a vessel at sea. It is the owner assuming the authority of ownership. It is the owner noting that they are not accepting of what the captain has decided to do and will at first opportunity call for an accounting. It is a threat that the captain might be denied pay for his efforts if he cannot show how he is progressing in the project for which he was set into authority. As the captain is effectively in charge of this ship while at sea so the government leader is effectively in charge of the government in our current political environment. Our citizen challenges much like that of the boat owner. Can we the people assume ownership of our national government resetting it to the purposes we originally set on it? The privileged leader attitude of you aren't the one in charge of this boat is not going to fly with the owner. Paternalism will not work well for public leaders who would claim authority to rule over citizens of this nation not after they become aware of their ownership. When we come together as a public based on what we would direct to our leaders for accomplishment there is no question who is in charge. No amount of posturing or protestation is going to allow any elected leader that privilege of denying the expressed will of the public that elects them. If the owner finds that public voice the leader is no longer in effective authority over the public. Quite simply we are in a society and continue within a legal environment where leaders are convinced that they really are in charge for the purpose of running things. They generally are convincing themselves and others that they are doing what is right for their official actions and expect to be upheld and supported by the people who benefit from their efforts. Any public mandate is a rude awakening to a reality that can upset privilege. It is that the real authority has not been intended to them by the public but continues to reside in those commoner citizens who saw fit to elect them in the public office. The mandate totally ignores their privileged status. It interrupts their sense of rule. It denies that they have any authority to simply ignore the public when it might disagree. It is notice that their boss has an assignment that they are expected to perform. It is a rude awakening to the truth that there is no separation between the one who represents and those who are represented. No authority to deny the public without facing severe potential consequences. The public mandate is a public order to the one who leads in the name of the public. This is not one of authority when gathered we are the only authority. It is a challenge of the public coming together based on some stated public purpose and communicating that purpose to those who will act upon it in our name. Whatever can bring us to this level of agreement is a potential for finding a mandate. It is a matter of our empowerment, our choices to seek what we as a people value. Much of what we have done so far in this study is establishing such potentials and working on how we can communicate the impact of waste to other people. It is to identify many potentials for finding agreement that can become our mandates. Captain Sherman is at the wheel when you as the owner come to inform him that he is not going to be paid for taking you to the Bahamas unless you agree that it is a wise course of action. His response, I'll hear your complaints of change of shift when someone else takes the wheel come and see me then. If you are the ones who employed that captain and it is about him getting paid such a leader tactic would not have good results not even if it was within the full authority of office. An employee does not just kick the owner and customer aside until it is convenient to deal with them. The only way such an approach would even be tolerated would be when the operation of the boat was under immediate threat and the captain was compelled by the situation to remain constantly alert and on post to prevent a disaster at sea. Simply refusing to speak with the owner until it was convenient would not generally be tolerated. It could well be enough to get him dismissed when they get to port even if the redirection of your voyage was totally justified. He would be fired for stupidity if not something else. You do not treat your employer like that and expect a good outcome and if you finding 85% agreement on what you would direct to your representative come to one of his offices noting the same. Will he be too busy representing you to respond giving you off to a staffer to take care of your complaint? He might as well say, if I have to listen to you will be at my convenience. How about, see my secretary at schedule and appointment I don't have a lot of free time right now. The culture of privilege in government runs deep as well but not that deep. The fact that you are representing the people who he is to represent is a pretty strong incentive for him to break away from other matters denying that he works for the public can have disastrous consequences. What are disastrous results? How about the same public he so obviously disrespects contacting state level government leaders would notice that his office that office of the representative has been abandoned and giving direction to begin the process of selecting a replacement. The authority of the public is real and it does not answer to privilege. Most public officers even those who would normally act as rulers no better than to just shove the voting public aside the claim of almost universal agreement on a matter is a claim to be the voice of the public. People are not only the owner but also the only real customer of government. Any contact claiming to have such an agreement behind it is a rude interruption of privilege. No matter how sure the one in office is on authority of the office the reality is still that the people are the only real party in interest as well as the source of all public authority. The owner calling on the employee who is hired into authority a representative who acts otherwise may well pay a stiff price for telling the owner that their employee is simply too busy to see them. Even the most privileged employee will not be telling their boss that he has to make an appointment if he wants a meeting. It is more likely that the boss is going to tell the employee when he has an opening to meet to be there. While it is true that there is a cultural urge to have rulers act to the contrary it is very much recognized that there are practical limits in the authority of governance. The general belief that the public cannot ever come together to any real effect is recognized as a belief only. There is also the very real threat that the impossible has been accomplished and it behooves the leader to understand the situation in case the impossible really has happened. Gee Mr. Citizen, we let you have the vote what do you want now? Unfortunate as it may be that attitude both we and our leaders are taught to expect whenever and wherever we find agreement our voice as a public we are outside of that cultural norm that in itself can be quite troubling to our ruling leadership. What does the congressman do when he gets notification that his public has agreed upon his being their financial agent in government and that a body of concerned citizens intends to meet on a particular evening at one of the local churches to discuss implementation. It notes the basis for agreement and that they need him to be there to help plan the required changes. First of all anything that can gain that level of agreement in the public is not going to be a surprise to the leader. He or she is part of that same public and has family that is also part of that same public. This is not so much a request as a summons for him to attend if he wants to assure that he continues in authority he takes the effort to be there. It is up to the one with real authority to pick when and where and how to meet with the one whom they employ. It is not a matter of convenience for the representative coming to that meeting to receive an assignment is part of being an employee. The one who is truly in authority can pick when and where the employee is to receive an assignment. There is the matter of courtesy by the public toward the one who represents them. But it is at the option of the people not at the convenience of the representative. The representative can suggest some other time in meeting place but it is up to the owner, the public to approve any changes. That is what employment is about. It is having the choices and making such decisions as seem personally most appropriate and beneficial. And yes with this lesson we are stepping more fully into personal empowerment. It just starts with realization of the true nature of agency and vision on where the decision authority actually lies. Our next lesson gets far more personal. We have been addressing where benefits or the removal of costs have potential for bringing us to agreement as a people. Our next effort will more fully address the other side of investment instead of costs that our commitment to a change effort will incur. And it is not just personal with us. It is personal with everyone who will take part in initiating that change, implementing that change or even supporting it. Even just supporting a cause that is strongly opposed by privileged leaders can come with costs. But this is a course for empowerment. And we are empowered where we have the choices and where we are able to choose when and where to commit our personal time and effort to accomplish what we value. This is the nature of performance, the nature of getting things done. First we need to understand what has value. Then we need to see what it is going to cost if we are able to act to gain that value. And only then can we look to efficiency considerations to how we minimize what it is that is likely to cost us to gain what we value.