 It is time to address our personal commitments in more detail. Humanity only does what people do. And we have a common basis for deciding what we do. It is ultimately personal, even when it is shared with others. We, individual human beings, are the unit of humanity that largely sets our actions to meet our own understanding of commitments and results. As humans, we have value in behavioral inertia. We do not change things unless there is some reason to change. Change is a challenge, and it would put requirements upon us to either accept the change or do something to interrupt or redirect it to best serve our personal sense of value. Our resistance to change is inherent in humanity. We do not regularly look for something else to do, but try to protect our existing priorities and work to them. What is true for us is also true for our friends and neighbors. They too resist change, and most certainly resist someone else introducing new priorities and requirements to which they have to respond. We generally term the resulting stability as comfort. There is human value in avoiding change. To this, we have to add the value of performance. We also have value in accomplishment, and commonly decide to act to accomplish something that we expect to have value. That is also human. We eat when we are hungry, rest when we are tired. We work to have resources to be able to harvest what we value, knowing that something change is inevitable and that there is also personal value in getting things done. For our performance purpose, we bring this decision process more into conscious awareness. We know that we are going to act. We know that we are going to get things done. We know that we are going to make decisions to act on a fairly continuous basis, and that, accordingly, we will have value in deciding to act when it can have greatest effect. We value performance itself. We are also keenly aware that it is not just us, but all humanity that feel compelled to make such decisions. Also, we value what we own, and history teaches us that we act as owners of what we do, of the processes we use to get things done. This is both a challenge and a working tool. It is a challenge as we resist the process changes. It is a tool as we can change process if the benefit from the change is efficient for us to decide to promote that change. Being intelligent beings, we have the opportunity to learn and to seek out those processes and process changes that will best serve in accomplishing what we value. With performance orientation, we are gaining the vision and tools to manage our own change efforts to best effect. This is enhanced by such knowledge as almost all real changes are accomplished by people working together, not by one person's commitment. Our commitments to change are to initiating a change, implementing a change, or supporting others as they see to their more active commitment. These are options for us as individuals. We have the knowledge that change is generally accomplished by people working together, by people who share value in a common result, a shared accomplishment. We know that they are also human and will be engaged in the same cost and benefit understanding, and also be seeking what to initiate, implement, or support as changes through their commitments. This is where we start our performance study of change management. One of this is really new to those receiving these lessons. This presentation is more for bringing the lessons already addressed to a new and more intense focus on the processes that will support the management of a change effort. In this context, management is addressed in terms of performance, in terms of how we get things done through the efforts of others, and this management is appropriate to all those who would initiate, implement, or support a value-driven change effort. I note that we are dealing in this study with performance, not with authority. It is not some support for winning over others or assuming rule over them. We are addressing so far as possible basic human values that we can share with others. These are the ones where we can most easily develop those common understandings of value that are useful for garnering the commitment of others to take part in accomplishing change. Consider that there are two general classes of value that we can recognize. The first is creating and delivering what people value. The second is removing impediments to our receipt of what we value. Yes, management is that basic. It is what we see witness daily and family members coming together to assure what they value as a family. We also have two concepts of inducement for our decisions. The one is to convince us that something has value. The other is to make us aware of where value is found. The one is advertisement, designed to make us aware of how valuable it is to use what others would sell. The other to present a possibility we otherwise would miss. And this is also about advertisement. This is a technique for bringing people together based on what many can value. There is negative advertising as well. It is how some decision to act might bring damage to the one who undertakes it. Or how it does harm to others so that they cannot join in corporate efforts. When we would publish a potential mandate, it is advertisement. It is information intended to bring people to see the value that can result from a specified change. And it is intended to provide such information that they too can both see the benefit for themselves and see that others are already sharing in that sense of value. And part of our individual challenge will be the common political use of advertisement to create an enhanced division. It is advertisement of issues and the importance of taking sides against others who are otherwise much like us. It is advertising of otherwise unpopular understandings to enhance their divisive effects. It is advertising the need to align against other people, reducing their ability to get anything done. Part of performance orientation is in seeing the cost of conflict and the loss of value that our rule-based leadership feels compelled to promote. My weasel wording approach compelled to promote is intentional. It is in recognition that this disempowers the leader too. It wastes the leader's time and effort even as it would put costs on us. This is not a value for the leader either as it also distracts them from getting anything done. Promoting those things that can only set people against each other is part of our current culture and denying it comes with a cost of disempowerment. We naturally value teaming, coming together to get what we all can value. But they, for performance, there is no they, no them. There is only us and only one result is achieved. Conflict is not a result and the effect of conflict is disempowerment of those who are intent in committing their efforts for that purpose. For performance, a person defends themselves and those they care for, but otherwise works to reject conflict by seeking what we, the big we, can value. We do have one highly injurious and disempowering lesson in our general culture and that is how people are untrustworthy. It is a teaching that people cannot be relied on and we have to approach everyone with caution. Hear and understand human beings are always trustworthy. It is not because you can trust them to do the right things or do the wrong things. It is that we are human beings who make our decisions based on who we are and the environment as we experience it. We can be trusted to do this every time. It is what we do because of our commitments. Our actions may seem variable, but there is little, if any, change in what we would accomplish. You can trust people to continue to be the same people in the future that they are today or were in the past. For our performance purpose, you can trust people to value personal freedom, prosperity, and their shared purposes with others. People who do not do what you want or expect them to do is based on what people do, not on their valued end result. It is not that the people are untrustworthy, but our expectation of how they attempt to accomplish things, what they do, are often proven wrong in reality. They just do not do what we expect them to do. Much of our performance orientation is built upon people finding trust because of what they value and how they value their shared purposes with us and others. When we set forth a result that all value and set our commitment upon an action that does promote that end, then we become trustworthy to those who can value that same result. The effect is empowering for us as we are presented as trustworthy. The effect is empowering for others who share that same sense of value and result as they can rely upon our commitment knowing how they value it. Consider that you have something that you really value and someone else finds a way that looks like it might work to support your getting it. It is not what you would do on your own and not what you would even encourage as a way to get it. Still, others are not buying into it. He is getting a lot of support from others who also see that same value and they too seem willing to take that direction. Do you insist that only your better approach can be followed or do you join in with others seeing that the possibility of success is actually greater because people are coming together to make it happen? This is performance orientation, arranging for some action that will generate what people value and that others are able to support and coordinate an action. This is the performance action, the change, if you will, that is the basis for bringing the actions of many to focus on gaining a valued result. The stated rule, everyone is worthy of trust when you know what they will continue to do. The challenge is not really knowing what you can trust them to do. For change, we need to trust one another to accomplish a valued result because we can be true to our personal commitments to that purpose. As you may remember, one of the first lessons in the study of human performance is that we are society, that we are the public, that we are humanity. There is no society except the society that is us, no public except the public of people, no humanity that is somehow separate from us. When it comes to human performance, there is only one party in interest and it is us. And the performance vision carries us further. Whatever is accomplished, the results of all that we do, that is what society accomplishes, what the public accomplishes and what humanity as a whole accomplishes. Conflict accomplishes drama. That is what value it provides. It is more a source of entertainment than anything else. If we are interested in actually accomplishing other results, we can value. Then we avoid conflict and seek for what can bring us together to gain some valued result. Our environment now breeds con artists as leaders and they tend to mislead themselves even more than they do common people. Privilege cannot exist over a people who are not internally conflicted so their privilege is supported by taking sides on issues, trying to influence what people will do to prevent others from what they might accomplish. Our lesson is an interesting one. Write out of political governance. When there is a change in administration, it almost always focuses on undoing what the conflicting party now replaced was able to accomplish. It creates only further conflict, not performance. The very nature of privilege minimizes any changes at all. It promotes stagnation, great commitments and efforts that produce waste. A group meets in your local park and many just drop their trash. When you come to see this, do you come into conflict because of what they are doing and the ad work you will do to clean up after them? It is them who offend us by their lack of consideration. The performance alternative is the value of having a clean park for all to use. It is to note the value and enlist those among them who are willing to be effective in helping you prepare it for others who will also be able to value it. It is to call people together for what people can value. Whether any member of the group disagrees or not, they will not see you as their enemies for your attempt to enlist them. For a guide, if it is not valuable enough for you to commit your time and effort to the action, trying to commit their actions is likely to be ineffective. Empowerment comes from your commitment to what has shared value. It is your commitment that calls others to join your effort. Conflicts arise through trying to get others to do the right things, insisting that they owe it to others. And if a few of the crowd do respond, also picking up a few things in their area, it encourages others to join in and it quickly and easily as accomplished a moment of shared value when those in the meeting glance around and see the result. They have accomplished something that has value and not just to those who took part in the effort. The fact that you have done it together has value. It is a value that you do not get when that cleanup is accomplished by someone paid to do it. The value is in your choice to act. Public charity is a challenge. Public compassion in place of your own is not a same benefit. The size of the giving someone else does in your name is not a source of personal value. It is not something that you really share with others because you did not decide to do it. As an empowered citizen who seeks to improve your nation and your economy, you need to address your role as a vendor, someone who has a product valued by others and for which they will, if they are able to evaluate it, be willing to part with some of what they have. Charity is a personal choice for each of us and committed based on what each of us does value. We give charity when it is valuable for us to do so. The potential improvement presented in this course or others you may discover by other means or develop personally have human value. But so does the time and effort of people. Every improvement involves a change. In presenting a change potential, you are offering something of value but only if others will commit their own time and effort to join in bringing about the change. Most people also have a sense of personal value in what they have learned to do and any change appears to be a cost, a loss of something that they value. It is like a vendor selling ice cream. We know that the children would gladly receive it but it requires parting with money that they also value to receive that treat. When it comes to changes in our culture as in the empowerment of individuals through this study, there is also the hurdle of disbelief, the learned propriety of isolation and division as the right way things are done. In our current framework, the idea of coming together is presented more as stopping someone else or other people from succeeding at something they would do. Empowerment by joining in what all people value is an intrusive change, something that is a cost by the very nature because it does not fit in with how we do things. The power of promoting personal choice is not in it being the right thing to do but in a potential empowerment that has been effectively denied as impossible by our culture. Of course, this has no impact on the reality or human effectiveness of coming together to get things done but it does raise the impression of an additional cost in the mind of those who are not already oriented to performance. The importance of communication and of your development of communication skills is set before you. If you would choose to be empowered, it will put the requirement upon you to develop the appropriate skills. The skills for simply supporting what others do may be minor, but taking effective part in change management or change activities will require you to deal effectively with others. There is also emphasis on human values rather than issues and causes. This is both a matter of achieving communication and finding such values that people will come together as owner of government or economy. Tools like the black box may be useful but only as you are prepared to use them. The challenge is passing your own vision to others so that they can also make intelligent commitments of their time and effort for what they can receive and value. To this, we have to add the two-pronged matter of personal resistance. We are also human and it is our own resistance to change that will urge us to that same stability that privilege is eager to offer as its product. It is the comfort of avoiding conflict, of refusing change when it would put a cost upon us. We have learned this. What we feel is right may exceed our natural resistance but that resistance is a reality of our culture, a reality of how we are socialized. It presents a personal cost to any decision to take part in upsetting that status quo of our present society and situation. When seen through the lens of performance orientation, this same natural resistance enhanced by socialization is a test for each of us. We know that we are every bit as seriously impacted as the people we want to appraise of some need for change. Here is the rule. You are every bit as resistant as they are. Whatever can be so obvious and improvement in value as to overcome your own resistance will likely be sufficient for others. It is right back to you not being alone, not being some contrary part of civilization. You and I are the nation. You and I are the economy. We are the only party in interest and this is true of others who are so like us in our shared humanity. It is the study of human performance. We come face to face with the reality of who we are and how we come to decision to commit our time and effort and other resources to gain what we most value. As incentive for this study, we have that human ability to accomplish the generation and delivery to us of what we can value. It is capture of that vision that we have massive untapped potentials for accomplishment. It is the art and science of human performance that opens the door to finding such agreement among ourselves that we can harvest from selected improvements in our nation and our economy. It is in the realization that we are also better able to focus our life energies on those things that we can both accomplish and value as our personal activities. These are huge human enticements for engagement, for volunteering some level of personal commitments to who we are. We all should support effectively gaining what results we value. It also opens away to a level of personal freedom that has never been attained before. It is a level of personal ability to deal effectively with those in our environment. It is a huge increase in the acceptance of ownership. It opened disregard of the privileges that some people would claim to rule over us. And to push it to the extreme, it is recognizing the amazing fuel of current direction waste of our personal resources that is daily demanded of us. And that it is wasted in order to serve the benevolent purposes of our well-meaning leaders. Freedom is in the mandate. It is the owner's instruction to those who think the owner has set him or her into authority to rule. It is the owner's direction to those same leaders as servants of the people. As employees who are only in their positions of public authority to see to the purposes that we the people have set upon them. And finally, there is no real us and them. Our leaders are every bit as human as we are. They also care for their own families and work to achieve those human things that we all value. When we find effective agreement as a people, leaders can be called to support and lead our public change efforts. You and others like you are the only party in interest. We are society. We are the public. We are humanity. There is no other public purpose than the purpose we have. The idea that our leaders might define other purposes, causes for government to pursue, stances on issues where we are not agreed, speaks to a disturbing disrespect for us as the owner and public customer. And so your local government leaders pass a law requiring you to have special inspection and admission control standards before you can legally operate your vehicle. As you live in a tourist area, this is a cost placed on you as a resident while most of the other vehicles are from out of town. You gather a small group of local citizens with the intent of repealing that restriction. Those in the group carry the cost of their friends and neighbors. What you need to realize is that you have just become an agent of the public. You are an agent from the same population that elected the local leaders who put that legal requirement in place. Unlike those in elected office, you do not need to act on privilege and have no authority to rule over others. You have, by actions taken, become the in fact agent for the purpose of change. If you get a Pareto level agreement on the action you propose to take, the simple repeal of the offensive law entirely, you become the voice of the people when you address it to those who are in public office. What you deliver to them is a mandate to repeal that law. It is not some permissive wish that is to be removed. At that level, you are the voice of the people, those who own the local government directing their action. With the agreement and the public behind you, you are their effective boss. Should you be informed that they will schedule the matter for discussion in two weeks, you are the effective authority to reset their priorities. I'll be back in two days, which is plenty of time to take care of this. If they seem hesitant or try to raise the important work they have pending, I don't think you want me to report back to those who sent me here that you have more important things to do than to represent them. It is called management. It is accomplished by setting an assignment upon an employee and following up to assure that it is completed. And here is the kicker. It does not matter whether they feel privileged in their positions or not. It does not matter if they personally have other priorities. It does not matter if they have already agreed with each other on something else. Whenever the people are agreed at the appropriate level, the people are the only party in interest. This is the public working through you as an agent, assigning work to public employees. If they want to stay employed, it behooves them to comply with the public that pays their salaries. But we have hired inspectors, rented facilities, purchased equipment. But you know that you represent the public and these hired leaders would set an office to do the management. I'll be back in two days. We are paying you to manage it. All you have to do then is to report the assignment to those who supported the mandate and show up in two days to receive the completion of that assignment. If you do not receive it, then it is time to consider consequences. A mandate is not a suggestion. It is the voice of the owner issuing an assignment to the people that have been hired by the public. Our common culture would promote the leadership avoiding that assignment by finding something more important to do. We have some common directions as in declaring that the money collected for inspection was used to fund the police and that the funding is going to have to be cut out of their budget if we just pull a plug. The answer is the answer that boss gives to the employee who says he will no longer be able to maintain his tools and if you force him to take productive action. The employees do not get to ignore their boss's priorities and threatening the public will damage as a matter of privilege, not of service. I'll be back in two days. If anything further seems necessary to support their efforts, it is probably a further emphasis that they are not in charge for their own purposes. If your inability to fund the police what you want me to tell the people who I represent, the simple truth is that when the owner steps into management over what they own, they're the only authority. There is no us and them and public employees who would deny the public will face consequences for any contrary acts. There are not going to be frivolous mandates. You cannot get that level of agreement without something that people care enough about to come to agreement. Trying to put consequences on the public from their effort that change is going to be a reality due to our culture but is unlikely to be effective unless the agent takes a subservient role. In this lesson, we have been discussing how to maximize our effectiveness through using the tool of public mandate. This can be exciting stuff, stepping into an agency of greater authority than those who are elected. Our next lesson is even more so. It is presentation of an efficient method for accomplishing mandate, for establishing that agreement that creates a mandate. For your investment, it is a how-to for minimizing what you have to commit to initiate mandated changes.