Category Archives: complexity

EIGHT DECADES OF INSIGHTS 75-THE ADVISOR

FOREIGN POLICY?

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The President had just entered the Advisor’s underground office. It was a surprise visit. The Advisor was alerted that  the President was on his way down to the tunnel between the White House and the Treasury Department. The Advisor’s office was off an unused and restricted branch off the main tunnel. Access to the Advisor and the secret location was now controlled by the Secret Service. The existence of the Advisor and his location was the best-kept secret in the nation.

The President took his customary seat at the small conference table and said, “I need to clear my thinking about Syria and foreign policy in general. I don’t really like your advice but it does help me think through through problems.”

Mr. President, my mission is to help you. If my advice helps your thinking about problems, that’s good. What specifically do you want to cover tonight?”

“A few weeks ago you asked me what I meant by the phrase, ‘Transform America.’ Telling you my thoughts re transformation clarified my thinking. Today I want to talk about my vision of America in the world.”

“I’m the smallest audience a President ever had for such a topic. I am honored. Please, your audience is ready.”

“People say I came to the White House with very little experience. To some extent that is true. My actual experience with managing huge organizations or in leadership roles is nonexistent. But I bring  other skills no other President had. I was a practicing Muslim when I was very young. It is a very different religion from Christianity or any other world religion. More is expected from the believer. Free thinking is discouraged. There was no reformation in Islam. The individual, the family, and the Nation are all one. Islamic law is the law. Religion and country are not separate. I am no longer a Muslim but I know what they feel and think. I doubt if any previous President could make that statement.

“My father was not an American. He was a true  Kenyan nationalist, as was his family. They did not sit around and hope things would  change. They worked and struggled for change. To me change is part of the result of hope and struggle. I understand the process. I was also exposed to collectivist theology when I was very young.

“To me the sacrifice of individualism or the freedom of the individual must give way to the greater good of collectivism. You may think that this is a strange way to explain my foreign policy objectives. But it isn’t. In place of the individual put a single nation state. Now what is different? The freedom of a single nation must give way to the collectivist’s better world. America has dominated the world since World War II. The only change is that America became more powerful and wealthy while the rest of the world fell far behind. When I came to power the United States was the only super power.

“I believe that is wrong. It is wrong for an individual or a group of individuals to control wealth and power in a single country just as it is wrong for one nation to control more than its fair share of the world’s resources and power.

“My foreign policy plan is to gradually spread America’s wealth to other nations and to slowly weaken the power of the United States military to dominate the world. I do not want America to become energy self-sufficient.

“There will be no pipeline bringing oil from Canada to our refineries. Canada does need more wealth. The Muslim world does. If they cannot sell their oil, they will be lost.  Buying oil from OPEC, borrowing money from China, climate control and Cap and Trade, pushing our manufacturing to other countries, keeping taxes high – all these policies are spreading America’s wealth. Domestically my goal is to destroy the ability of families to accumulate great wealth. Very high death taxes are the way to do that. But back to foreign policy.

“When we become a more humanitarian, less wealthy nation and reduce our stockpile of conventional and nuclear weapons, other nations will be more willing to join with us to better the entire population of the world. In theory the same process and theory used to spread the wealth among the American population, can be used to spread America’s wealth throughout the world. One world, one people, one God is not an idle dream. I know I can’t achieve all this in three more years but a series of Progressive Presidents, and Congresses can. I have always known I was a citizen of the world. What do you think?”

“Mr. President, if that is your dream, it doesn’t matter what I think.”

“No. I need to hear your comments.”

“You must know that what you have described is not new. It is an Utopian plan that has been tried in both small- scale models within the United States and in countries such as, Russia, China, Germany, Cuba, Eastern Europe, a few nations in Africa, and England. When people see the Utopia they sacrificed for, they haven’t liked what they saw. The problem is Collectivism requires management by an elite, chosen by whatever process. The management challenge presented by collectivization is too great for any elite structure.

All elites in history who have had total control over the economy, the people, the courts, police, and military have succumbed to corruption. The term power elite describes the problem. Mr. President, look at your own Administration. It is an elitist structure. Where is the transparency you promised? You are an elitist yourself. You know what is good for the people better than they do. ‘They will not be able to understand Ben Ghazi. So why tell them?’ All the unprecedented incursions of individual freedoms by Executive decree, the disdain you have shown for the Constitution and the courts. Your unwillingness to work with the Congress.

“I see I’ve struck a nerve. I am not trying to insult you, but I am trying to cause you to rethink collectivism as a goal, domestically and internationally. You may have some immediate successes but I fear failure will be your final result with great damage to the America you were elected to guide.”

“I thought you, as an old black man, would understand what I’m trying to do.”

“Someday, I’ll tell you my story. Thank you, Mr. President for being so honest with me. I do have your best interests as my mission.”

The President finished his coffee, stabbed out his cigarette and let himself out.

The author has 27 years of Government service, including two years serving President Ronald Reagan in the 1980s as an

Meeting with President Reagan, Vice President Bush, Deputy National Security Adviser Frank Carlucci and General Colin Powell in the Oval Office.

advisor. Considering today’s volatile political situation, you are encouraged to share this on Facebook and to click the “like” button below. Comments and dialogue are welcome.

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EIGHT DECADES OF INSIGHTS 32

Management of Complexity

Management of Complexity (Photo credit: michael.heiss)

THE REAL BI-PARTISAN ISSUE

Nearly every day I hear someone saying, “I can’t believe what I just heard the administration is doing.” If there ever was a bi-partisan statement, this is it. Democrats or Republicans, it makes no difference when it comes to dumbness.

English: Seal of the United States Department ...

English: Seal of the United States Department of Homeland Security. (Photo credit: Wikipedia)

Since the first days of  centralized authority, government dumbness has been with us. In the last 150 years, the level of government centralization has steadily grown to levels that jeopardize the continued development of our civilization. The roots of centralization have been nurtured by an explosion of progress in the transmission and processing of information. Good thing? Maybe yes. But many good things have dangerous side effects.

It is usually true, the closer a leader or manager is to a situation or problem, the more they know about the facts and can fix the problem or recommend a wise course of action. A hallmark of an effective leader and manager is their ability to put a premium on the advice from ‘people on the ground.’ As governments have moved more toward centralization, managers have been moved further and further from people on the ground. There are myriad management levels between the point of contact with the situation or problem and the top-level decision maker. Government managers, in my favorite example, of the Department of Homeland Security, are several light years beyond their span of control. While I don’t think the recent and current heads of Homeland Security are exemplary managers or leaders, no human can do more than pretend they can manage something as large and diverse as Homeland Security or the Intelligence Community or a number of other government agencies and departments.

You see, the  catalyst of expanding centralization is the speed of information transmission and processing. Managers believe because they can communicate they can understand and manage. This is a dangerous illusion. How well did Presidents Johnson and Nixon, Secretary of Defense McNamara, and later National Security Advisor Kissinger personally manage the Vietnam War? Not well. I was there and read many of their directives. Some verged on comic relief.

A few organs of government like the Defense Department and NASA have been able to somewhat mitigate the downside of centralization because at all levels, except the very top, managers come from men and women on their way up the management ladder. They and their staffs can receive and understand the flow of information. They understand the culture. In a sense they have all been there, done that. I believe the only remedy to the downsides of centralization is to ensure organizations are made up nearly entirely of men and women who have had a deep immersion in various mission levels of their organization and to decentralize those departments and agencies that have an impossible scope of attention and management for anyone. Letting the states manage their own affairs according to the Constitution will check rampant centralization. This is truly a bi-partisan issue.

By the author of the Jack Brandon Thriller Series.

http://www.factsandfictions.com

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INSIGHTS FROM EIGHT DECADES #6

CENTRALIZATION

President George W. Bush signs the Homeland Se...

President George W. Bush signs the Homeland Security Appropriations Act of 2004 on October 1, 2003. (Photo credit: Wikipedia)

Does every civilization contain the seeds of its destruction? Maybe the historians are right when they publish learned tomes describing trends and signals of certain decline in  highly organized cultures. Conservatives sometimes claim when the ‘takers’ out number and out vote the ‘givers’ the end is coming. Maybe, maybe not. Another signal I’ve recently heard is fascination or obsession with spectator sports or games is a sure sign we’re sledding downhill. Again, maybe. I don’t find either of those or a number of others, persuasive.

My own worry is the embedded drive in humans to continue the process of centralization. Defined as combining segments of government, business or religion into fewer and fewer segments where fewer and fewer people make decisions. This process expands the scope of control beyond the ability of anyone to be an effective manager and steward of public funds. It is all part of the desire to make things better. Watch, when things go ‘wrong’ the cry is, put someone in charge. Make someone responsible. 9/11 gave us that opportunity. Something was wrong. How else could such blow strike our homeland? A conservative government, under President Bush, moved to fix the problem. By, of course, putting pieces of government together under a central  control. To start with the pieces of government in their separateness, were not well managed. Many of them were already too large.

Today Homeland Security, is an example of centralizing management until you reach numbing inefficiency. Another example is the DNI organization. The Director of National Intelligence is about the worst fix anyone could have made to improve the collection, analysis and dissemination of intelligence. I defy anyone to prove money is being saved or that the product produced has been improved. Top managers of such over centralized organizations don’t have a clue to what is happening in the trenches. Their main concern is often getting enough reporting from the far reaches of their commands to make them look credible, especially when briefing the President or appearing before an aggressive group of journalists or legislators.

Unfortunately both our main political parties are vulnerable to the drive to fix things by centralization. National Health Care or Obamacare, Dodd Frank, over reaches of OPA and the Department of Energy are examples of good intentions leading to disastrous unforeseen consequences.

While some centralization is necessary, decentralization is the sure path to renewed growth and vitality in both business and government. Good people in charge of manageable organizations can fix problems. Over centralization cannot.

by the author of the Jack Brandon thriller series         http://www.factsandfictions.com

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