The management and democracy symbiosis.

By Francisco Pantaleo-Gandais
Free World, take note.
Symbiosis is a phenomenon where factors create an indivisible and interdependent
relationship. Human beings and the environments is our basic symbiosis.

Each person lives this relationship with others, starting with a relative, a couple, a
family, a team, an organization, the polity, or the natural environment, interacting
dependently. From one person to humanity, individual satisfaction -that plurally
becomes group one- is the factor that defines any social system in all aspects
representing the beginning and the destiny of human evolution as the free will rights'
reach expands. Freedom propels human upgrowth. These are not only nice words.

The human evolution quantum leap happened after World War II when almost half
the planet adopted democracy. There are many reasons for this outstanding
upgrowth. However, However, free will’s right massification is the main one, as its
reach gave new possibilities to billions of free individuals who may achieve and
choose different kinds of satisfaction.

Evolution ended the –almost total- ancient dominion of the autocratic impoverishing
global order by massively expanding freedom's progress. The issue ignored by many
leaders at that moment was that freedom systems and progress demand management
to satisfy a changing environment, not just administration, as in the previous pattern.

Such a reality created new business systems to serve massive competitive markets, as
plural welfare based on plural satisfaction freedom is now in command. These
conditions originated adaptations in leadership, socio-economic models, and even
new professions to fit specialized needs. Here is the breeding ground of management.

Any activity controlled by autocracy has only one purpose: the satisfaction of a few.
For thousands of years, this was the principle commanding the administration of
absolute monarchs, dictators, and even traders. The antique's mentality never
comprehended humanity as the value of all human beings, so not the individual
welfare but the total sum of such one builds the strength of the whole, feeding and
protecting each other. The concept of humanity beyond its sensibility has been
decisive in creating our best evolution in history.
In an autocracy, only a few have the power, so operators administrate third-party
assets obeying commands and standards of those with enough dominion to please and
protect their selfish satisfaction.

In a democracy, each citizen owns rights and duties on private property and a
common assets figure called the republic in Latin. Thereby we need operators to obey
a plural legal order and majority’s decisions, but mostly we need managers to build a
plural satisfaction balance.

The Democracy, as an outcome of all factors that define this system, politics means
management of the polis’ welfare. Any other administration of the polis that doesn’t
match the essential democratic principle of the benefit of the “demos” (people in
Greek), as the owner of all powers, cannot be called politics. The problem isn’t politics
but the lack of it when honest and efficient people are absent. Is a mistake to adopt the
corrupt vision that most people have of the politics’ concept that belongs to autocracy.

Beyond any political theory, democracy needs managers to balance satisfaction

among plural factors with power. All other political models only satisfy the few with
power by administrating assets and obedient operators.

In a corporation, managers coordinate a satisfaction balance between investors,

public factors, suppliers, operators, sales force, and consumers in obedience to the
latter's demand and the legal system.

In conclusion, for any environment, personal, corporate or public, management’s

purpose is to balance satisfaction among all system factors, internal or external. We
must get the best of a circumstance to create the best satisfaction balance, even
breaking and changing pre-set standards, or else we are only operators keeping the
establishment’s order, as we need it until it does not work anymore.

Under this conclusion and the duty that each one has as a citizen, we can detect a link
between management and democracy. Each citizen is a manager of its democratic
system as a co-owner of the republic, just as managing its life or private property.
Such task imposes a state organization capable to respond to plural needs.

Plural attention's responsibility defines the size and complexity of a state. The concept
of the state belongs to plural satisfaction systems. Absolutist monarchies don’t need
such one, as the monarch's satisfaction is the only one to be regarded, considering the
rest of human beings as cattle. Dictators’ state structures follow the same pattern.
In a democracy, only by considering all human rights, state structures are complex
and large, limiting their efficiency when only one or very few are the control locus –
such is the case of flawed democracies. Without options, democracy imposes plurality
in its power's origin, control, administration, supervision, and responses.

To conclude, let’s see an example that may demonstrate these ideas.

Since 2002, I belong to management group dedicated to studying the operation of the
Venezuelan state during the democratic period. Among other conclusions, we found
out that a large part of the problems, that led to the loss of this system, arose from
errors in the design of the state.

Among other errors, the presidentialization of the state power and fortune, was the
continuation of the old autocratic state design used by dictators. Another error was
the privatization of the electoral parties by a corrupt corporation, as this became the
only group able to cope with the colossal costs of a mediatic electoral campaign.

During the early Sixties, as part of political beliefs, democracy founders disregarding
management didn’t design a new plural state. Then, they thought that only including
human rights in the National Constitution was enough to succeed, almost keeping the
old one-man state design but ignoring its negative effects on the dimension of the
nation’s future. Such a centralized structure collapsed as it had to respond to a new
mass of needs resulting from human rights, its progress, and a higher population as an
effect of the national operational reach that never existed before.

Therefore, it's absurd to think that one-man, the President, as the individual in
command of this highly complex system, can cope with such a task. Even worse,
almost all of the state power under few’s control was legalized, with its incompetence.

In the beginning, Presidents and their staff were honest, but corrupt people became
strong electoral sponsors, imposing their agents in political parties and state
positions. By the ‘80s, system design mistakes started to institutionalize corruption
and incompetence: 1) by the President’s limited supervision capacity, 2) by the
presidential constitutional power to influence the whole state, and 3) by creating an
incompetent payroll submissive to corrupt gangs. The kleptocracy took control.

Democracy only exists as citizen power and satisfaction are respected and protected.
The only political ideology I believe in is democracy as the management system of the
welfare of its owners, the citizens. Democracy can only exist through management.
Do you have any doubt that management and democracy are symbiotic?
When dishonest, criminals, corrupt or incompetent are leading an organization, those
who do not control it can't expect a good destiny. In the case of a corporation or
company, negative consequences are limited in most cases. In the case of countries, it
depends on the political model. Under an autocracy, such tragedy is usual, even as
part of a strategy to debilitate the people. Under democracy, a wrong administration
can mean the end of such a system and our good living quality, mainly because
efficient honesty was not in control. Take note.

My experience tells me I have to address this message to efficient honest people who
believe in management but ignore the true and indivisible importance of Democracy
in our living quality, society, and freedom, hence for the Free World. One of the
reasons for such ignorance is their hate to the deceiving activity that the dishonest
manipulate as politics. Such an attitude creates distance from reality, becoming a
critical mistake when you own your destiny by democratic right and duty.

I also reject any dishonesty, but do you realize the power that bad people obtain
because of our distance from politics? Democracy and management are
interdependent and indivisible for many reasons.

Each citizen, balancing satisfaction between wishes, needs, rights, rules, and duties, as
any owner, has to manage their destiny and the destiny and use of their property
(state, republic, community, and private assets), acting or participating in its
administration, strategies, plans, means, and maintenance. Do you let your destiny
and the destiny of your property to dishonest people only because you are absent?
The state is our property, and its power affects our living quality and our power.

In 1999, after Venezuela lost its democracy, we began to understand our role. Thus
the main reason to leave my isolation from politics is that I am one of freedom's sons,
a citizen of democratic Venezuela and so of the Free World.

As each citizen is the owner of the republic and responsible for the system, then each
one of us is the first power of democracy so the responsibility inverts from “theirs” in
autocracy to “ours”. Thereby, since 2002, as a manager, I decided to invest my time
and professional skills to promote solutions for all of us by studying and analysing
democratic systems and structures, focusing on Venezuela, plus examining other
countries in a team, along with others colleagues and professionals.
It didn’t take much time for our team to realize that the polis is a synonym for society
in Greek. Then, politics is the general label for the ancient activity of administrating
the polis, no matter the regime.

The cause of the dishonest in control of any organization is not that they struggle to
reach it, but because we let them do so, and even worse, we, the honest, don’t do
enough to be in such control. This is the responsibility of the owners. Such is the
responsibility of the citizens as owners of their republic – remember its meaning res
publica.

Individualistic models cannot match democratic standards. This is the case of the
presidential model distinctive of the Third World flawed democracies, that
concentrate too much power in one individual, becoming anti-democratic, highly
corrupted and most inefficient to meet the plural needs of citizens and the state itself.

It looks like this weird situation of the majority under the political control of a
dishonest, greedy, and/or selfish minority drives us back to autocracy as a
consequence of nature's law mandate: Each void fills. Reality says that our distance or
absence is a costly mistake as this facilitates bad people reaching political positions,
thus gaining more power to protect themselves while destroying our living quality.

Many good people need to re-examine their way to see politics if we want to be a
majority in control to protect democracy and improve it. Such a system is the cause of
humankind's life quality and its global reach at the best levels ever achieved in
history. Not realizing this importance brings problems that lead to its destruction.
Democracy demands managers on top, way upon traders.

We Venezuelans have to suffer the worst holocaust in our republic’s history because
of such distance. A lesson the Free World should know very well. After all, we lost
democracy because most of us, being honest people, only focused on our private life
and left alone the wrong guys controlling our destiny. Most business leaders, like in
autocracy, were traders, not managers, as they focused on their money, not on the
whole system’s factors as the freedom that provided the best benefits ever achieved.

Traders, in the most pragmatic sense, behave as operators, almost robots, driven by
numeric goals ignoring the rest of the system's factors that affect such ones. These
don't create development, so they exploit opportunities until the benefits don't match
the expected results. Nothing else but numbers decide whether they remain or move
to another business or place. It is one of the oldest activities associated with
autocracies, never loyal to human satisfaction unless it means more money in their
pocket. Such behaviour even betrays the systems and people that the best life quality
offer to themselves. These can buy or sell protection but never get it free from people
because they never give it to them for free.

Of course, all businesses do trading, but the level of interest in human values makes
the difference between traders and managers