I’ve spent a lot of time this week thinking about Energy Analysis, which is a central part of the Superdemocracy project I’m working on.

Energy Analysis is a different way of viewing how organizations work. Instead of seeing people in particular “jobs” — which are ragbags of roles inherited from earlier empire building and power grabs — we examine the energy flows through the whole unit. We also look at the type of energy involved. This method always points up people placement as the main source of rigidities in any large organized group.

It’s a simple enough procedure, but breaks away from our normal worldview in which people are the natural drivers and shakers of all corporate activity. At first sight, it can leave you a bit disorientated, but think of Google. From the outside, the Googleplex looks like a giant energy plasma instead of a normal corporation, like Microsoft or IBM. And yet even Google has still fully to evolve into a true superdemocratic organism.

Then, out of the blue, a perfect example of an energy-driven corpo landed with a thud in my lap : the European Commission.

Basic background
The EU Commission is a board of quasi civil servants, drawn from the political classes of EU member states, and based in Brussels. Unlike normal secretariats it exercises considerable executive powers by proposing new Europe-wide legislation which eventually becomes legal throughout the community.

It has steadily amassed a lot of influence and control, backed by a tame supreme court which almost always supports the central orthodoxy. Its methodology has been “salami-slicing”, taking power in small increments that they think will not be noticed by busy people, but will accumulate over time into a vast control console for the whole of Europe.

The Commission is widely regarded as a political graveyard for national politicians who see it as western Europe’s equivalent to the Siberian salt mines of the old Soviet Union, where out-of-favour opponents were conveniently deposited. Britain’s commissioner, Peter Mandleson, a friend of Tony Blair, was twice forced out of the British Cabinet for alleged dishonesty. He now controls trade negotiations for all 27 countries in the EU.
/Basic Background

Now just imagine what all that negative energy will do if concentrated in one supranational body given the power to use it.

Naturally, that resentment and loss of status back home will fixate on stripping power from national governments and lodging it in Brussels. This will compensate Commissioners psychologically for the assumed shabby treatment these people had received from national politicians.

In short, the Commission will inevitably become a kind of politburo, hoovering power to the centre and spewing out hundreds of thousands of prescriptive “directives” for the folks back home. It will be job justification and revenge politics writ large by a powerful bunch of losers.

And that’s just what has happened over the past 35 years, ever since the UK joined an inoffensive “Common Market” with “no political or sovereignty implications”. The energy map of the institution predicts perfectly how it has evolved over the decades. It’s also a fact that the Commission’s accounts have not been cleared for 13 years by their own court of auditors on the grounds of massive fraud.

This week a constitution was signed by national politicians which paves the way for yet more power grabs and the downgrading of democratic procedures and accountability.

You would rightly guess that most ordinary people are totally against all this. Indeed, two years ago both France and the Netherlands voted it down in referendums, and Britain would have done the same if allowed to have a say by the slippery Blair and Brown. The constitution has now been repackaged and renamed — an amending treaty. This time they’ve walked away with the whole salami.

So the transition from common market to legal jurisdiction is almost complete, with not a referendum of the people in sight. And it’s all been driven by the energies funnelled into the Commission by short-sighted, short-termist national politicians. Stitch-up is too mild a comment for what has taken place.

This week also sees the 350th anniversary of the Flushing Remonstrance which was issued by English settlers in New Holland, now New York, in protest against religious persecutions by the then Dutch rulers. In retrospect it was the model for all the other Declarations and freedom documents that followed.

So do we need our own Flushing Remonstrance here in western Europe? It would be a good start, but we should also look at the energy makeup of the Brussels Commission and so-called Court of Justice. Then we could get back to free trade and dispense with the futilities of failed politicians.

As Shakespeare put it, we must renounce “the equivocation of the fiend that lies like truth”.

Energy Analysis is a useful tool for that in any organization, especially when aimed at finding the points of maximum competence for the taking of critical decisions. One thing’s for sure, pushing up decisions to Brussels is the worst of all possible worlds — the point of maximum incompetence.

But then we hardly live in a sane universe.

In developing my forthcoming book, Superdemocracy — The New Art of Corporate Governance, I’ve been looking closely at the dream of synergy and the reality of particularity. #

All mergers and acquisitions are based on the idea that economies of scale will drive down costs across the board and produce synergies between organizations. This assumption is so ingrained in our thinking that few people stop to ask why most takeovers fail.

In any group activity there’s a hierarchy of decisionmaking. Each person in the structure gets a bagload of responsibilities based on various assumptions, and the empire-building of their predecessors. Like cream in a milk bottle, decisions have a strong tendency to rise up the hierarchy, stopping only when the number of assumptions needed to take them exceeds common sense.

Notice the word “exceeds”. This isn’t a rational process, it’s pushed purely by ego and vanity.

The result is that most decisions in any organization (business or governmental) produce a one-size-fits-all outcome which gives a false sense of synergy, while destroying efficiency and particularity.

“Particularity” may sound odd here but, in reality, it’s the crux of the well-being of any complex infrastructure. It means decisions are made with few assumptions and with a “size”, or scale, that fits the need of every case.

Modern Western countries are one-size-fits-all societies. It’s our weakest link and the point where our enemies concentrate their attacks. They know most decisions, whether laws, regulations, red tape, whatever, are unpopular and largely unworkable, because they lack particularity.

Thus we need armies of lawyers to sort things out, over long periods of time. We also have to throw huge amounts of national and business capital at problems just to keep them afloat.

Politburo orders are always wrong. EU “directives” are never right for most people. Decisions taken on 10 Downing Street’s sofa have been proved disastrous time and again. White House decisions are hardly spangled with success. Microsoft, and even lucky Google, make crass moves all the time which go totally pear-shaped.

If every decision were taken at the point of maximum competence, or very near to it, there would be few assumptions to make, and the outcome would be as close to perfect as it’s possible to reach.

So here’s The Superdemocracy Principle : Particularity means never having to make assumptions. If you’re making assumptions, the decision shouldn’t be taken at your pay grade.