The Post-Nation Era

Ever since coming up with the solution of abandoning countries in favour of global and very local governance, my head has been spinning about how it might work. But what has become clearer in my mind is the basic belief that it would work, or at least be a major improvement on what we have today.

I have started reading political statements and news articles in a different way. Never before has I realised that nations and their apologists did so much damage. Look out for policies defined in a national interest that are plainly against a global interest and arguably against the interest of the citizens of the subject country too. There are everywhere. Some are blatant – just read the obituaries for Kim Jong Il. Others are more subtle – look at the statements of European leaders around their recent summit. The worse an argument is, the more likely it is to be sold using a justification of national interest, and we fall for it!

So am I advocating a sort of big brother super-state? Well, I hope not. Though I have started to look again at one of the countries I had the privilege of living in during the 1990’s, namely Sweden. The place had a collectivist feel which I found strange at the time. Districts of cities had a lot of power, and people clubbed together readily on basic things. As an example, a typical apartment block had a common room in the basement for laundry, thereby saving electricity, freeing space in kitchens and creating social contact all at the same time, at the cost of a bit of time and planning.

Then the Swedish state was more intrusive than I was used to. We all had personal numbers and identity cards, and information about each other was readily available to all, for example income and tax records. Taxes were high, and very progressive, but then services were excellent too. My favourite example concerned affordable childcare facilities, whereby parents could both work while raising children. Also, people worked hard, but their hours showed a good balance between work and family.

Of course Sweden is also famous for its environmental leadership – with a clear understanding of common goods - and its generous overseas aid. Ten years ago, capitalists scoffed at the Swedish model, but they seem to have fine-tuned it a little now to promote growth and innovation a bit more. They tried a Tobin tax, but found that alone it was too costly. Even while I was there, the arguments against innovation seemed thin – as an example Swedish IT was always leading edge – but now the economy has become a leader again overall.

So Sweden may be a good model for future global governance. Lots of local democracy, within an accepted system of benign global rules. It is feasible. It even works to an extent in isolation, so imagine its power if everyone played by those rules.
What might those rules look like?

Start with the universal declaration of human rights, maybe strengthened a little with statements about gender equality and rights of children. After abolishing countries, we can also add in a right for full freedom of movement and residence. We just have to accept transparency in our affairs.

Next, create an economic policy for the world. Common goods, such as forests and natural resources, are owned commonly. One central bank runs a global monetary and fiscal policy with a single currency. Goals are full employment, global balance sheet (common resource) growth, stable prices including asset prices, a declining GINI coefficient, and fair outcomes for each generation. Taxes would focus on production and on redistribution.

Much tax would be collected or be immediately reallocated locally, to communities of say 100,000-500,000 people. Health, education, housing, policing and social care would be managed locally, and communities could also raise tax on property and consumption. Where I am struggling in the extent to which communities should be regulated. I want competition at this level, but not at the expense of human rights and wider goals. Ideally, there are a set of big rules about freedom of movement and human rights, but everything else would be the subject of local democracy. But a part of me would intervene too much. Why not outlaw smoking? Or gambling? This part gets tricky.

Companies would be registered and regulated globally, with no need for subsidiaries. Shareholders and workers would have lots of rights to prevent greed, and communities would encourage companies to locate in their areas. Careers are managed by individuals, with much freedom of movement, personal education and personal pension plans, and the right to variable working hours and styles.

There would need to be a lot of transition arrangements, but the EU experience shows that these can be managed.

There is a second type of community. We all have a residence community, but we are also free to join communities of interest as well, for example religions or languages. And families of course. This way traditions can be maintained and sensitivities can be managed, at least in theory.

Am I mad? Does this sound like communism, or at least collectivism? We all know what happened to communism, its inherent flaws. Would this system reduce corruption, ore make it worse? Would it stifle development? I don’t really know. But I do know we could eliminate armies and secret police. We could solve the current crisis in an instant. Climate change would be resolved. The millennium development goals would be achieved, indeed exceeded.

What about the people? Could we survive without our nations? For this one, look at football. When there are clubs, we don’t really care too much about countries. My guess it would be the same with governance, that given the chance to support a local team of people we identified with, together with other communities of global interest, we could easily dispense with the nation.

The sad thing is, I don’t think we are ready to try. We have all been brainwashed, and our elites have too much to lose. Even the most noble live experiment of pooling resources, the EU, is collapsing rather than thriving.

But I’ll continue reading articles and statements with my new lens. Try doing the same, you may reach the same conclusion.

Now I’ll retire to read my Christmas treat, the Economist. I’ve only read two special articles so far and already I’m captivated, the comparison between Martin Luther and Facebook was simply brilliant.

Happy Christmas and a healthy and peaceful 2012.

After Democracy - The World of John Lennon

Imagine there’s no countries, it isn’t hard to do, nothing to kill or die for, and no religion too.

How did countries come about? Originally we were individuals, then loose groupings, then tribes. The people who grouped us into countries were Kings, or Priests, or Landowners, all looking for ways to legitimise their established advantages. It enabled laws (initially on things like slavery and surfdom), taxes and tithes, trade, and borders – to keep people in, and to keep people out.

Now we need laws, and taxes. And we benefit from trade. But most of the rest of that list only do harm to development. And what if the good bits – laws, taxes and trade – could be managed within a single global country? Why not?

The start of this line of thinking was to look at the mess democracy is currently making. Democracy itself is not the problem – indeed it seems better than other systems – but we have allowed it to become misused.

A lot of this is about language, and the use of language to pursue tribal goals (for the modern day Kings of course). Democracy becomes associated with freedom. What sort of freedom? In some countries freedom becomes associated with God, a God who somehow is on our side.

I’m sorry to be blunt, but this is almost akin to fascism. Freedom is a relative concept, applicable only to insiders and within defined boundaries. How can we espouse freedom when we invade others, build fences, lock up so many citizens, allow an explosion of inequality, and allow our establishment to peddle lies?

Good concepts have been taken over for tribal ends here. It was interesting this week to read that Egyptians are not hankering for democracy and freedom, but for dignity and justice. These are better goals, and the system should be shaped to deliver those goals, rather than be the goal itself.

So what system best delivers dignity and justice? I think I would add a third goal, something about development - a sustainable positive evolution of living standards. That is a bit wordy, but it covers things like health (eg. infant mortality) and other such progress.

Let us learn from other systems that have lasted to course. Families can be functional or dysfunctional, but their strength is their compact self-support mechanism. A lot of our dignity comes from our family, at least when it works well. Families distribute blessings with some justice, and protect the weak.

Churches have perpetrated some of the worst evils on the world over the centuries. But, at their heart and when well-run, they promote values supporting dignity and justice. They help our sense of belonging, distribute blessings, and make us humble.

Companies allow development through innovation. They rape the world’s natural resources and have little sense of sustainability, and, unchecked, can lead to terrible inequality. Yet I would argue the best run companies do more good than harm. And we know that families, Churches and governments would have struggled to give us the internet or modern medicines. So let us embrace them.

So what about countries? Unlike companies, they rarely evolve. Few people change country, few countries perish or merge. Unlike families, their system of redistribution is inefficient, and, unlike Churches, their values are almost always tribal. If you doubt that, just look at David Cameron this week, defending a national interest over a greater good, and a national interest based on a parasitic sector of the economy driving shameful inequality, no less.

Elsewhere, we have Belgium that took 500 days to form a government, Greece and Italy where bankers have taken over, a USA where Gingrich might become president. And let us not just knock the West. Russia, DRC, or Venezuela or hardly role models. China has at least managed the macro-economics a bit better, but at the expense of dignity and justice.

No, countries, you are the weakest link, goodbye. Imagine what might have happened in Durban if everyone had not been constrained by tribal economic or political interests. Europe has got itself in trouble over the Euro, but let us celebrate the single market and Schengen as the wonderful drivers of dignity, justice and development that they have been.

Most of the economic mess comes from imbalances between countries. Each country tries to optimise its own affairs, and it is the structural imbalances that have resulted that led to the system clogging up. A single currency and central bank, like the Euro but backed up by a fiscal framework, could respond as required. Global austerity would never be needed. Globally, we could also have a balance sheet as well as a current account, with scarce assets valued, and, for example, a carbon price.

What I would propose is a global governance for global issues, run by technocrats using universal principles. We need one currency, one central bank, one monetary and fiscal framework, one energy framework, one supreme court and so on. There would be free movement for all, a single competition framework for business, and no trade restrictions. Then, within that framework only, allow communities to form and run their affairs using democracy, with powers to raise taxes. Using modern technology, we could change our chosen teams easily, thereby facilitating good competition. Things like health and education implementation, rubbish collection, police and fire and so on could all be managed very locally.

Great changes like this have traditionally only followed wars. This morning I looked up the visionary fourteen points of US president Woodrow Wilson in 1918, which sadly became watered down by inter-country rivalry. In the late 1940’s, we did a bit better, with some sort of UN, a global declaration of human rights and the Marshall plan. Sadly, as always happens, the existence of countries has meant we have backtracked from there ever since.

So there is little chance of a such a change without another war. The Economist this week had a chilling comparison of the current global economy and policies to the 1930’s. Hopefully, this one won’t need a war to sort out. But we can dream, like Lennon. Next exercise will be to dream up fourteen points for today, as a sort of global charter

My Favourite Course

I’m still thinking about what to do with democracy. Somehow, the main problem is that the concept of a country has become outdated. It is far too small an entity for some modern challenges, yet far too big for others. We have a vote, but only within this out-of-date bounadry. Keep the votes, but change the structure. More to follow.

In the meantime, I was gratified to read an article in this week’s Economist about Harvard’s MBA. They want to change the basis of syllabus and teaching away from one based on case studies towards more direct field experience. Hooray, I say.

The article brought back happy memories of a course I did at Shell in the mid 1990’s. That course has stayed with me, as the most fun and the most beneficial I ever did. I still use the lessons today.

The whole basis of the course was that we were split into teams of about four, and sent out as consultants to a small business for two weeks. The time spent with the small business was interspersed with some classroom content. At the climax of the course we had to present our ideas for our small business – to our teachers and the managers of the small business itself.

This was a neat idea. Once a year Shell took out an advert in a trade magazine looking for volunteer small businesses to accept raw consultants. It was potentially a good deal for them, as they got some fresh insights and at least some cheap labour for a couple of weeks, for free.

I was blessed in the business I was assigned to. My team worked with a Jewish butcher from the east end of London. They had a processing factory near Smithfield incorporating a tiny office, and a shop in Golders Green. The employed maybe twenty staff, and, like most small businesses, most of the leaders came from the same family.

We had such a laugh. The family really welcomed us. Their own relationships and business practices were bizarre and funny. The boss was constantly doing deals on his mobile phone (a new gadget at the time) and played a passing impression of Topol from Fiddler on the Roof. It was an insight into a totally unfamiliar world for us, and a privilege to be included. I will always remember doing a price survey and market research among the Jewish housewives of the Golders Green road.

I recall that one challenge the business faced was about the weekly cycle. Smithfield only had its best value meat on Friday, in time for weekend shoppers. During the winter, the firm had to buy meat, get it blessed by a Rabbi, process it and distribute it to stores, all before sundown, when Jews have to stop working. You don’t get that sort of challenge in MBA text books – yet it mirrors something very realistic for many businesses.

In the end, I think we gave the family something of value, though I have doubts whether they implemented any of it, such was the impulsive nature of the boss. But the gain for our team was immense. And the reason we gained so much was because the course directors sent us into the field and did not get in the way.

A case study is almost always from the point of view of the CEO, with defined parameters. Field studies expose a broad canvas of human actors with human issues. Just like real business.

A case study can be solved at leisure, in the time of the students. A field study has to respond to the tempo and distractions of the client. Just like real business.

A case study is constrained by a classroom. Field studies show the squalor and primitive conditions most real businesses operate in. For a load of pampered Shell kids, that was perhaps the biggest realisation of all. Real business is not usually like Shell business.

A case study has a financial and a strategic element. Only a field study can show up conditions where the cash needed to pay the wages the next week is the dominant consideration, yet somehow the business has to drive forward in that environment. Just like real business.

In a case study students have to convince learned professors of their ideas. In a field study, students have to gain credibility and influence among real decision makers, often with very different world views. Just like in real business.

Altogether, a field study offers potential a case study can only scratch at. So why has it taken so long to move from case studies? Well, the professors mainly. The former approach allowed them to show off their brilliance in the classroom. It allowed them to re-use material time after time. There was little risk of students coming up with angles and challenges that other students had not brought up before.

In a field approach, the professor cedes control. In a way, the professor becomes like another student, trying to understand the subject company and fit its challenges to familiar models. Hard work, that. And perhaps beyond the skills of most of the cosseted professors out there.

So well done Harvard, I applaud you, and I look forward to the day when a field based approach is standard practice and MBA students can emerge so much better qualified as a consequence. It doesn’t surprise me that Harvard professors required convincing before accepting this new experimental approach, and no doubt they will find other reasons to slow it down. But my guess is that this is the start of a whole new way of teaching MBA’s. And not before time. After all, some trainer at Shell thought of it twenty years ago.

Keep it Simple Stupid

On Saturday, I visited a Vodaphone shop to try to my a mobile phone and a contract. This was because of the sad demise of my previous mobile phone, a wonderful Siemens device I had bought for 15 Euros.

The mobile phone died in a very Dutch way. Last Wednesday evening, I had a concert and a party to go to, on either side of a small forest in The Hague. I had often walked in this area, so I decided to get from one engagement to the other on foot, even though it was dark.

Then I took a wrong turning. I could go back to get on the right route, but, hey, I knew this forest, so I ploughed on. Up ahead was a path I knew well. My mum phoned so I was a bit distracted, as I jumped down onto the path.

Only the path wasn’t a path at all, it was a canal. The call to mum was the phone’s swansong. Mum says she heard some strange noises, probably me screaming. I wish someone had been nearby, it would have made a great video, grown man in concert clothes walking straight into a canal.

Walking into a canal is not something I recommend. There is a lot of gunk in Dutch canals. They are quite deep, very cold, muddy and slimy. It was very easy to walk in, but quite hard to climb out. Lesson learned – walking in forests after dark is a silly thing to do.

So that is how I ended up in the Vodaphone shop. And what a beautiful shop it was too, with sexy lighting, fancy equipment and tasteful marketing everywhere. I got the feeling that the store in The Hague was replicated in cities around Europe, or even the world. That company has a powerful brand department and plenty of money to invest.

But the senior managers and brand managers have plainly never been in any of these shops. For the customer, it was horrible. They could afford lots of equipment, but not enough staff. Of the staff that were there, half of them were wearing blue shirts, which seemingly disqualified them from actually dealing with customers. A blue shirt met us, listened to our needs, and told us that we would have to wait for a red shirt to be free, although he could offer us coffee while we waited. So half the staff were actually waiters, while the other half were overloaded.

When we finally reached the front of the red queue, we came to realise why we had to wait so long. It seemed to be impossible to conclude a transaction in less than twenty minutes. By the time we had explained our needs, listened to the array of contracts on offer, and linked these to physical phones, we were more confused than enlightened. Even when we were able to make a decision, there was still the long process of contracts and validations, and the simple expedient of keeping the same phone number added further complication.

The red team guy was excellent – perhaps surprisingly so, since he is probably paid a meagre wage and had to deal with many interruptions. Even the blue team guys seemed very willing and motivated, even if their only roles were greeter and waiter. Yet, as a customer, I came very close to just walking out and abandoning the whole process more than once. I felt frustrated, intimidated, and un-served. Are these the emotions that the Vodaphone brand managers aim for in their customers? Probably not.

The nearest equivalent retail experience I could link this to was the old fashioned way we all used to book holidays. The tour operator shop still exists, though most of us rarely set foot in them these days. It used to be the same, with long, long, transaction times and waiting times, staff of mixed motivation, and more often than not frustrating outcomes.

I find it ironic that the travel industry has reinvented itself through the internet. Most of us now do everything online and have better service and outcome as a result. The industry itself has not always reaped the benefits, as poor old Thomas Cook demonstrate. Yet the customer has won, and well-managed providers are still in business. But here we have a modern industry, mobile communications, invented around the same time as the internet, which has the most old-fashioned customer interface.

Surely someone should do an Easyjet or an Ikea on mobile telecommunications? There must be a way to reinvent things around the customer. Please let me know when it happens. I hope at least that occurs before the next time I walk into a canal.

Other modern industries have similar problems. Computer interfaces are still created by geeks. Surely those older people who only want to use google and e-mail could be served by now by a simple device with one large button advertising each, together with a keyboard of large letters, big buttons and no symbols? It would sell so well, even my dear mum could be a customer.

And what about other electronic devices? Philips, a fine Dutch company, is onto a winner with its slogan emphasising simplicity. Spot on. Yet my alarm clock cum CD still resembles the potted face of a teenager. No-one else can use mine, and I can’t use anyone else’s. That is not simplicity, my friends from Eindhoven, that is the result of too many application-loving geeks. No doubt some customers love the applications, but many customers would value something simpler.

Then there are banks. Ah yes, banks. But I want to be happy today, so I won’t dwell on banks.

I think part of the problem is often the distance between departments in large companies. The designers and the marketers live in different worlds from the shopkeepers. This is especially true for business models relying on in-store experience, like mobile phones. McDonalds and Starbucks and others have shown it can be solved. None of the petrol companies have. Nor has Vodaphone. Or banks. Sorry, I wasn’t going to dwell on banks.

When it goes wrong, the marketers emphasise standardisation, often internationally. That usually leads to stores where the staff have little discretion, and customer experiences with little regard to local needs. The most important management choice is often where in the chain to place the power and discretion. McDonalds has it right, each store feels like a motivated and tailored business. Same for Ikea. But many brands have forgotten the importance of the local interface.

Perhaps this is also the answer to the conundrum I asked myself last time, about democracy. WE should think first about the best level to make each decision. Currently, individuals have too much say about climate policy and fiscal policy, but not enough about their local schools. Democracy is mainly conducted at national level, with a few morsels left to a local level. This suits national politicians, but leads to weak outcomes.

So now we have a partial answer to the question: how is the euro crisis like Vodaphone? I’ll explore this further, so long as I can also answer the question about how to stay out of canals.

The End Game for Democracy?

What a mess Europe is in politically. Last week two governments fell, as a direct consequence of the Euro crisis. This sort of thing usually only happens during wars or in the run up to wars. And the impotence of the political leaders is stunning. They can all see where they are heading. Most of them can see how to escape. But collectively they are unable to stem the tide.

How did we get here? One thing that caught my attention was the Greek prime minister’s call for a referendum. The poor chap had his career finished over this call, and, to be fair, his timing could be questioned. But wasn’t this one of the few honest acts in the whole charade? He had a democratic mandate from two years ago. He had used it to its limit, trying to find ways out of an inherited mess and to do deals with creditors and partners. It was clear to him that his mandate was expiring, since the packages he came up with were not accepted on the streets and were leading to slow paralysis of the state.

So he called a referendum, in an attempt to shore up his mandate. He had a good question to ask, since he had just negotiated a landmark deal. He had something to gain, since a yes vote would have enabled him to face down the protesters and start reform properly. And the people should have been able to see the consequence of their choice.

So he took a brave step. And was immediately vilified by his so called democratic partners, with a stunning hypocrisy. The British press call for European referenda all the time, about the most ill- defined issues, yet someone else calling a referendum was not acceptable. In the end the elites completed a coup, and followed it up with a second coup in Italy later in the week. In both cases, the new leaders are bankers. Ah, bankers. The very people who got us in the mess in the first place.

In the short term we will all probably muddle through. Pundits and politicians lazily refer to the abyss, or meltdown, or some other term for a disastrous endpoint from which there is no return. Yet no one really tries to describe what such an abyss would feel like. Argentina had such an abyss ten years ago. Anyone with savings got badly burned, and for a while it was hard to find a job. Then the country started to recover, and now is arguably better off than it would have been if it had muddled through. I am not sure that such a thing as an abyss exists, and one of the reasons the Greeks were not allowed to have their referendum was that they knew it.

In the longer term, the casualty may well be democracy. It was also struck by an Economist quote this week, where it was made clear that there was never any democratic intent behind the EU, even when it started as a small trading block. “Ordinary Europeans see Brussels as remote and elitist. As it happens, the European project was like that from the very beginning”. What a statement that is. The article defends the project as inspired statehood, a way to defend the people from themselves and to avoid a third spiral into war. Fair enough, but let’s not call it democracy, then.

And the long term consequence may be the very spiral it was trying to avoid. Look at the anti-elite parties all over Europe now. Surely these will all grow as a direct result of the crisis. Look at the protesters on our streets. They will surely find a voice in anti-elite parties eventually. This is not a movement of some thugs any more, it is people like us, the 99%.

Yet the politicians continue to lie, and to make no attempt to win over their citizens with any logic. Virtually every elite party in Europe queues up to blame Brussels, at the same time as knowingly ceding power. They have their cake, and they eat it. But in the end there will be no cake left for anyone. They consistently champion democracy, while eschewing it.

Is the US any better? Arguably, it is worse. Their economic fundamentals are even worse than ours, only hidden away by the elites because an abyss for them (at least the elite them) would even be more unthinkable than an abyss for us. Their social fundamentals are clearly worse than ours. And their politics is even more cynical and even more dysfunctional, dominated only by money and media access. And the cheerleaders for freedom invade others at will, and have intelligence agents undermining societies globally. At least they have to answer for their wars in their sham elections every so often, the clandestine stuff is wholly unanswerable. Should we be pleased or scared by the Americans managing to stymie the Iranian computer systems? I am not sure.

So our system is dead, while our leaders still champion it. I am not promoting other systems of national governance, since they all seem to fail too. There is still wisdom in Churchill’s quote that democracy is the worst form of government except for all those others that have been tried. But let us at least start being honest about it. There are alternatives, and soon we will need them.

We don’t run companies by democracy. We don’t run Churches by democracy. We don’t run families by democracy. Those institutions have lasted as long as most countries. We now have such powerful technology available, and education is so widespread, that models that were previously infeasible become interesting. We could probably take the best from the models used by each of those institutions and create something strong.

Perhaps this is what the 99% are saying, much derided by the elite for being directionless and without coherent solutions. They (we?) might simply be declaring the imminent end of the current Western system, called democracy, but in practice rule by an elite and high finance. I get annoyed when multinational corporations get blamed for everything, for they are usually quite honest in their methods and their goals. But finance as an industry is another thing. Banks and bankers have not come through this era well. Nor have politicians.

A friend last week told me to stop observing and stop moaning about this crisis, but to come up with some ideas. Now that is a tough ask. But I’ll have a go, next blog. As long as there is time, before we all fall into the abyss. All ideas are welcome.

I know what you are thinking

Technology continues to make breakthroughs to change our lives. I like the cover of the fiftieth anniversary of Private Eye. The shields at the top show what has changed between 1961 and 2011. Mainly it is communication. A typewriter and telephone have become a mobile and printer. Everything is much faster now, and many things are more reliable. This is generally good, though the blackberry 24/7 addicts choose to become slaves to progress.

A leader in this week’s Economist suggested what might be coming next. Seemingly, mind reading technology is getting closer. We might soon be able to look inside each other’s brains and be able to tell what we are thinking. No doubt the facility is many years away from being generally available, but fifty years ago we couldn’t really imagine the internet or wi-fi.

Just imagine the changes this technology would have on the way we lived. Start with relationships. The whole vocabulary would be thrown open. We could no longer quietly leer at someone we fancied without being exposed. Our professed loyalties would be called into question. Our small lies in the interest of harmony would no longer work. Many bums would suddenly look big in many outfits, and have nowhere to hide. A man is supposed to have a sexual thought every eight seconds or so. Imagine if such thoughts were transparent to all.

Things would change, but no doubt we would adapt. Adapting is what humans are very good at. And would it be worse? Initially, it would be very difficult for everyone, but, once things had settled down, perhaps things would be easier. How many women really believe the harmony lies anyway, or believe their man is the only one immune from the eight second urge? The worst thing in any relationship is a lack of trust, and the technology would have the potential to banish that completely. Most of us are more anxious about the fear or what someone is thinking about us than the sure knowledge of what those thoughts are – and most of us are thinking better thoughts of most of our acquaintances than they think we are anyway. We would adapt. The game would change. I sense things would be better.

Then look at illness. The earliest application of the technology would be to improve the lives of the disabled. People with the inability to communicate would suddenly be able to, and lives would be improved immeasurably. Maybe there are other creative brains like Stephen Hawking out there that could be liberated. I also suspect the technology would be decisive in breakthroughs against diseases primarily of the mind, such as addictions. All the junk in our minds could be freed. In most cases, I suspect that could be decisive in helping people to move onto better lives. True, counsellors would lose their capacity for professional dishonesty, but again the advantages would be enormous.

Now take politics. Again, things would change, and change a lot. But for the better or the worse? Many of the more intractable problems in the world start with casual misleading of people. The EU, a good thing, was set up by the elite without really explaining the truth to the public, who were deemed too dumb to understand. Ditto the euro. Such lies are coming apart right now. Cameron doesn’t really want a referendum, just votes. Such lazy lies are coming back to haunt him. The true reasons for the US invasion of Iraq are either justifiable – so we should hear them – or not – and the invasion might have been avoided. Discrimination would be out into the open, and perhaps eliminated by a rare dose of honesty, or at least cast to the outer reaches of society.

The same with firms. When the CEO makes his Christmas speech about his staff being his most important asset he might find himself the turkey, and quite right. Effort would be moved from the dark arts of misleading marketing and lobbying, and invested in innovation to create genuine customer benefits. No more fraud. No more tax avoidance. No more value-destroying confidentiality. I have no problem with any of this.

What surprised me was the tone of the Economist leader, which feared the change. Generally, this magazine embraces technology and innovation, and especially likes things which eliminate inefficiencies. Well, here is a chance to eliminate perhaps the greatest inefficiency of all, and how do they react? They worry about their eight second urges, predict problems with adaptation, and fear misuse by the governments. The internet had all these problems too. Should we have resisted it? I expect better from my favourite magazine.

Perhaps the leader writer, like me, has been spooked by his or her computer lately. I have seen a step change in the last six months at the ability of my computer to know everything about me, and find it scary. Do you feel the same? When I reflect on it though, I find this technology exciting. True, it can be misused, and I like to have a few secrets, even from my computer. But we will adapt, we will move on, and the benefits to society can be huge. Bring it on.

One last argument in favour of mind reading. I read a different article this week about Amanda Knox, in the Guardian weekly. Seemingly, most of us found her guilty because of her face. Her features make her look a bit foxy. We were a bit titillated by the stories of what may have gone on in Perugia, egged on by our tabloids, and jumped to conclusions about poor Amanda. According to the article, we do this sort of thing unconsciously all the time, making judgements about people based on how they look. I knew this before, and understood it as a reason for some discrimination and a need for caution against bias, for example in job interviews. But this article took it to a new level, for indeed a part of me had done exactly as the article suggested, and found Amanda guilty, despite any real evidence available to me.

Once we all have our personal mind readers as an app in our mobile phones, we won’t make such mistakes again. This will be scary. Probably it will be after my time, but at the rate things progress these days who can know that for sure? Personally, I hope the technology comes sooner rather than later. By then I’ll be so old that eight seconds will have become at least a minute anyway.

On reconciliation

Non-catholics may not realise that the sacrament of reconciliation is the modern name for what used to be called confession. It is not just the name that has changed. The emphasis on owning up and penance in a dark box in Church has largely been replaced by a quiet chat in a lounge with a priest who tries to help you come to terms with yourself.

In its new form, this is a powerful process. And it is no coincidence that reconciliation is emphasised in many other forms of self-help.

Take the AA 12 steps for example. Step one is about surrender - reconciling oneself to powerlessness. Steps five to seven are a sort of confession. And step nine, the last step before a recovery can enter a phase of stability, is about reconciling and making amends with all those we have wronged. Often the hardest thing to live with for an addict, or anyone else for that matter, is the guilt and shame. These steps face up to guilt and shame, and create the space to make it possible to move on.

A completely different example comes from business, and the Kotter model of change management. The first step in this model is about creating urgency, and it is the one where most change programmes fail. I would argue that this step is about helping those that need to change to feel reconciled with that fact. Before we accept this need we are stuck in the past, living a long-lost dream. Intellectually, we may see this, but it takes a human step of reconciliation to accept it and be ready to move on. The best implementations of Kotter do not emphasise leader speeches and compelling power points, but instead ask people to talk among each other. That way, nostalgia can be seen for what it is, individuals and teams can mourn their loss, and then face a different future. Leaders struggle with this because they do not usually have the need for reconciliation themselves, so are blind to it in others.

Mourning is another form or reconciliation. Nowadays, funerals attempt to be a celebration of life. Another catholic healing sacrament, anointing the sick (formerly last rites – how things have moved on!), seeks to reconcile people with their possible death and help others reconcile themselves to the loss they may face too. A wake tries to achieve the same. A strange ritual at first glance (especially to cold English people like me) it is powerful, and has parallels in most other religions and cultures. Just like in the two other examples above, the key element is encouraging people to talk openly to each other, to rid themselves of the baggage that would stop them moving forward.

So, reconciliation works. We should try it. Some of the happiest news stories of recent years involve reconciliation. Explicit in South Africa via the heroic truth and reconciliation commission, similar processes have been followed, arguably with less grace, in Northern Ireland and the former Yugoslavia. Only this week, ETA in Spain came closer to disbandment, following a long reconciliation effort. It is not easy, especially when memories and discrimination are long-standing and where everyone has a reason to hate and for suspicion. But facing the past, accepting it, and even forgiving it, is the only route out of the cycle of misery. You cannot move forward successfully unless you are at peace with the past.

I sense different sorts of reconciliation are the key steps in other situations. Tony Blair removed clause four, and somehow reconciled most of his party from a past that was no longer relevant. This week’s Economist has a hopeful article about Detroit. It seems that a key step in creating a positive future there has been to accept that the city must be different and smaller than before. The Norwegians were remarkable this summer in reconciling themselves to the massacre of its youth. In its attitude to the EU, the British are not really reconciled to a less powerful role than in the days of empire. Reconciliation is hard – often close to impossible. But its lack is more damning than anything.

Many muses on this and other blogs have some well-reasoned diagnosis, but then are unable to offer practical solutions. The wonderful thing about reconciliation is how much we can do about it ourselves. And we don’t even need priests!

We all have reasons to complain about others. We say stupid things to each other, hurt each other. To some extent, we can’t help it. What we can help is what happens next. We tend to make assumptions about how people think about us, about what they meant when they said something hurtful. We sulk. We are stubborn. Wow, how we are stubborn.

We could instead try another tactic. We could attempt to reconcile. We could make the first move, and apologise, even when we aren’t so sure it was our fault. Apologise, with no buts and no bitterness. We could make it easy for the other party to apologise. We could try to understand things from their point of view. We can try to create conditions where we can move on together.

What would this cost us? A bit of pride. Some feeling that the other party got away with something. Not much really. Whereas the rewards are huge. There are few better feelings in life than after unloading with an apology, receiving forgiveness, and feeling a friend become a friend again after a period of strain. We feel lighter. We feel happier.

So, where to start. Most of us have an opportunity with work colleagues, notably with our boss. Bosses can be so stubborn, as they have their position to maintain. Try disarming them by recognising their side and giving some ground. They won’t know what to do, but they won’t be able to stop themselves giving ground in return.

Then there are parents. Parents still treat us as though we are small children, so usually like to keep a bit of power and struggle to make the first move in apology. How sad. We only have two parents. Imagine if one of them died and we hadn’t made peace with them. It would haunt us for ever. Painful though it is, make the first move. Accept them as they are. No matter how many times they misbehave, never break off good relations. Most of us are lucky, and our parents have time to reconcile their affairs before dying, to set their relationships in order and say what needs to be said. But sometimes that cannot happen, and we have to be ready for that contingency. Follow the timeless advice to live each day as though it were your last.

Then there are other acquaintances, friends, and especially our partners. We can make a start today.

Sometimes we have a strained relationship and we don’t even know what lies behind it. In my experience, the most common cause is that the other party has some baggage to reconcile with you. I had a recent experience of this, and the thing the other party was carrying guilt over came out quite by accident one day. That was a true turning point, as both of us could immediately sense a new lightness, and start to go forward again. We have to be patient of course, as the other party has to move in their own time, but we can always do things to signal our readiness, to make it a bit easier rather than a bit harder. Life is so much happier if we stop seeing it as a point scoring exercise.

When I learned to drive, my instructor taught me some famous last words. Something like “it was my right of way”. If we are killed in a car accident, it is little consolation to know we were in the right. We are dead anyway. This same philosophy applies to our relationships.

In the end, our own peace comes less from seeing the pleasure of others, and more from the feeling of being reconciled with ourselves. That is the point in AA and in the sacrament, and a happy consequence in the business context. We don’t have to leave it until we are on our death beds.

I am one of the worst role models for my own advice that I know. I have relationships to reconcile in all the categories listed, and can be as stubborn as anyone. Wow, how I love to score points. Yet I feel I am getting better, and benefiting a lot from it.

Who will you start out to reconcile with today?