“We the People” Need to Change the Game to Fix Our Nation’s Governance

We can’t fix the major issues we face as a nation until we fix our governance. The current governance structure hasn’t enabled us to do that. It’s time to change the game of how we’re approaching the problem.

I’ve been working on the question of how to significantly reduce the number of people in need in the U.S. while at the same time reducing the costs of aid efforts. The solution is going to require restructuring the system

we have in place for addressing these issues. Accomplishing that will require restructuring parts of how we work as a nation — and one of the most critical of these is fixing our governance process. Right now, our governance is not working for the success of the nation as a whole and for our interests collectively as citizens.

This is already a recognized issue, and there are many efforts underway to address it. However, as far as I can tell, none of these has the scope, scale, and resourcing to bring sufficient force to bear on our behalf to solve the problem. What we need to do is consolidate our efforts and concentrate them to fix the issue.

I’m not an expert in our political system and governance and how it works in detail. But I do have extensive experience in restructuring large and complex organizational systems so they perform differently and at significantly higher levels. This includes figuring out how to make such systemic improvements happen.

Some of the issues I see as a citizen are:

• The focus of governance is on political party supremacy.

It’s not leveraging the best knowledge and judgment of all of our representatives working together to come up with solutions that work for the nation as a whole. There’s no incentive for political parties today to do that. Their focus is on winning — not doing the right thing for the nation. Currently, they generate constituency support by exacerbating and inflaming the differences between two poles of the political spectrum. This is not helping. We need to find a way to decrease the power that the political parties have. One example I’ve read about is eliminating the power of the parties to select members of key committees.

• We need to reduce the influence of money on the political process.

It’s ridiculous that it’s possible to buy a Senate seat simply by spending more than the competition.

• We need to reduce the power of corporations to influence policy relative to citizens.

• Giving corporations some of the same rights to influence the political process as individuals — treating them in some ways like people — is absurd.

• We need to increase the direct influence citizens have.

Right now, it feels like I have very little influence on the political process. We need to change that so citizens can be actively involved on a day-to-day basis in a way that fits within the context of their lives and allows them to bring their influence to bear.

If I were leading a nation that wanted to increase its strength relative to the U.S., I would be laughing — because I wouldn’t have to do anything except sit back and watch. We’re tearing ourselves apart from the inside. There’s no way this can lead to positive outcomes. It will be impossible for either extreme of the political spectrum to dominate all aspects of the nation. Citizens are too balanced across beliefs. Neither end of the spectrum has the solution that will work best for the nation, but parts of both, working together, will. As a nation, when we come together, we achieve great things.

What We May Need to Do

To make these improvements, since they will act against what gives current representatives and parties their power, we may need to create a new mechanism to fix how they work. Ultimately, we — the people — are the governance of the nation. We need to work together to fix it.

(As with the ratification of the U.S. Constitution, when the framers went outside the formal government and appealed directly to citizens through state conventions rather than existing legislatures — see accounts in Ron Chernow’s Washington: A Life and Alexander Hamilton, as well as David McCullough’s John Adams.)

But one thing I’ve found in researching how to restructure the system for aiding those in need is that the current approach to addressing these issues is far too fragmented. Individual initiatives have insufficient scale to solve systemic problems. The net impact of having so many conflicting efforts is to both increase the barriers to improvement — by increasing complexity and the number of stakeholders involved — and reduce the effectiveness of efforts, because they compete for scarce attention and resources. We need to overcome this in addressing governance by working together across efforts to bring the focus, scale, and concentration of resources we need.

An Invitation

I’m not an expert in governance, but I am an expert in figuring out how to make significant changes in complex organizations, including fixing governance and leadership issues.

If someone would like to take the lead in fixing this problem, I’d be willing to contribute my expertise to help make it happen. I already have a number of ideas given the work I’ve done on the system for aiding those in need. I would do it myself, but my main priority now is finishing the work I’ve been doing on restructuring the system for helping those in need — including identifying the other structural changes needed in related systems and how we need to work as a nation.

This is only one dimension, but it is an essential one. We need a system that works for all of us and makes our strong country stronger rather than dividing us.

If you’re interested, please contact me at 914-215-2771 or psleeman@org-builders.com.

It’s possible