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YOU’VE surely noticed these days
that a big event is sweeping the country, as people are raring to
rediscover the benefits of participating in a national sport where
the most physically demanding activity is laughing at the way
politicians throw mud and mortar in this coming election.
It has reached
to the point that if you don’t play the game, you end up thinking
you’re in North Korea. Of course, I’m not saying that Nokor is a
backward nation but merely saying it is outside of the global loop.
Unlike Nokor,
we Filipinos are in the global loop that we enjoy much about
politics in every democratic space fit for banners, posters, and
streamers. Now the question comes to mind—how do you win an
election if you’re not from the entertainment industry or don’t
have the money in Germany?
Theoretically,
the answer is human networking. The nearest buzzword that we could
think of is Fifth Generation Management, the one by Charles Savage,
who like Peter Senge in his Learning Organization, draws parallel
from the fifth generation of computer networks to the management of
human organizations.
Savage
contends in his book Fifth Generation Management: Integration of
Enterprises through Human Networking (Digital Press, 1990) that a
fifth generation management organization will evolve where human
networks will use computer technology to leverage collective
knowledge.
In building
this analogy, Savage explains that in the early 1980s, the then
Japanese Ministry for International Trade and Industry launched a
fifth generation computer project. This was soon followed by a
similar undertaking in the United States and in Europe.
The first four
generation of computers pass all information through a single
central processing unit (CPU) which has been described as the von
Neumann bottleneck (named after that mathematician and computer
pioneer).
The key to
fifth generation computer management—parallel processing, requires
the networking of multiple processing units that can work on the
same problem simultaneously and significantly speed up analysis.
Networking
further allows multiple applications in parallel on different
computers by linking databases and allowing multiple users.
Just as
computer processing had reached a bottleneck, Savage sees the first
four generations of management, which are the creation of the
industrial era—proprietorships, steep hierarchies, matrix
management and computer interfacing—as reaching an impasse.
The next step
therefore is fifth generation management which is called “human
networking” obviously as the same key to winning an election.
Speaking of
election, another question often asked by neophyte and traditional
politicians is “how do you prevent cheating?”
The answer
lies in the fact that you don’t prevent cheating. You must prove
it. According to all lawyers who passed the bar since the 1930s and
are still living up to this very moment, government officials
including those in the Commission on Elections are always presumed
to have performed their sworn duty in good faith and to the best of
their miniscule ability.
And so God
must help the Filipinos 86 million times. Because thieves,
murderers, and rapists even if they’re still in law schools do
their best with their victims. No I’m kidding again. But I’m not
kidding about our final question, which is: How do you cure poverty
in this country without having to join the government, and of
course, without going to the boon-docks?
If you call
yourself a peace-loving Filipino, you need to know about a crucial
issue that is now confronting Congress with its motto: “To win the
game, you must be born to a dynasty.”
Rey Elbo is
a business consultant specializing in human resources and total
quality management as a fused specialty. Readers’ feedback may be
sent to reyelbo@pworld.net.ph.
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