On politics, wars and management

There’s this book – "Machiavelli and Management" by Anthony Jay – that attempted to draw lessons from Machiavelli’s," "The Prince," a work on the governance and tight grip on power in a small principality. In "The Prince," Machiavelli laid down the principles to follow and the actions to take by anyone who wanted to attain his goal (which is power) and never mind who got hurt (in Filipino, kahit sinong matapakan). This treatise on power was the first book on realpolitik because it said, without blushing nor apologizing, what the taking of naked power is all about.

"Machiavelli and Management" attempted to apply this rather cynical principle to the world of modern management, in the running of corporations, in the operation of government entities. As far as the author is concerned, there is not much difference here.

In Jay's perception, Machiavelli’s days were not dissimilar from today. Cities during the middle ages were much like the big corporations of Ayala Avenue, Makati City and other large Metro Manila business enterprises. The mayor was no more than a corporation president, the city aldermen were no more than the directors, and the residents were no more than the stockholders.

How many managers actually took to heart the recommendation of "Machiavelli and Management" we do not know. What we do know is that the book was a bestseller when it came out a good many years back. If nothing else, the author was an excellent manager of his own finances who knew how to produce a best selling enterprise.

Conquest

Comes now another book entitled "Management Secrets of Attila the Hun." We don’t know whether the author wrote the book with a tongue-in-cheek smile. But Attila’s conquests showed that making wars and being a winner required a great deal of organizational talent. There’s no doubt that Atilla the Hun had applied a good measure of management savvy in his invasions.

In fact, if you think about it, the mobilization, the moving of armies, and the conquest of nations are no more than a management problem. Just imagine the mind-boggling amount of scheduling, following up, training of the army. Consider, also the amount of two-way communications in those days relying only on horse-riding couriers, the paperwork (strategic planning) before Attila could move his army up to the borders of Hungary from China.

Conquest, as you know, is selling (encroaching and selling the conqueror’s might and enlightened governance), distribution (distribution of an army of occupation and collection of the army’s needs), and service and maintenance (servicing the army of occupation while maintaining peace and orderin the occupied land).

Local application

This is an operation no different from McDonald’s attempt to encroach on Jollibee, Robinson’s campaign to outflank SM or Asia Brewery’s desire to ice San Miguel in sales of beer. Take a look at Nestle taking over Magnolia ice cream and San Miguel taking over Pop Cola and many other buyouts. It happens in business: competition, buyout and merger with winners and losers. Of course, it is too early to say who is the loser and the winner in Kirin’s buying into San Miguel – both winners, perhaps?, as the government would have us believe.

These types of management in conquests say something, too, about the marketing and selling of agricultural products, indirectly at that. Vegetables, fruits, meat, dairy products and some processed farm food items — like political power – are highly perishable. To transport them from the farm to the consumer demands precise scheduling of deliveries, care in transit and some form of packaging to prolong their shelf life.

And that’s why the sight of Divisoria and Balintawak Clover Leaf markets after the delivery trucks have left and at the end of the market day is really a mess. Tomatoes, cabbages, lettuce, beans, green leafy and root vegetables, and tons of organic matter are left lying rotten on the side of the streets because there was no previous care taken to ensure safe delivery to the markets. And we’re seeing only the wholesalers’ markets. We have yet to see the wastage at the farmgate and the final wastage at the retail markets.

The two books also say something about presentation. Political ideas have to be presented in an acceptable and attractive package. Pass by the Muñoz Marketand San Andres Market in Malate; take a look at the fruit stails there and you will see that the fruits there are batter looking because the vendors bother to stack their merchandize to display them at their best. They sell for a higher price of course. But make no mistake about it, these are exactly the same kind of fruits coming from the same source that you will see in Divisoria and Clover Leaf. The farm items in the former are simply better presented while those in the latter are thrown helter-skelter.

In war, conservation is observed in the conquered land. Although Attila’s army was supposed to have burned and pillaged this, at best, doubtful. No conquering warrior, in his right mind, would do it. After all, they have to get their food and shelter from the conquered country; and to burn and pillage would be foolhardy (parang pinukpok ng bato ang sariling ulo). So they have to conserve whatever resources are there.

Any businessman and farmer would conserve what they have, too. The top soil of the farm is preciously thin and this is the first concern of the farmer’s conservation efforts; water and energy are also conserved. Likewise, waste organic materials are saved for future composting into fertilizer.

Farmers, who don’t know Machiavelli and Attila the Hun, know by heart it is wise to conserve useful things in the farm because it is for their own good.

Finally, the books "Machiavelli and Management" and "Management Secrets of Attila the Hun," have something to say, too, on the gradual building up of knowledge and experience in the running of a political entity. Exactly the same thing one could say about running an agribusiness enterprise. Gradually, there must accumulated knowledge on the various demands of the agribusiness market, the technologies that have been around for sometime and technologies that are developing from which new skills are gained by the agri-entrepreneurs to meet the challenges of the changing market and the borderless commercial globalization.

Machiavelli and Attila the Hun needn’t have involved themselves in politics and wars. They could have simply work their farms and learned exactly the same thing. At any rate, Machiavelli finally retired to a farm and there, we may speculate, applied his political savvy in learning the ABC’s of planting.

So, if there should be books published on the supposedly sharp management insights of world leaders, maybe we should expect these books to focus on agribusiness and farm management instead. How about Clinton’s Secret Techniques for Increasing Milk Production or Bush the Younger’s How To Plant Fruits and Vegetables instead of Bombs in Afghanistan’ Caves. Closer to home, how about Ate Glo’s Technology To Make Laundry soap from Coconut Ash. That we have to see.