E-M8 Entrepreneurial Management for Eternal Mission

The top wealthiest countries according to IMF in 2008 are:

Rank	Country	US$
1	Luxembourg	113,044
2	Norway	95,062
3	Qatar	93,204
4	Switzerland	67,385
5	Denmark	62,626
6	Ireland	61,810
7	Iceland	55,462
8	United Arab Emirates	54,607
9	Sweden	52,790
10	Netherlands	52,019
11	Finland	51,989
12	Austria	50,098
13	Australia	47,400
14	Belgium	47,108
15	United States	46,859

The list of wealthiest countries reveals a curious insight. All, but United States are monarchies, fairly socialistic, and with the potential exception of couple middle eastern countries, all allow for high degree of personal freedom and capitalistic opportunities.

Since Plato’s Republic and Machiavelli’s Prince, the pattern of movement from anarchy to republic to democracy to tyranny and through revolution back to anarchy has been well documented. However, quite a few countries on our top list have managed to largely avoid at least the bloody versions of the revolutions for quite some time.

I would like to propose a theory behind their success: They manage to combine a monarchy, a republic and and democracy all at the same time. Rather then separating them in time, they separate them in function. By having the roles clearly spelled out, they are able to have a tyrant, whose function is strong enough to discourage other tyrants from arising and yet weak enough to be practically irrelevant in the everyday life.  They have a republic that is powerful, but largely stays out of local affairs and day to day life. And they have thriving democracies in the best sense of the word.

Importantly, many of the countries on that list have relatively small populations and yet are open to substantial ammount of transient traffic of people and ideas coming and going.

Some of their structures are worth considering from the organizational perspective. Hierarchy, expert, network and collaborative styles of management survive in these countries simultaneously without having to be violently be replaced by each other. After all, what is a tyrant but an unchecked expert or a leader who can only speak but not listen, a king that has been bred or raised up for the specific purpose of overcoming adversity and acting rapidly in an emergency. But it takes a good callaboration or network leadership to avoid most emergencies in the first place.

But it is also a matter of ownership and transparency. It takes silent majority to stay silent for things to turn really bad and that can only happen for two reasons: “don’t know” and “don’t care”. Transparency takes care of the first, but only growing up in a world of personal responsibility takes care of the second.   

The countries that are wealthy, seem to be able to do both better then the rest of the world. In Luxembourg, for example, the office of the Duke as well as all the minstry phone numbers and names of the officials are on the first page of the phone book. No wonder that their country prospers.

What are your thoughts?

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