This short article is just a Friday article- and its just to share some pointers and reading material.

Despite the title, is not necessarily just a commentary on the recent vote at the European Parliament.

Actually, if you are interested in reading what I think about that and about the motion of censure, you can read my posts on the subject over the last few weeks on:
_ Facebook
_ Linkedin or even a short article that posted earlier this week on my Eastern European community:
_ Frype.com.

A short summary of all the above and what I think:
_ I supported many of the points
_ those points affect the external credibility of a partnership with the European Union
_ the vote was useful to assess the distance between rhetoric and reality for each political family and each party.

Let's say that the last point is the one that showed the structural weakness of the current distribution of powers.

It is akin to a country declaring that its own Internet is sovereign, but then doing nothing to create its own infrastructure and manage its interconnection with the shared Internet: would become a self-referential, disconnected network akin to North Korea, undermining the value of Internet access.

Actually, the vote earlier this week, seen from the outside (as I am a foreigner in my own country, and even at the European level, not just in Italy, was told that was too "American"), gave the feeling of the 2000 "hanging chad" voting and the "recount" string of documentaries and movies, and remembered a quip within the 2005 movie "Lord of War" (which, as wrote a geopolitical magazine back then, and shared with friends while having lunch at the War museum in Brussels, was a blend of two merchants of war).

The dictator? Says that after the 2000 elections, it was reassuring to see that the American exceptionalism was not that much, despite all the pretense to export democracy.

We Europeans keep lecturing other countries about human rights, transparency, due process, oversight, public and independent anything (from Central Bank to Watchdogs) and then look as a doe in the middle of a road on a dark night when a car approaches with lights on: stuck there, unable to decide and move.

Look at the numbers of those voting or not voting, and how those voting voted, and read the tea leaves beyond the PR on the vote results.

As I shared online, curious how some newspapers (even in Italy) in their titles after the vote suddenly moved from a fuzzy description, to focusing on just one point, and ignoring all the others: our free press unfortunately increasingly, to avoid losing access, sounds as "free to support whoever is in power and not support anybody who is unable to retaliate".

This week saw that also we, European Union citizens, and those appointed to cover roles within our shared supranational bureaucracy, can become the target of USA sanctions.

Anyway, we Europeans and our institutions since the election of President Trump for his second term adopted a posture that could describe as the "boiled frog Grand Strategy".

We keep ceding a bit of our internal cohesion around rights, duties, choices- and each time present it as a success.

It is sometimes funny, more often sad, to see how opposition parties, e.g. in Italy, are roaring as lions asking a kind of "Europe first", while, at the same time, stating that we should not spend on defense, on joint research in that domain, on infrastructure to increase our resilience on that side.

Then, we have Germany that promises Ukraine missiles that will buy in the USA.

European Union politics is becoming increasingly vocal and increasingly a paradise for careers built on demagoguery, while avoiding any choice that could be unpopular.

Our checks and balances simply do not work: strategy and initiatives build on quicksand and shouting, a kind of "first past the post" attitude that is closer to an "influencer" model on Instagram, than somebody who wants to build.

Because no matter how many announces are made, it is their implementation that matters.

Also, each new announce should be positioned within the framework of the previous ones: if anything, because, in the end, the "implementation side" is really landing way too often on the same people.

As I wrote in previous articles, you cannot build anything sustainable (from an organizational perspective, organizational culture included), if you keep dropping on the table a different perspective that requires rewiring what already had been prepared for multi-year initiatives.

Why? Because complex organizational structures are not at their best when carrying out Sisyphean tasks, where you get every few months back to square one.

Hence, the title of this article: "Reforming the European Union: scenarios vs. pipedreams".

Do you remember the Franco-German proposal to reform the European Union, potentially using a gentle touch to reform while using what is already in place?

Interesting, and I shared my commentary in the past, as I did for the Franco-German renewal of the 1963 "Traité de l'Elyée", and the Franco-Italian Trattato del Quirinale.

As of today, 33 articles of comments on various bits of or attempts thereof at treaties, treaties that try to replace a Grand Strategy with an Entente Cordiale.

Actually, the latter is what made me think a string of recent events on the defense cooperation side between (former European Union Member) UK and (current leading European Union Member) France- up to the recent visit in UK from the French President.

All components of a potential further step toward integration within the European Union- to echo the "Coalition of the Willing" for wars that Michael Moore joked about in one of his documentaries.

No, I am not referring to his movie "Canadian Bacon" about a war with Canada, or "Wag the Dog" (different director, same concept- about an equally false war with Albania): I was thinking more to "Fahrenheit 11/9" and "Where to Invade Next".

When I selected for the title the dichotomy between scenarios and pipedreams, it was an obvious provocation (and also to keep the title short).

Still, the key issue, as in many other things, and I said also 20 years ago to partners and startups that was supporting in Italy, you have to differentiate between an ability to "design strategy", and that to implement it.

While you design, you can abstract from reality, and, then longer it takes, the more detached from reality it becomes.

Reminds me a joke that was told by an Andersen partner in the mid-1980s, while working at a customer side on my first banking project, a General Ledger (for various reasons, started as developer, ended up covering a multitude of roles, from PMO/QC/QC, to release management onsite, to business analyst, to 2nd level functional support during rollout in few hundred branches).

In Italy, we have probably the longest running pipedream post-WWII: building a bridge between Sicily and Calabria.

I will skip the issues, details, etc- but imagine having a 50 years career working just on a blueprint- makes the procurement movie "Pentagon Wars" looks as lightning fast.

The joke: a consulting company (I will not say which one) was called among others to present a feasibility study for connecting Sicily and Calabria.

In the end, its proposal was considered the most interesting one in terms of timing, costs, etc.

So, the discussion with the selection team went into a detailed discussion, and they proposed a road with ramps etc.

Then a question: how could a road be built where the was a sea strait.

The answer: we foresee emptying from the water the area.

The obvious riposte: but how?

The answer, purely "strategic consulting": it is a technical details that will be taken care of by those implementing, we designed the strategy.

Our current "coalitions of the willing" are constantly making commitments on a "view from the International Space Station" (even an helicopter view would be too close to reality), and calling it a roadmap for implementation.

If, as we Europeans claim to be, are focused on convergence and sustainability, we should shift from this current "blueprint from space and then are all technicalities" to a "lifecycle of the initiative".

Because for each new "blueprint from space" we create (it is a Pavlovian reflex in Brussels) a new nice pyramid looking for a purpose, following this "design" from the jacket cover of a book from the creator of Peter's Law:

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We start small (that's the level of many of these blueprints- the Franco-German proposal for reform, as well as the Treaties I listed above were, for our current standards, structured and long but not excessively long), then we keep expanding above, then adding oversight, and on, and on.

The point is: if the foundation was fragile, cutting many corners to get something out fast, implementation to stay within those sketchy borders is even worse than what in the early 1990s my Germany girlfriend (urban planner in her small village) told me that had happened to a friend when the "parking zones" were implemented.

Basically, the scale of detail on the map was not enough- and his home was exactly on the line identified between two zones.

Hence, had no right despite being resident.

I do not know how it was solved, but it was an interesting case, that I saw in "strategic design" when the level of detail is that of pipedreams, presented as (really sketchy) scenarios, but then used as a roadmap for implementation (I should say "straight-jacket" for implementation, considering the level of constraints).

If we, Europeans, keep getting onto that boiled frog wagon, we can only expect to get boiled.

Look at this letter that a friend shared online (I do not know if it is the real one that a country received):

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A strategic announce a week implies building a large backlog of "analysis needed before implementation" that does not match the working of a 27-countries alliance.

And, increasingly, with different "circles of influence" that actually reduce the number but extend to 28, and then present as a "fait accompli" to the others.

What sometimes feels as if there had been a "St Crispin's Speech" (yes, Henry V) and the "happy few", "band of brothers" were those few who pre-digested a blueprint from space and then serve it an implementation roadmap to all the others- take or take.

The usual reason presented (by either the European Commission leadership, one of the other Presidents within the European Union, or anybody leading the charge for the day, à the Light Brigade against cluster bombs) is "ordinary speed of decision-making incompatible with current needs".

Then, reform- but keep a balance, otherwise we will spend, on the "operational side" time to fix engines while running on an F1 circuit that is set on an aircraft carrier running toward a mission in a location yet to be decided.

Well, I managed to stay around 2,000 words while, hopefully, sharing enough pointers to allow others to dig deeper.

Anyway, I promise something deeper in the future.

For now, it is enough for a week-end reading and thinking.

Enjoy your week-end!