(Refs:
Although it may appear so to some, successful management is not a highly complicated, esoteric activity. But, just as an auditor or a C/S must know and be able to use the exact tools of first dynamic tech in handling cases in order to achieve exact and standard results on a one-for-one basis, so must an executive or manager know and be able to use the exact tools of third dynamic tech in handling groups to achieve successful and exact results in every instance.
Within the wealth of data on third dynamic tech contained in HCO Policy Letters, the OEC Volumes and tapes and books on the subject, there are certain definite, specific tools a manager uses. These are the tools of management.
The difference between brilliant management and mediocre or no management, at any level, lies in
1. Knowing what the tools of management are, and
2. Knowing how to use them.
Many people are not aware that, like a carpenter or any other workman, a manager uses specific and exact tools. Thus, we see people here and there who are doing the equivalent of using the handle of a chisel to drive nails into wet concrete.
It is a common fault with inexpert workmen to find them using their tools wrongly or not using them at all. They make a breakthrough when they discover what the specific tools are for.
One can see this in people who can’t mix sound or can’t become mixing engineers. They sit with all these knobs in front of them, reach out and grab this knob or that one, hoping hopefully something will happen to the sound. Yet every component they have in front of them is an exact tool to do an exact thing with sound!
There are a lot of comparisons one could make, but the point is that people in management positions have precise tools available to them in Dianetics and Scientology which happen to be far better tools than have ever been available on the planet.
One can have very good people on management posts who still can drown if they don’t know and put to use the basic management tools.
But without these being specified as exact tools one might not see the simplicity of it.
Operating as it does into an expanding scene, Scientology has grown into the need for and use of various echelons of management.
In orgs, for some time we have had division heads and above them we have the Executive Council, headed by the CO or ED of the org.
The OEC (Org Executive Course) and the FEBC (Flag Executive Briefing Course) have long been established as the essential courses for training executives to manage successfully at org level.
These courses, and the OEC Volumes upon which they are based, teach the form of the org and how to use the parts and posts and functions that go to make up the whole. They give us executives who know how to correctly utilize staff and their assigned posts and duties. We call it “knowing how to play the piano” — it’s a matter of knowing what key to hit when and which keys to use in combination to produce a desired result. (Ref: HCO PL 28 July 72, ESTABLISHING — HOLDING THE FORM OF THE ORG.) In other words, it’s a matter of knowing and using one’s tools.
The very least training we would expect for a div head in order for him to “know how to play the piano” within his division is for him to have done the OEC Volume that covers the form and functions of the division he heads up. If he has also done the OEC and the FEBC, so much the better.
The very least we would expect of a CO or ED, a Chief Officer, Supercargo, Org Exec Sec or HCO Exec Sec is for him to have done the OEC and FEBC. Then we have an executive who is capable of “playing the piano” across the divisions of the entire org, using the hats and posts and functions correctly in order to achieve the utmost production from the org as a whole.
Above the level of service orgs, we have middle management. Now one is handling not one function nor only one org, but many orgs and their functions. And still above that we have the senior executive strata of management. Here we get into the vital need for “knowing how to play the piano” across a much wider sphere, using the full scope of management tools and using them with high skill. One might be using the same tools as lower stratas of management but a higher level of expertise is required as one’s planning, decisions and actions are influencing far, far broader areas.
What has brought this about is the rapid expansion of Scientology into wider
zones of responsibility and therefore increased responsibility with a resultant increase in traffic. This naturally has to be handled by increasing efficiency. What it has done, in effect, is push some up from lower level management status to upper level management status, necessarily. Without realizing it, some executives have been climbing a status stairs in terms of influence and zones of control. And they can go only so high without being terribly precise in their use of tools. After that, without this acquired precision, they drown.
The obvious answer to all of this is an executive training program that provides Management Status Checksheets through which an executive or manager raises his status by becoming expert with his tools. And such a program has now been developed!
The new executive training program consists of four status levels.
EXECUTIVE STATUS ZERO consists of simply putting the executive on post and getting him instant hatted.
The Management Status Checksheets which then follow, and which carry a prerequisite of OEC and FEBC, train the person intensively in the recognition, selection and actual use of management tools. Working up through these status levels, a manager not only becomes more proficient in handling an org, any org, but becomes fully certified to operate at middle or senior echelons of management.
1. EXECUTIVE STATUS ONE brings up the exec’s awareness of the basic tools of management and further develops his skill in their use.
Some of these basic tools are the Admin Scale, target policy, strategic planning and programing, the use of org lines and terminals, org boards, despatches and telexes, statistics and graphs, conditions, hats and hatting, importance of files, personnel folders, ethics folders, etc. Each one is a specific tool.
2. EXECUTIVE STATUS TWO covers the upper level tools of management and enhances one’s ability to effectively use such tools as survey tech, PR, pilots, general economics, finance systems, cost accounting, control through networks, admin indicators, morale, legal, goodwill, exchange, missions (action missions), economical management and managing by dynamics.
3. EXECUTIVE STATUS THREE takes up each of the eleven points upon which the senior executive strata operates and trains the person in each of these as a specialist action.
Middle and central management personnel should not draw full pay or be bonus eligible until they have gotten up through Executive Status Three, as they will not be operating effectively until they have done this.With the release of the new Management Status Checksheets, precise and gradient training levels for all echelons of management will exist comparable to the precise and gradient training levels required for all echelons of technical delivery.
Quite an unbeatable combination!
One winds up with managers fully familiar with their exact tools, having the one-two-three of management tech at their fingertips, and “knowing how to play the piano” effectively across an org, a continent, a planet!
So the answer to current expansion is an action which is geared to bring about even further expansion. And that is the only way to go!
It begins with the basic tools of management.