A Product Officer and ESPECIALLY an Org Officer has to know how to GET a product.

All science and technology is built around this single point in the key phrase “Name, want and get your product.” Managers and scientists specialize in the HOW TO GET part of it and very often neglect the rest.

The Product/Org Officer system, covered fully in Flag Executive Briefing Course tapes, contains the key phrase for any Product Officer. This is

There are many Product Officers who do NOT know enough about organization to organize things so they actually GET their product. These, all too often, cover up their ignorance on how to organize or their inability to do so by saying to one and all “Don’t organize, just produce!” When you hear this you can suspect that the person saying it actually does not know the tech or know-how of organizing or how to put an organization together. He may not even know enough about organizing to shove aside other paper on his desk when he is trying to spread out and read a large chart — yet that is simple organization.

A bricklayer would look awfully silly trying to lay no-bricks. He hasn’t got any bricks. Yet there he is going through the motions of laying bricks. It takes a certain economic and purchasing and transport tech to get the bricks delivered — only then can you lay bricks.

Breaking this down into its parts we find that the most common failure of any Product Officer or staff member or Purchaser lies in the first item, NAME YOUR PRODUCT!

A manager looks pretty silly trying to order a brick wall built when he doesn’t have any bricks or bricklayer and provides no means at all of obtaining either one.

On org boards and even for sections, one has products listed. Departments have valuable final products. Every staff member has one or more products.

A Product Officer may be great at single-handing the show. How come? He doesn’t realize that building a show comes before one runs it. And even though economics demand at least a small show before one builds a large show, a very bad Product Officer who can’t really organize either, will, instead of making the small show bigger, make the small show smaller by trying to run a no-show.

IF PRODUCTION IS NOT OCCURRING, THE ABILITY TO NAME THE PRODUCT IS PROBABLY MISSING.

There is a HOW of organization. It is covered pretty well in the Org Series and elsewhere. Like you can’t put in comm lines unless you put in terminals for them to connect with. Like you can’t get particles flowing in a profitable way unless they have something for them to run on. That’s simply the way things go in the universe in which you are operating. Now of course you could build a new universe with different laws but the fact is, that would require a knowledge of organization as well, wouldn’t it?

Misunderstood post titles were collected once on a wide survey. Whenever it was found a staff member did not seem to be able to do his job, it was checked whether he knew the definition of the word — or words — that made up his post title. It was found, one for one, that he could not define it even though no unusual or special definition was being requested. In other words, the first thing about the post could not be defined — the post title. This may seem incredible, but only until you yourself check it out on staff that habitually goof.

The tech of how to produce something can be pretty vast. One doesn’t have to be a total expert on it to be able to manage the people doing it, but one has to have a pretty good idea of how it goes and know enough NOT to stop the guys who do know how to make bricks when one wants bricks.

The ability to NAME the product required goes further than a mere, glib definition. Some engineers once drove a Purchaser halfway up the wall by glibly requesting “one dozen bolts.” The Purchaser kept bringing back all different thicknesses and lengths and types of bolts. The Purchaser was going daffy and so were the engineers. Until the engineers were forced to exactly name what they were seeking by giving it ALL its name. The Purchaser trying to purchase could not possibly obtain his product without being able to FULLY name it. Once this was done, nothing was easier.

If the product is to get somebody to come in to see you, then you have to have some means of communication and some tech of persuasion to make him want to come in to see you. Brute force may seem okay to cops but in organization it seldom works. There is more tech to it than that.

A Product Officer can ask, beg, plead, yell for his product. But maybe he isn’t naming it! Maybe he isn’t naming it fully. And maybe even he doesn’t know the name of it. A Product Officer should spend some time exactly and accurately naming the exact product he wants before asking for it. Otherwise he and his staff may be struggling around over many misunderstood words!

If a Product Officer does not know there is tech involved in GETTING the product, then he will never make his staff study it or teach anybody to do it. And he will wind up with no product. So beware the Product Officer who won’t give time off for hatting! He doesn’t know one has to know the tech of getting his product. What do you think the OEC (Org Exec Course) Volumes and the technical bulletins are all about?

When you see a staff whirling around and dashing into walls and each other and not producing a thing, calmly try to find out if any of them or their Product Officer can NAME what products they are trying to produce. Chances are, few of them can and maybe the Product Officer as well.

One has to spend some time organizing in many different ways — the organization itself, the hatting, the technical skill staff members would have to have, to get anywhere in GETTING a product.

Handle and it will all smooth out and products will occur.

Sure, if you only organize and never produce you never get a product either. But if you only produce and never organize, the only brick wall you’ll ever see is the one you run into.

[Note: There is no Esto Series 34.]