We have introduced many new principles in administration in recent policy letters. Here is one which if left out would cause mystery.

This is the principle of traffic flows we now use. It is called the FAST FLOW SYSTEM OF MANAGEMENT.

It is the concern of anyone sending a despatch or mimeo to route it accurately.

A being controlling a traffic or activity flow should let the flow run until it is to be reinforced or indicates a turbulence will occur and only then inspects the part of the flow that is to be reinforced or is becoming enturbulated and inspects and acts on only that one flow.

A major part of an executive hat is "routing".

This principle would operate on a committee of 3 in this fashion: the committee does not act as a body. Each member acts individually in three spheres of influence (three types of flow). There is no committee (collective) action until one of the three members wants concurrence from the other two on greatly reinforcing a flow or until the other two, by observation, see the third is going adrift. Only in these cases does the committee act as a Committee. In other words all 3 members go about their work independently until there is a change in one of their three spheres and then they act. Otherwise the flows of orders and actions are independent. Not doing it like this is why Committees have gotten the reputation of being unable and a waste of time.

A vital part of any staff member's duties is proper routing.

To do this one, of course, needs another principle: that of Indicators.

Our orgs are too big for routing to occur to Bill, Jane or Pete.

An Indicator is something that signals an approaching change rather than finding the change is already present and confirmed.

Route to the hat only, give its Department section and org. Put any vias at the top of the despatch. Indicate with an arrow the first destination.

We get this from auditing. An auditor audits so long as things go evenly. He knows when they will begin to deteriorate or change by an Indicator. He acts on seeing the indicator. He doesn't wait until the collapse or total change of the pc occurs and then look it over and act. The pc could be run into the ground or a good process that was bettering the case could be neglected if an auditor could not PREDICT from indicators how it was going before it was gone.

Sign it with your name but also the hat you're wearing when you write it. You might be holding several hats. Which one wrote?

In supervising a number of sections or departments, it would work this way:

Just as a post office can't find wrong addresses, so neither can we. If you want your despatch to arrive, do the above.

The person in charge does not examine every action or decision on the lines. If all despatches of all the activities went through his or her one pair of hands the volume would be too great and would jam. The executive's "plate" would be too full and this would halt any expansion of the activities as the executive would feel overworked, yet in actual fact would be getting nothing much done. The flows which needed watching would be buried in a huge volume of flows that did not need watching.

When you get a misrouted despatch, look it over and see how it erred and return it to sender with a copy of this Policy Letter.

Instead, the principle of flows tells us that the executive should have statistical INDICATORS such as O.I.C. charts on every part of the activity each week and should act only on the basis of the charts' behaviors.

That way we'll take a lot of confusion out of our orgs.

If a chart went down the Executive would not wait for that area to collapse before inspecting it. At a dip point the executive should go over all the plans and traffic and despatches of the area dipping down and unearth the real reason why it did dip. If the matter needs minor remedy, it should be corrected. If then the graph still dipped down, the executive would not only be advised of it by the OIC Indicators but would know, having inspected earlier, what had to be done on a more drastic scale to get the graph going up again.

There is an org there, you know. A lot of new staff go about for quite a while never noticing there is an org there that has posts and functions.

The OIC system must be used and all data plotted and circulated to the Executives in an org before this system will work.

If we all route to the right hat from the right hat according to our org board, we'll make it a lot sooner.

If the OIC system is put into effect fully the executive can then (and only then) let go the comm lines and let the traffic flow.

He then only needs to:

1. Keep alert for and correct Dev-T (off-line, off-policy, off-origin and non-compliance);

2. Keep an eye on the weekly OIC charts;

3. Find from OIC the upward trends and inspect and find out what's working so well it can be reported;

4. Be alert to any down dip and inspect the activity itself and correct the matter; and

5. Spend most of his time getting his own job done (since executives do have jobs besides supervision).

The one thing he mustn't do is "get reasonable" about dips or zooms and not act to really check the decline or to reinforce the rise:

(a) Thinking one does know when he has not gotten it inspected closely;

(b) Not believing the graph and Indicators; and

(c) Not acting, are the fatal errors.

Doing (1) to (5) tells us who's an executive and doing (a), (b) and (c) tells us who shouldn't be an executive.

If this system is in effect the org can't help but boom.

We will call this the FAST FLOW SYSTEM OF MANAGEMENT.

It is a very precise art. It's like auditing. One predicts the slumps and reinforces the tendency to boom.

It can't miss. If it's done completely.

[LRH NOTE: Study this. Shows why of OIC.]