We have learned the hard way that an individual from the public must never be asked to DECIDE or CHOOSE.

Examining experiences we have had, 1 finally saw there was a hidden datum we had not been aware of in our orgs and particularly in handling the public. I finally dug it up and here it is:

TO DECIDE ONE HAS TO UNDERSTAND.

Examining our big org chart you can see quite plainly that Understanding is higher than the point of public entrance into processing.

Example: Mr. J is offered Particle A. He can accept it just because it is offered. He does not have to even perceive it or talk about it or recognize any condition. He needs to see only two things — (a) That it is being offered by somebody or something (source), and (b) that Particle A exists. All you have to do is show him where to obtain it and that it exists. This is acceptance without decision. Therefore he can have it.

Example: Mr. J is offered Particle A or Particle B. Now we have an entirely different situation. Mr. J must compare Particle A and Particle B in order to see which is best. Therefore he must see where each comes from (source), that each exists, establish the condition of each particle, communicate with and about them, perceive them, relate them to each other (become oriented), understand them, be enlightened and finally decide (establish own purpose). If he can do this Mr. J can choose which he should have, A or B. If Mr. J can’t do all these things, Mr. J is overwhelmed, gets confused and takes neither. One has asked Mr. J to jump up a lot of levels. Actually the ordinary Mr. J, when raw meat and even not so raw, would have to have a Grade IX Certificate to obtain a Grade I Certificate. And that of course is impossible.

The door, then, is barred utterly for the majority of people into any department or function or org, let alone the promotion and accounts functions.

The moral is very plain. Never ask anyone in the public or field to Decide or Choose.

Erase from our org patter “Which do you want, Mr. J?” Don’t ask which course, or what pin or what book or which auditor or what door or what time he or she wants to start anything or which door or which road or which membership.

Cultivate totally on a staff a didactic but pleasant approach. “Your intensive starts” “This is your next book’’ “Your next course should be taken on” “Go to the third door.” “I see you’re a pc. You go up to the second floorErase even the banal “What do you wish?” or “What can I do for you?” as even that throws confusion into it.

Example: Miss N has heard of processing. She wants some. She never did decide to want some. She just wants some. Now to ask her to decide anything about it blunts that purpose. It is a thin purpose. It quivers. Don’t ask her does she want a book or want training or want a pin or want anything else. Say only “Ah. You want processing.

That is a good thing to want. Be here on Monday and bring funds.” That’s all. For heaven’s sakes don’t sell her processing or books or alternate schedules or ask her if she can pay or anything. That want is frail at best. Don’t crush it! If she says timidly, “I only have funds,” say, “Good. Bring them, you can owe the rest. Be here on Monday.”

In short MAKE Miss N RIGHT for WANTING, thus intensifying the want. Make her RIGHT when she talks about money. Then, being right, she can come in Monday. Simple. Chances are, even if she works, she’ll still come in.

When she comes in she says, “I’m Miss N. I’m here for my processing.” Reception MUST say, “Ah. You’re Miss N. Good. There’s the Accounts window. Sign up there.”

The Accounts says, “Here’s the slip. Sign here. Take the slip to Room”

Reception says, “This way Miss N.” Estimations says, “Let me have your Accounts receipt. Good. That’s fine. Have you been processed before? No? Well, you soon will be. This way please. Your auditor is waiting.” The Auditor says, “Over here, please.” Adjusts the pc’s chair, etc, and sits down and says, “Start of Session.” At its end he says, “Be in this room at” for Miss N’s next. And so on. When she gets her Grade Certificate she’s told, “That means you’re a Grade I preclear. Get the book down in reception. It will tell you all about Grade II.” Miss N throughout is never anything but 8c’d. The general promotion told her what to want by saying she could have it. She expresses the want. The org people say, “That’s a good thing to want. You can have it.” And give it to her.

That’s all.

Just as you’d never ask a pc which command he wanted, you never ask the public individual to decide.

You can teach them anything, particularly the truth. But never ask them to decide.

By processing up through the grades this person will soon begin to see and be there and understand and decide. And she’ll surely decide she’s a Scientologist as it’s true all the way!This is new Admin tech.

You will see us knocking out now all requests to choose in all promotion and in all routing of the public in an org. If we do so we will succeed beautifully.

There is an even deeper fundamental at work here. It is quite startling.

You cannot get a flow without agreement. Examine your ARC triangle and you’ll see why.

This is why an org won’t flow traffic when Policy is out or not formed.

That’s why any policy, agreed upon, is better than points of individual decision on flow lines.

It’s not that people can’t decide in orgs. They can. But when a staff member makes an individual decision not laid out by policy, the flow stops.

Thus all flow and traffic lines including people and money and despatches will flow smoothly and rapidly only so long as the decisions that can be made are also part of policy and are simple decisions.

THE RAPIDITY OF PARTICLE FLOW ALONE DETERMINES POWER.

Thus an org’s strength and its sphere of influence and domain are all regulated by the speed of flow, both inside and outside an org!

And an org particle inside or outside an org (promotion, books, people, money) flows as fast as it’s free of independent, unagreed-upon decision points.

Example: A flow line can go to A or B. Unless policy says “If it’s above 80 it goes to A. If it’s below 80 it goes to B,” then that particle becomes the subject of a decision that is not covered by policy and the flow stops.

You can have a lot of choices on a Comm line or traffic line but none may be random choices made by an individual at that moment. The flow will stop, not because the decision is wrong but because the next point on the flow doesn’t know what it really is and so can’t handle it except slowly or by stopping it at least to think it over.

An org full of individual decision points not covered by group understanding is no org at all and will fail. It is a bunch of individuals working at cross purposes — each person okay, but the combined strength of the “org” is only that of one person in a state of confusion!

When the public is also being asked to decide about coming into an org full of individual decision points you get a total collapse.

The new Org Board overcomes all this. It has the choices laid out by policy and org form and formula. So it can grow, will be easy to work in and will remain a happy place unless somebody puts in some new decision points not on the chart. The result will be stopped flows, no traffic, no money, no org.

Never put in an “Individual random decision point” on a chart! That’s the moral.

Then all staff can look over and see easily on what’s decided where.

A multiple decision point can work providing only that all the decisions to be made are already known to all. Take a Communicator. She has to make many “decisions” that are known in advance. Which basket does what dispatch go into? That’s,an easy multiple “decision” providing the Org Board is easy to read and staff understands it and is doing the jobs for which they are posted. The line stops when the posts cross or aren’t being handled, or at an “individual decision point” not then easily knowable to the staff.

This was the main problem in working out the 1965 Org Board. For the first time even my own post was being clarified by the need for knowable decision. Every post on the Board is like that. And it was all worked out. It could not have been worked out at all unless I had found some of the most fundamental formulas of this Universe. The type of pattern used kept one org going for 80 trillion years, believe it or not. And to that were added some very basic laws that had been overlooked by that outfit and which caused its eventual decay. It couldn’t correct itself!

We aren’t actually radically changed by the Org Board as all our own customs are functional on it also.

Frankly, the 1965 Org Board pattern, as posted, gives all the routing hats and therefore the “decisions” are already visible. If a flow stacks up or a basket fills, or trouble occurs, we have an overload or an absence or an injected “individual decision point”.

Far from robbing anyone of self determinism, the 1965 board is welcomed by sighs of relief. Even I was glad to get my own work onto it. The whole room went bright when I cognited “Gee, this is what everyone is trying to do to me; make me an individual decision point!”

One puts one’s baskets and one’s “hands” into the lines and acts on the lines. One doesn’t put his decisions on the lines as the lines then hit him! A postulate or a decision is too close to a thetan’s identity! It confuses him and makes him feel hit personally by the Communications when he has to newly decide on each one. If the decision is already there, A or B, he can then route with his “hands”, not with himself. If he is always newly and randomly deciding he gets carried eventually on down the comm line himself and goes off post! A thetan can handle a vast volume of action so long as he doesn’t have to make a strange or fresh decision in each act. We can tell in orgs who is making fresh individual decisions as that person has to bring each of his own dispatches in personally. (We call it, “bringing a body”.) He routes himself too! Only a Communication runner who is involved only with who and where can do this safely as her decisions are known beforehand. Thus she can move on lines with impunity. Note that she only stops when she has to figure out who has now gone where and why she was not informed! Otherwise a Communications runner could go through fire and war with impunity without a pause so long as the who and where are known. Thus an investigation’s personnel cannot also be a communications personnel without going half mad! But an investigation’s personnel with her set of “who to look for and where” can move swiftly too! They (the communications personnel and the investigations personnel) have entirely different previously known decisions to make. Both are who, wheres. But the comm who, where is the comm station of a known person. And the investigation who, where is composed of types of whos and reported wheres. The purposes are different. The comm personnel sees to whom and where and delivers. The investigation personnel sees what and finds out whom and where and reports. Other staff must know what decisions these two will make. Other staff sees a jam of traffic and will feel comfortable if a Communicator predictably sends an expeditor to help clear the jam. Also, seeing a confused area, other staff will feel all right about it if an investigator pops up and finds out what and whom and reports it accurately for a predictable decision. Thus a staff trained in the pattern of decisions that will be taken by the various departments only complains when somebody green puts somebody else’s traffic on their lines or leaps in investigating the maintenance men when it’s a bulldog a pc brought to session that’s howling. Things get predictable. One sees a pile of traffic growing, one knows an expeditor will show up. One sees a student blowing, one knows an investigator will show up. One can live in a predictable environment. One gets nervy only in the presence of unpredictable decisions. Want to know why wog courts make people nervy? Who can predict a wog court decision? Who can even predict the sentence man to man for the same crime? It’s not knowing that makes men stupid. Part of knowing is “In a given situation what should be decided?”

Only a new knowledge of universal laws has made it possible to make.such an org pattern, for its decisions are then basic in every person and the universe in which we live. We need only avoid bank dramatizations to own the lot.

[Note: The above Policy Letter was reissued on 13 October 1970 without change. A revision was issued on 15 December 1972 deleting the first page and a half. This revision should be studied in conjunction with Policy Letters on sales closing techniques which appear in the 1972 and 1973 Year Books.]