This is the first policy letter on STANDARD ADMINISTRATION.
STANDARD TECH came in with a crash just by teaching the most basic of basics as the most important actions. Cases which hadn’t moved for years, when handled by Case Supervisors and auditors who skipped all the airy-fairy nonsense and just did the usual ordinary basic actions, suddenly flew.
There is also Standard Training Procedure. This again is the ordinary, down-to-earth basic actions. A class that hadn’t moved at all suddenly took off and all graduated when the USUAL was done.
Thus we find the flaw in all our actions to be the failure to separate out the truly basic important actions and instead engaging upon trivial complexities.
It is a characteristic of a thetan that the least complex actions are the most powerful. When his confront lessens he tries to do things by vias that add complexities and he then fails and becomes weak.
So, just as we blasted our way to 100 percent results with STANDARD TECH, so we can thunder straight through to victory using STANDARD ADMIN.
STANDARD means “a definite level or degree of quality that is proper and adequate for a specific purpose.” (Webster’s Third New International Dictionary Unabridged, standard 3b, page 2223.)
ADMINISTRATION means “the principles, practices and rationalized techniques employed in achieving the objectives or aims of an organization.” (Webster’s Third New International Dictionary Unabridged, administration 5a, page 28.) We commonly call this “admin” as a shortening of it and to designate the work of doing it.
ORGANIZATION means “a group of people that has a more or less constant membership, a body of officers, a purpose, and usually a set of regulations.” (Webster’s Third New International Dictionary Unabridged, organization 2b, page 1590.)
BASICS means “(basic-s) something that is basic: FUNDAMENTAL.”
BASE means “the bottom of something considered as its support.”
FUNDAMENTAL means “serving as an original or generating source: being the one from which others are derived.”
DERIVED means “formed or developed out of something else,” which is to say something formed or made from a basic.
Thus if we have the BASIC or base or starting point, and know it well, then from it we can develop more complex actions.
We had to have the fundamental or basic laws of organization in order to develop the full structure of organization.
Administration becomes STANDARD when we have the most important points or laws or actions and when we always use these and use them in just the same way.
For example, some people look at a factory as a big complex structure, they consider it very complicated or hard to understand or are in awe of it. Or get confused trying to study it. Well, the moment they know that the basic action of the place is to make silk cloth, they have a fundamental on which to understand what is going on. When we then know that raw fiber goes in one side, gets processed and comes out the other as satin, we can begin to sketch in what its flow lines must be. At last we have that, we can assume somebody runs it and that people work there, and taken all in one piece it’s an organization.
To RUN the factory we would have to know the most important duties of every person in the place, the functions of the machines and the lines of flow. And to run it SUCCESSFULLY, we would have to know where its raw fiber came from and its cost and who would buy it and its price and how much the various expenses were to keep it going and to make it make more than it spent, and we’d have its economics and accounting.
These would be the BASICS of the place: who did what, what the lines were, where the raw materials came from and where the finished product went, and keeping the cost and expense in ratio, how to stimulate more demand for satin and how to get raw materials in quantity at a reasonable price.
While some might be upset at making a similarity between a factory and an organization in general, all organizations have the same basic problems and similar solutions.
An army delivers blows to the enemy and gets recruits, materiel and pay from the government.
It has a supposed product too, since few armies exist after losing too often in a war.
The best organization is one which has a thetan over it, methods of working out its problems, basic actions and a good desirable product. It adapts itself to its environment or surroundings or conditions of operation so as to expand to greater or lesser degree.
Such an organization must have a clear-cut purpose and fill a definite need in order to survive.
Its services must be more valuable than what it costs to produce or furnish those services.
It must, to remain healthy, obtain more potential than it spends. For “potential” can be ready money or power or even strength.
Where an organization violates these very fundamental things, it sickens and will eventually perish.
For example, a government of a country can violate one or more of the above simple ideas and eventually cease to exist. Some governments are really dead for a very long time before the fact is discovered.
Such is the persistence and power of a once strong organization that it can continue for a very long while, feeding inward on itself. It gradually contracts and eventually becomes a memory only.
Thus when you see an organization begin to contract, if it is to be salvaged, it must be stripped back to basics quickly, its form simplified, its purpose clarified and the important services it can render greatly intensified and the cost of rendering them greatly reduced. This formula intelligently applied even to a dead government could revive it.
Lest we go too quickly, in the single sentence above and the earlier basics mentioned we have the whole “secret” of either reviving an old or founding a new organization.
If you know the purpose and how to make a desirable service known and know how to handle its fundamentals expertly, you can found, increase or revive any organization.
Putting together or handling an organization requires very certain, positive knowledge of
Handling or serving in an organization successfully, one has to KNOW the actions and activities of the organization and its area so well that one does not have to think about it. One just does it or one indicates or works with what or who does it.
You don’t think “clutch, gear shift, accelerator, steering wheel” when you drive a car. You should, to drive it successfully, know where these things are and what they do so well that you simply drive a car.
But learning to drive a car, you learn each of these things and its function and then learn them so well that it seems like instinct to use them. It isn’t instinct. It’s knowing them so well you don’t fumble.
An organization is like that. Working in it or being one of those who run a part of it or the whole of it, one has to know the parts and actions and (a) to (f) above so well one knows them so fast that one just does them.
So, in STANDARD ADMIN we are acquiring
And when we have this, the organization will go, go, go with an ease and lack of effort that is astonishing.