You often hear that one should “hold the form of the org.”

What is it?

Some people think it is making sure the command channel (junior to senior to senior’s senior or on down) is held. This is only a small part of an org form.

In any new group of a few people, each and every one wears all the hats. This is not an org form.

An org form is that arrangement of specialized terminals which control and change the production and organization particles and flow lines of an activity.

A terminal for this purpose is something that has mass and meaning which originates, receives, relays and changes particles on a flow line.

To have any form at all, an org must have space.

The space must be located where it can have particles and flows or where the particles and flows with which it deals can easily be gotten to it and sent out from it and where it can conduct its activity without undue disturbance and at a velocity and volume with exchange that makes it viable.

There are a number of factors involved as noted in the above requirement: located, can have particles and flows, can get them in and out, no undue disturbance, velocity and volume, exchange and viability.

Although this looks complex, it is actually very simple as it involves just those elements and others are relatively unimportant. When you add aesthetics of building and grounds, and carpets and desks you can get too far off the definition of space requirement when these are given first priority. These are something you build up to. Clean and neat are closer to importance after the basic definition is met.

So one has a space. It has to be big enough for the traffic volume it has to handle to be viable. This is usually smaller than people think. The space is a building or other structure.

So we have a space as an essential of org form.

Traffic, particles, flows, have to be guided. They have to be pulled in (as per Div 6, Div 2 Reg, Div 2 Letter Reg, ASR, D of Tech Services, etc.). These are reaches out into the potential traffic that pulls it up to the space entrance point. In essence these posts work on the potential traffic and get it up to the door. So org form can start way out with a general approach, a magazine book ad, word-of-mouth, PR, an FSM, a ticket distributor, a book, etc. A specialized approach to specific names as per the tour, the Letter Reg working CF, the Phone Reg, etc. One generally directs the whole “general public” toward the space and also specifically directs specific people in it toward the space.

This is the org form at work that functions outside the org space. If it doesn’t function the org space itself gets no inflow.

Departing traffic must also be guided — and is too often neglected. An org without its CF up-to-date and used is neglecting its departing traffic.

England, for instance, loses a huge percent of its car sales business because it has no decent spare parts stockpiles (government taxes spare parts on the shelf). The customer who purchases often gets no follow-through.

Orgs that neglect departed traffic wind up with ARC broken fields.

So org form must include its own space and the spaces of its potential traffic and its departed traffic as they relate to the org’s activity.

When particles arrive at the org space proper they must be routed AND MUST CONTINUE TO BE ROUTED FROM THE MOMENT THEY ENTER UNTIL THEY LEAVE THE ORG SPACE.

Thus there must be a Reception for bodies, for mail, for phone, for telexes and for messages in general.

There must also be an exit point for all these things and someone to send them on their way out of the org space.

Lack of a Reception that can and does route can break an org of any type or kind and has done so.

When bodies can’t contact the org they assume the org is dead. And so it dies. The org can be so mislocated for its type of traffic that it can’t get anyone in or out. Then too the org will seem dead.

No matter the INTERNAL form of the org, its external form can be so remote that success is impossible to maintain. Thus org form does not begin with reception and routing. This is an action that occurs after the external requirements are met.

But once the particle (body, despatch, raw materials, whatever) is at the door RECEPTION must establish the routing.

This is done usually with an each-step-signed-off ROUTING FORM that gives the full road map of the particle.

Without this, particles don’t enter, jam up, get lost, go astray and DESTROY THE INTERNAL ORG FORM by making confusions.

Thus Reception has to have a very good idea of particle types and org form even to be able to issue the right routing form.

Routing forms often carry a particle into the org but not out.

This becomes a serious problem in getting anything completed. The start is on the form and not the exit. Thus the particle doesn’t exit but piles up some place.

When you see a mass of paper (in-baskets, pending, etc.) or a jam of bodies (Reg waiting room, D of Ts, etc.) or piles of unused pamphlets or unsold books you know two things at once:

A. Routing is unknown or not done or incomplete but in any event is faulty.

B. The internal org form is bad.

To say internal lines are out, one must also be saying internal terminals are faulty.

Ideally, the internal org form is designed for flows with the target of production.

The internal space has to be so allotted and arranged that the lines flow.

The lines flow to terminals in the sequence of change required in each particle.

The principal particle, meaning the most important one for that org has the total priority for design of space and terminals.

If wheat were being processed, then the whole space and terminal allocation of the plant or org, to have org form would have to deal with wheat.

In a Scientology org it is public bodies. Thus the whole design of space and flows must deal with public bodies.

This is easily violated and when it is it makes a terrible confusion.

You have to trace such a flow with what is called a DUMMY RUN. This means going through the place pretending to be the principal particle.

When you first try this in most plants or orgs you really begin to wonder how anything happens ever.

The answer is correction of location, either of the whole space or the terminals in the space.

One can dummy run as anything. First dummy run the principal particle and lay that out by what has to be done to adjust the space and terminals to it. Then as a telex, then a despatch, then as a piece of money, then as an invoice, etc.

When you’ve done all these you’ll really know what you’re doing in terms of space and terminals. Until then it’s all guess work.

You will find you can’t get in, you can’t get handled, you can’t stay in and you can’t get out!

So you adjust space and terminals for the main particle and then for the lesser particles.

You will achieve a near optimum compromise.

Then you arrange it and drill it in on the terminals.

After that things will speed up and stats will go up.

You now and only now have the FORM OF THE ORG.

It must be drawn up as org boards and flow plans and terminal location plans (3 quite separate things). These three plans give you the form of the org.

Then you have to drill-in EACH OF THE THREE PLANS usually with Chinese school.

You do the routing forms.

Now by HATTING you give each terminal control over his portion of the line.

The terminals will thereafter interact to bring about the needful flows.

And if your product is good and desired, the place will boom.

And that’s what’s really meant by the FORM OF THE ORG.