BUSINESS MANAGEMENT - THE TOOLS & CREED

INTRODUCTION TO?BUSINESS MANAGEMENT

It is a logical truth, that if one knew how to effectively build and organise groups, he could conquer the world. Using groups one can not just conquer the territories of the planet, but one can actualise any dreams one might invent.

This is the promise of effective business management. This is the reward for acquiring this know-how and developing one’s skill as a manager.?

For me personally, I have come to the conclusion that through the development of my skill as a manager, or more correctly stated through the organising of people into organisations, I am able to acquire the wealth and philanthropy I desire for myself and my groups.?

This is why the highest-paid individuals in our society are administrators: CEOs, Generals, Founders, Captains, and managers.

In this article, you will find the description of management and how to use it in your business or organisation, as well as the list of tools of management.?

THE DEFINITION OF MANAGEMENT

Management could be said to be the planning of the means to attain goals and their assignment for execution to staff, and the proper coordination of activities within the group to attain maximal efficiency with minimal effort to attain determined goals.

Now an important distinction, is the difference between management and the goal maker who dreams up the goals. In large companies, the goals of the group are normally set forth by boards of directors. This topic will be defined in more detail later on in this article

Management itself does not ordinarily include the discovery and delineation of the goals of a group and this is left to the dreamer in the company which is usually the founder.?

Management should concern itself with the accomplishment of goals.

THE GOALS OF BUSINESS MANAGEMENT

The goal maker should make a goal for the organisation that embraces the whole group. If this is accomplished and the group agrees to this goal, the entire organisation coalesces. Once a group coalesces like this, true power starts to emerge.?

The visionary dreams up goals, and the group manages these goals into actuality.

Two types of goals must be distinguished to avoid a major pitfall. One type of goal is a pro- survival goal which betters the world and the group members. These types of goals must be created to coalesce the group and such goals will gain the support of the individual group members.??

The other type of goal is a destructive goal that pushes into the opposite direction of a pro-survival direction. Some groups form for the purpose of destruction. To destroy another group, person, or thing. Destruction becomes the goal of such a group, and inevitably this group achieves its ultimate purpose and ends up destroying even itself.

THE THREE SPHERES OF ORGANISATIONS

Organisations exist in three parts and to be a skilled manager it is important to know what organisations consist of:

1. The goal maker. This is usually the founder or a visionary in the group. The one who dreams up the goals.
2. The management. These are the messengers between the goal maker and the individual group members. This group uses its tools of management to coordinate the execution of goals. They are not goal makers or the actual producers.
3. The individual group members. This is the group who actually does the production and execution of the goals. They rely on management to keep the organisation stable so that they can get to work. They rely on the goal maker to provide a goal they can strive for.?

The true group wants a goal-maker and needs to protect him. Management in a true group, needs to be able to execute the goals and not get stuck in production either. And the group members need to handle the production without tardiness or backflash. By backflash is meant any response other than immediate compliance with orders from a manager.?

In groups where the goal maker becomes part of management, or the management becomes part of production, the group soon starts to deteriorate. Each element has its own strengths and should focus on its own responsibilities to make the whole group function as an effective organisation.?

MANAGEMENT OF COMMUNICATION LINES

Communication lines are what hold the organisation together as a group. They are sacred and should never be perverted. Organisations need to have a fast and effective flow of communication between all its members and parts. This makes the organisation agile and alive.?

As a manager you should take care to only have these four things on your incoming communication lines:

1. Information,
2. Appointments and dismissals of personnel for your action or confirmation,
3. Financial matters,
4. Acknowledgments.

A manager should not allow these things on his incoming communication lines:

1. Demands for decisions.
2. Backflashes and can’ts. (As described above, these are things that are disagreements to execute appropriate orders).
3. Trouble, gossip, bad news for the sake of fear-mongering, etc.

It is the task of the business manager to make sure that all the company’s communication lines are free from bad communication and are filled with good and factual communication particles.?

POWER VERSUS AUTHORITY

There is a common misunderstanding of what management is as conceived by the amateur manager.

The amateur manager believes that orders have to be enforced by punishment. He believes that this is true as he believes that his title of manager grants him this ability to punish. This “power” only lasts until the inevitable uprising and mutiny by his threatened subordinates.?

The professional business manager on the other hand, knows this and he never uses punishment to enforce orders.?

True power comes from agreement. Management derives power most quickly by being an interpreter between goal maker and group. This power is granted to managers by the group they manage. This is why having clear and pro-survival goals is so important.?

MASKED MANAGEMENT & THE PUNISHMENT-DRIVE MANAGER?

In the intriguing 15th-century book written as an instruction guide for new princes and royals by Niccolò Machiavelli, The Prince , we start to encounter the first versions of a management science being defined. Machiavelli goes on to describe a punishment-drive management style, where he encourages the princes to make goals for his subjects via acquiring new territories and that it “is better to be cruel than merciful”.

This is masked management. It only lasts temporarily and inevitably ends in disaster.?

True management has their group aligned and in cooperation, with an agreed and pro-survival goal.

FALSE MANAGEMENT TECHNOLOGY

“The world is in tumult today because of three schools of management: fascism reserves the right to fire at will and devil take the men of production; socialism outlaws private property and builds up staggering bureaucracies about as efficient as Rube Goldberg’s machinery; communism buffoons around with one-time high ethic tenets, building an empire on deceits. None of the three are worthy of attention should a workable science of management come into being.”

by Mr. L. Ron Hubbard

A workable science of management is not one where unionism has had to start. Unionism is a result of the failure of management, to support the individuals of the organisation. When management and group members become opposed to one another the organisation soon implodes.

Once again the need for a pro-survival goal is seen. The goal makers must be protected and valued, the management must be protected and valued, and so too must the individual group members be protected.?

We have a better proverbial mousetrap today, in the Hubbard Management System.

THE CREDO OF A GOOD AND SKILLED MANAGER

To be effective and successful a manager must have a creed. Creed being defined as a set of beliefs or aims which guide someone's actions. Mr. Hubbard developed such a creed intended for use of a good and skilled manager. In Mr. Hubbard’s words:

1. Understand as fully as possible the goals and aims of the group he manages. He must be able to see and embrace the ideal attainment of the goal as envisioned by a goal maker. He must be able to tolerate and better the practical attainments and advances of which his group and its members may be capable. He must strive to narrow, always, the ever-existing gulf between the ideal and the practical.
2. He must realize that a primary mission is the full and honest interpretation by himself of the ideal and ethic and their goals and aims to his subordinates and the group itself. He must lead creatively and persuasively toward these goals his subordinates, the group itself and the individuals of the group.
3. He must embrace the organization and act solely for the entire organization and never form or favor cliques. His judgment of individuals of the group should be solely in the light of their worth to the entire group.
4. He must never falter in sacrificing individuals to the good of the group both in planning and execution and in his justice.
5. He must protect all established communication lines and complement them where necessary.
6. He must protect all affinity in his charge and have himself an affinity for the group itself.
7. He must attain always to the highest creative reality.
8. His planning must accomplish, in the light of goals and aims, the activity of the entire group. He must never let organizations grow and sprawl but, learning by pilots, must keep organizational planning fresh and flexible.
9. He must recognize in himself the rationale of the group and receive and evaluate the data out of which he makes his solutions with the highest attention to the truth of that data.
10. He must constitute himself on the orders of service to the group.
11. He must permit himself to be served well as to his individual requirements, practicing an economy of his own efforts and enjoying certain comforts to the wealth of keeping high his rationale.
12. He should require of his subordinates that they relay into their own spheres of management the whole and entire of his true feelings and the reasons for his decisions as clearly as they can be relayed and expanded and interpreted only for the greater understanding of the individuals governed by those subordinates.
13. He must never permit himself to pervert or mask any portion of the ideal and ethic on which the group operates nor must he permit the ideal and ethic to grow old and outmoded and unworkable. He must never permit his planning to be perverted or censored by subordinates. He must never permit the ideal and ethic of the group’s individual members to deteriorate, using always reason to interrupt such a deterioration.
14. He must have faith in the goals, faith in himself and faith in the group.
15. He must lead by demonstrating always creative and constructive subgoals. He must not drive by threat and fear.
16. He must realize that every individual in the group is engaged in some degree in the managing of other men, life and the physical universe and that a liberty of management within this code should be allowed to every such submanager.

Thus conducting himself, a manager can win an empire for his group, whatever that empire may be.

BUSINESS MANAGEMENT TOOLS BREAKTHROUGH

First, an executive or manager must know that actual business management tools exist for his use in managing an organisation.

Secondly, he needs to know WHAT his tools are.

And thirdly, he must realize that these tools are SIMPLE but VITALLY, VITALLY

IMPORTANT, and that they are to be used and that he MUST USE THEM.

This applies to top levels of management, to middle management echelons and in every organisation from the CEO or MD down through the Exec Council and every head of a division or department.

The breakthrough was not a matter of discovering or developing or improving the materials which make up the tools of management. Organising boards, the Administrative Scale (see below), target policy, planning and programming, statistics, graphs and conditions (to name a few of these tools) have been a part of The Hubbard Management System, well defined, available for use and used for quite some years now.

None of these are complicated.

THE BREAKTHROUGH WAS IN DISCOVERING THAT A GREAT MANY EXECUTIVES DID NOT LOOK UPON THESE AS TOOLS.

BASIC MANAGEMENT TOOLS

The following is a list of the basic business management tools which Mr. Hubbard created. There are many more materials however this is a summary of the basic management tools:

1. ADMIN SCALE: A scale for use which gives a sequence (and relative seniority) of subjects relating to organization. The scale, from the top down, includes: Goals, Purposes, Policy, Plans, Programs, Projects, Orders, Ideal Scenes, Statistics, and Valuable Final Products. The scale is worked up and down until it is (each item) in full agreement with the remaining items. In short,?for success, all these items on the scale must agree with all other items on the scale on the same subject.
2. TARGET POLICY: A series of policy letters that describes each type of target and how they are to be used by staff, executives, and management personnel to get something done.
3. STRATEGIC PLANS: A STRATEGIC PLAN is a statement of the intended plans for accomplishing a broad objective and inherent in its definition is the idea of clever use of resources or maneuvers for outwitting the enemy or overcoming existing obstacles to win the objective. It is the central strategy worked out at the top which, like an umbrella, covers the activities of the echelons below it.
4. PROGRAMS: A PROGRAM is a series of steps in sequence to carry out a plan. Programs are made up of all types of targets coordinated and executed on time.
5. PROJECTS: A PROJECT is a series of guiding steps written in sequence to carry out one step of a program, which, if followed, will result in a full and successful accomplishment of the program target.
6. ORDERS: An ORDER is a direction or command issued by an authorized person to a person or group within the sphere of the authorized person’s authority. It is the verbal or written direction from a lower or designated authority to carry out a program step or apply the general policy. Some program steps are so simple that they are themselves an order or an order can simply be a roughly written project. By implication, an order goes from a senior to a junior. All orders of whatever kind by telex, despatch or mission orders must be coordinated with current written command intention. You can destroy an organisation by issuing orders to it uncleared and uncoordinated. Coordinate your orders! Clear your orders!
7. COMPLIANCE REPORTS: A COMPLIANCE REPORT is a report to the originator of an order that the order has been done and is a completed cycle. It is not a cycle begun, it is not a cycle in progress, it is a cycle completed and reported back to the originator as done. When an executive or manager accepts “done” as the single statement and calls it a compliance, noncompliance can occur unseen. Therefore, one must (1) require explicit compliance to every order and (2) receive the evidence of the compliance pinned to the compliance report. Such evidence might be in the form of copies of the actual material required by the order and procured, or photographs of it, ticket stubs, receipts, a signed note stating the time and place some action was carried out, etc. Evidence is data that records a “done” so somebody else can know it is done. True compliances to evaluated programs are vital.
8. TERMINALS: A TERMINAL is something that has mass and meaning which originates, receives, relays and changes particles on a flow line. A post or terminal is an assigned area of responsibility and action which is supervised in part by an executive. A fixed-terminal post stays in one spot, handles specific duties and receives communications, handles them and sends them on their way. A line post has to do with organizational lines, seeing that the lines run smoothly, ironing out any ridges in the lines, keeping particles flowing smoothly from one post to another post. A line post is concerned with the flow of lines, not necessarily with the fixed-terminal posts at the end of the lines.
9. LINES: A LINE is a route along which a particle travels between one terminal and the next in an organization; a fixed pattern of terminals who originate and receive or receive and relay orders, information or other particles. A COMMAND LINE is a line on which authority flows. It is vertical. A command line is used upward for unusual permission or authorizations or information or important actions or compliances. Downward it is used for orders. A COMMUNICATION LINE is the line on which particles flow; any sequence through which a message of any character may go. It is horizontal. The most important things in an organization are its lines and terminals. Without these in, in an exact known pattern, the organization cannot function at all. The lines will flow if they are all in and people wear their hats.
10. ORGANISING BOARDS: An organising board, is a board that displays the functions, duties, sequences of action and authorities of an organization. The organising board shows the pattern of organizing to obtain a product. It is the pattern of the terminals and their flows. We see these terminals as “posts” or positions. Each of these is a hat. There is a flow along these hats. The result of the whole organising board is a product. The product of each hat on the board adds up to the total product.
11. HATS: HAT is a term to describe the write-ups, checksheets, and packs that outline the purposes, know-how, and duties of a post. It exists in folders and packs and is trained in on the person on the post to a point of full application of the data therein. A HAT designates what terminal in the organization is represented and what the terminal handles and what flows the terminal directs. HATTING is the action of training the person on the checksheet and pack of materials for his post.
12. DESPATCHES: A DESPATCH is a written message, particularly an official communication. When writing a despatch, address it to the POST—not the person. Date your despatch. Route to the hat only, give its department, section, and organisation. Put any others that need to be aware of this communication at the top of the despatch. Indicate with an arrow the first destination. Sign it with your name but also the hat you’re wearing when you write it. Despatches must be written so clearly that any other person in the organisation can read and understand them, with the originator taking responsibility for both ends of the communication line. Drama and gossip in despatches on a communication line are forbidden.
13. STATISTICS: A STATISTIC is a number or amount compared to an earlier number or amount of the same thing. STATISTICS refers to the quantity of work done or the value of it in money. Statistics are the only sound measure of any production or any job or any activity. These tell of production. They measure what is done. Thus, one can manage by statistics. When one is managing by statistics they must be studied and judged alongside the other related statistics.
14. GRAPHS: A GRAPH is a line or diagram showing how one quantity depends on, compares with or changes another. It is any pictorial device used to display numerical relationships.
15. CONDITIONS: A CONDITION is an operating state. Organizationally, it’s an operating state and oddly enough, in the physical universe universe, there are several formulas connected with these operating states. The table of conditions, from the bottom up, includes: Confusion, Treason, Enemy, Doubt, Liability, Non-Existence, Danger, Emergency, Normal, Affluence and Power or Power Change. There is a law that holds true in this universe whereby if one does not correctly designate the condition he is in and apply its formula to his activities or if he assigns and applies the wrong condition, then the following happens: He will inevitably drop one condition below the condition he is actually in. One has to do the steps of a condition formula in order to improve one’s condition.
16. PERSONNEL FOLDERS: A PERSONNEL FOLDER is kept for each person employed by the org. The folder is to contain all pertinent personnel data about the person: name, age, nationality, date employment started, address (if other than the organisation), next of kin, social security number, test scores, previous education, skills, previous employment, case level, training level, name of post, former posts held and dates held, production record on post(s), date employment ceased, copies of all tests, and any other pertinent data. Copies of contracts, agreements or legal papers connected with the person are filed in the personnel folder. The originals of such papers are kept in archives. A personnel folder is used for purposes of promotion and any needful reorganisation and so should contain anything that throws light on the efficiency, inefficiency or character of personnel. Personnel folders are filed by division and department, with the personnel in separate folders filed alphabetically in their department. There should be two sections in the personnel files: (1) present employees and (2) past employees.
17. ETHICS FOLDERS: An ETHICS FOLDER is kept for each individual staff member. It is a folder that should include his complete ethics record, ethics chits, reports, commendations and copies, as well, of any justice actions taken on the person, with their results. Filing is the real trick of ethics work. The files do 90 percent of the work. Ethics reports patiently filed in folders, one for each staff member, eventually makes one file fat. When one file gets fat, call up a “hearing” on the person and his area gets smooth.
18. FILES: A FILE by definition is an orderly and complete deposit of data which is available for immediate use. As FILES are the vital operational line it is of the GREATEST IMPORTANCE that ALL FILING IS ACCURATE. A misfiled particle can be lost forever. A missing item can throw out a whole evaluation or a sale. It is of vital interest both in ease of work and financially that all files are straight.
19. DATA SERIES: (A series of articles by L. Ron Hubbard on the subject of logic, investigation, and finding true causes for situations.) The tool to discover causes. The administrative technology described in these policy letters is applied to find what is logical by ferreting out what is illogical, using this to reveal the greatest outness which, when remedied, will resolve the scene.

SUMMARY IN CLOSING

Having come to the end of this article on management I want to congratulate you. You now know more about business management than the average manager in this society. But with this knowledge and know-how comes more responsibility. It is now your responsibility to be a professional. Uphold the dignity and respect of the true professional manager. Protect the honor of our profession. And hammer out of existence any incorrect application of the management system observed by you by reprimanding such individuals swiftly.?

But holding this promise to yourself, you will be able to play games of considerable importance and magnitude. Use the knowledge you have gained to do good in the world and promote professionalism. Learn more on this subject and take the responsibility to be a great leader.?

My best,

Marcel T. Wasserman

P.S. A grateful acknowledgment is made to Mr. L. Ron Hubbard , as this article on business management is mostly based upon his work. There is much more to learn about his works and I urge you to investigate how you can study his works via the Hubbard College South Africa or the various International Hubbard Colleges.?

P.P.S. To find out how we can consult your business please contact me.?