Note: HCO PL 19 July 63 stated that an executive should “get people to get the work done.” HCO PL 19 Dec 69 canceled it and stated other duties.

This cancellation probably robbed some people of a stable datum that they got people to get the work done.

When an executive was no longer told he should get people to get the work done, hatting tended to go out and a great deal of overload began to occur on executive posts.

From an executive not doing “work” the viewpoint swung to the other extreme that executives only do all the work.

Both policy letters (HCO PL 19 Dec 69 and 19 July 63) were correct in their way.

Therefore they are restated as follows.

AN EXECUTIVE SINGLE-HANDS WHILE HE TRAINS HIS STAFF.

When he has people producing, functioning well and hatted, he then enters the next phase:

AN EXECUTIVE GETS PEOPLE TO GET THE WORK DONE.

By “single-handing” one means do it himself, being the one responsible for actually handling things.

This phase occurs when an executive is forming up his personnel.

(HCO PL 19 Dec 69 Executive Duties, is therefore requoted for this phase of the activity — he is on the post, most of the rest are new and flubby.)

An executive handles the whole area while he gets people to help.

An executive in charge of an org would “single-hand” (handle it all) while getting others to handle their jobs in turn.

This gives a practical and workable approximation of what top-stat executives actually do do.

The executive who sits back and waits for others to act when a situation is grave can crash an entire activity.

Essentially an executive is a working individual who can competently handle any post or machine or plan under him.

He is a training officer as well. He designates who is to do what and sees that a training action is done by himself or others to be sure the post will be competently held. An executive who accepts the idea that if a person has a school degree in “waffing wogglies” or sewing on buttons he can at once be trusted to waff wogglies or sew buttons is taking a personnel by recommendation, not by his experience with the personnel whose work-organization potential has never been tested under that executive. A camouflaged hole (undetected neglect area) may very well develop in such a circumstance, which can suddenly confront the executive with a time-consuming disaster.

Thus an executive accepts help conditionally until it is demonstrated to be help, and meanwhile does not relax his control of a sector below him until he is sure it is functioning.

In this way an executive is one who does and backs off spots continually. He could be said to always be doing himself out of a job by getting the job competently done. However, in actual practice, as post personnel does shift, he has to be prepared at any time to wade back in and put it right.

The Supreme Test of an Executive (as in the HCOB Supreme Test of a Thetan) is to MAKE THINGS GO RIGHT.

To the degree he can maintain his observation, communicate and get supervision done (see HCO PL on the Key Ingredients), he can achieve production or service and satisfy users.

As observation is often faulty, especially over long distances, as communication is not always received or studied and as supervision is often absent, the executive must develop a sensitivity to indicators of outnesses and systems to correct them.

A very good executive knows how to “play the org board” under him. He has to know every function in it. He has to know who to call on to do what or he disorganizes things badly.

An executive also has to know neighboring org board arrangements in the same org, the org board of allies and of enemies.

An executive has to know what users need and want and furnish it. When normal and routine posts fail under him, the executive is of course forced into Non-Existence as an executive, has to find what is needed and wanted and produce it. He applies the whole Non-Existence Formula to the situation.

Only if he does not handle fully once he does see an outness does an executive go into Liability.

An executive deals with the frailty of human variations and distractions. When these engulf his area and he is confronted with the fruits of alteration and non- compliance, of posts not held and duties suddenly found left undone, it is up to the executive to get them done any way he can. Having handled, he applies the Danger Formula (or lower as it appears) to the neglected area.

An executive has to be somebody who cares about his job and wants to get things done. If he only wishes the title for status, he is of course heading himself and his area for disaster and it could be said that such an executive, not meaning to do the job but only wanting the title, is in Doubt or lower on the third dynamic.

The executive thinks of the area and organization first and repairs. Then he thinks of the individual and straightens him out.

An executive who is worker-oriented winds up hurting all the workers. The workers depend on the organization. When that is gone they have nothing.

An organization cannot have more taken out of it than is being put into it. Efforts to bleed an organization of more blood than it has, destroys it.

The preservation of his organization is a first consideration of an executive.

In an executive’s hands an organization or one of its areas must be “VIABLE.” That is, it must be capable of supporting itself and thus staying alive. When his area is parasitic, dependent on others outside it, without producing more than it consumes, the area and its workers are at severe risk and in the natural course of events will be dispensed with, if not at once, eventually.

Thus an executive is someone whose own sweat and energy keeps an organization or an area of it functioning. In this he earns and uses help and they in turn take over executive roles in their subordinate areas and keep them alive and producing.

An executive is in the business of SURVIVAL of his area and its people and providing with service or production an abundance which makes the area, his own services and that of his subordinates valuable.

If an executive so functions his own survival and increase is guaranteed even by natural law. If an executive functions for other reasons it is certain the ground will vanish from under him eventually again by natural law.

An executive is in fact a worker who can do all and any of the work in the area he supervises and who can note and work rapidly to repair any outnesses observed in the functioning of those actions in his charge.

The best liked executive who is most valued by his workers as someone they need is an executive who functions as described above. One who seeks to survive on favors given and does not otherwise measure up is not in fact regarded highly by anyone.

Whatever ideology one finds himself in, the above still applies. The way to the top may well be marrying the boss’s daughter, but the way to stay there still requires the elements described herein. As bosses’ daughters are few, a sounder way is to learn all the jobs well and study this policy and just become an executive.

Now we come to PHASE II. The executive has inherited from a competent former executive or has himself built (and has prevented transfers and lack of apprenticeship from destroying) his unit, department, division, org or orgs.

Now to continue to single-hand will destroy anything that has been built.

The other policy letter (HCO PL 19 July 1963) now applies and is so reissued.

When an executive in charge of a working activity continues to retain the idea “Do all I can,” chaos then results. An already formed activity will collapse.

The only possible datum on which an executive could work effectively in a formed activity is “Get people to get the work done."

Otherwise the executive does as much as he can and leaves the willing personnel standing around unhelped and unguided. If we all did this, Scientology would go nowhere. One auditor can’t audit the world. One personnel cannot do all the work of a Scientology organization.

If each person in the organization wears all the hats or one wears all and the rest wear none, you will have

1. Bad morale

2. Overburdened personnel

3. Underburdened personnel

4. Rapid staff turnover

5. Bad dissemination, processing and instruction

6. Low income

7. Even lower income

8. Public flaps

9. Chaos.

An executive in a formed org has only two jobs:

1. Policy, promotion and planning

2. Getting people to get the job done.

A post or terminal is an assigned area of responsibility and action which is supervised in part by an executive. Supervision means helping people to understand their jobs. Supervision means giving them the responsibility and wherewithal to do their jobs. Supervision includes the granting of beingness. Supervision does not mean doing the job supervised.

Thus you have two phases and shades of grey in between.

At a slight sag or a mess-up or failure to hire and hat and apprentice properly, a PHASE II situation can drop back into a single-handing PHASE I. An executive who again doesn’t see that he has dropped out of comfortable Phase II and gotten into a PHASE I must at once again single-hand, if only for a day.

But now the executive MUST get in ethics, hire, hat and apprentice people and build once more to PHASE II.

In short, an executive has to know how to change gears!

To BOOM dissemination and income and hold the boom, study this well and be able to shift not only from comfortable II to hectic overworked I but also to push back to Phase II.

This is the reality of it.

[Note: Due to an error in series numbering, there are no issues for Admin Know-How Series 27 and 28. Issues in the series from Admin Know-How Series 29 forward retain their original series numbers.]