An Executive Secretary who does not get around his or her divisions now and then and see what is going on can make a lot of mistakes.
Inspections are desirable. But when an Executive Secretary makes one he or she commonly issues an order or two, and if this is done without that division's secretary being present it is a by-pass and willy-nilly begins the formula of the Danger Condition and can unmock a section or department or even that Division.
A senior can inspect, chat, advise, but must never issue an order on a by-pass unless he or she means to handle a dangerous situation and start the formula. For the formula will run, regardless, if a by-pass begins.
The way to inspect, then, is to collect the seniors and go around, and issue orders only to the next senior on the command channel, never to his or her staff.
Example: HCO Exec Sec wants to see if books are stored safely. The HCO Exec Sec can nip out and look on his or her lonesome providing no orders are issued. Or the HCO Exec Sec grabs the Dissem Sec and the Dir Pubs and the head of the books section and goes out and looks. And if the HCO Exec Sec wants a change in it all, the order is issued to the Dissem Sec only.
It is a great temptation to tell Books-in-Charge how and where to put what, for an HCO Exec Sec is one normally because he or she is smarter and more knowledgeable about orgs. But if one is to advise Books-in-Charge, one had better have the rest of the command chain right there and talk to the next senior below HCO Exec Sec.
You would be surprised how many random currents a senior type senior like an Exec Sec can set up with a few comments that skip the command channels and what a mess it can make for a Secretary or Director, no matter how wise the comments.
Secretaries who order a director's officers in the absence of the director or, much worse, section staff without Director or Section Officer thereby court and make trouble.
You can unmock a section or a whole department by sloppy command lines. It is not merely the "correct" thing. It's the vital thing to follow command channels as nobody can hold his job if he is being by-passed by a senior. He feels unmocked, and the Danger Condition formula begins to unroll.
The correct way to route an order to a person two or three steps down the command channel is to tell the next one below you to order the next, and so on.
If you have to tell the Director of Tech Services to have his Housing Officer post a list of houses on the bulletin board, you really don't have a Director of Tech Services anyway as he would have done it as the natural thing. So an order in such an obvious case is not the right comm. The right comm is an Ethics chit on the Dir of Tech Services for not posting the available houses on the bulletin board.
A smart senior is a senior because he is smarter. But when this is not true and the junior is smarter, you get an intolerable situation where the senior interferes. If a dull senior interferes continually on a by-pass, it's a sure way to start a mutiny. And a senior who doesn't inspect or get inspections done does not know and so looks dull to his juniors who have looked.
The safe way in all cases is to issue orders that are very standard on policy and obvious and to issue them to the next one on the command channel and then in the future inspect or get an inspection. If on the inspection one finds non-compliance with a standard on-policy order, one promptly calls for a hearing on the next one down the line who received the order.
Here's a terribly simple example: Org Exec Sec sees statistic for Tech Div down. Issue order to Tech Sec, "Get the gross divisional statistic up at once." Now nothing could be plainer or more standard. In two weeks the Org Exec Sec looks at the statistic, sees it is even further down and calls for a hearing on the Tech Sec for non-compliance or a Comm Ev to get all the evidence in about the matter.
This is about as basic as you can get with an inspection, an order and a further action all by a senior, the inspection being done by OIC and reported by graph.
Life in actual fact is very simple and an org is today a very elementary mechanism.
It is easy to run an organization providing one makes it run and handles things in it that refuse to run.
Where an Exec Sec is baffled on occasion is the apparent unwillingness of a section to function. Now this is so far down the command channel that info on it does not easily arrive back at the top.
The thing to do where possible is personally inspect. Or get it inspected. One often finds the silliest things.
Example: Book Shipping statistic is really down, man, down. One orders and harangues and argues trying to get books shipped. One gets the quantity of books looked into. It's okay. One gets shipping materials looked into. They're okay. A Shipping clerk is on the Org Board. But orders to the Dissern Sec just never get books shipped. So finally one gathers up the Dissern Sec, Dir Pubs and Books-in-Charge and goes down to Book Shipping — Lo! They have been building a machine that wraps books tightly when a rock is rolled off a bench! (This actually happened in DC in about 1958.) It has taken a month to build it and will require another to finish it and one and all in that Division are convinced this is the answer. The order? "Break that machine up and start wrapping books by hand and I want that backlog gone in one week." To the Dissern Sec, of course, in front of everyone for his soul's sake. And publish the order in writing as soon as possible.
So you see, you have to inspect because what seems logical and okay to juniors may be completely silly. Remember, that is why they are juniors and have seniors.
Frankly you can never guess at what holds some things up. You have to look. Often you can solve it for them. But solve it with their agreement and on command channel if you want it done.
You can't always sit in an ivory tower and issue orders. You have to know the ground and the business.
Over a period of fifteen years of active management of these organizations I have a pretty good idea of what can happen in one. And to one.
I try to be right more often than wrong. I don't try to be perfect as one's best plans are often goofed. I try to get done what can be gotten done. And I carry a little more pressure on the org that it can really accomplish.
I inspect. You would be surprised at how often I do and what I find out.
It sometimes looks to people that I use a crystal ball in taking the actions I take because they see no possible route by which the data could have reached me.
They forget how many lines I keep in operation. And also, I do operate on a "sixth sense".
For instance all accounting summaries today are done for governments, not for management. A manager has to develop a sixth sense concerning financial status of the org. One has to be able to know when the bills are up, the income inadequate and to know when to promote hard and stall creditors even with no data from accounts or contrary data that proved false.
Today with OIC this is easy. But I ran orgs successfully with no OIC for years just by sensing the financial situation. In theory accounts keeps one fully posted. In actual fact they often goof in filing bills owed and even in depositing money.
There are many things one can sense, OIC or no OIC.
The thing to do is to inspect or to get the area you sense is wrong inspected.
I have today LRH Communicators. They are pushing projects home. They also can tell me why projects won't push home because they have looked.
An Exec Sec or a Secretary has HCO's Inspection and Reports and a Time Machine to check compliance. And this is how it should be.
But nothing will substitute for inspection by one or for one.
And the Exec Sec who thinks it's a desk job is being very naive. The org would run better if Exec Secs had no in baskets.
If an Exec Sec watched statistics like a hungry cat at a mousehole and inspected like fury every time one went down or stayed down, the org would expand and prosper.
Providing Inspection was done.