Those parts of the org engaged upon similar functions must be on the same schedule.
In essence, you can’t play a ball game with different members of the team appearing at different times. It would look pretty silly to have a goal keeper show up in the last third of the game. By that time it would be lost.
If over a 24-hour period people on public lines showed up, each one, at different hours, there would be no public line. Thus there would be no org form. For there could be no flow of the major particle.
If an activity is open for business at 0900, let us say, the persons on key posts would have to be there at 0830 or at least 0845 in order to “open for business’’ (which means open for flow) at 0900.
Precision of schedule is determined by the type of particle the org form is set up to handle.
A service org handles bodies. A management org handles messages as the principal flow particle. A refinery would handle crude oil. A flour mill wheat, etc.
Of all particle types bodies tend to be the most random and are most likely to erode or knock out org form.
Thus a service org handling bodies has to be established and hatted about a dozen times more than one which handles inert particles.
This is one of the reasons “standard business practices” do not work in setting up an org. They are not strong enough or fast enough.
Schedules become very important in orgs which handle bodies. The lines rapidly jam up and make considerable confusion wherever the line goes faulty.
As almost every part of an org requires internal cooperation from almost every other part of an org, lack of schedules, unreal schedules or failure to keep a schedule are, after hatting and line establishing, the most likely causes of confusion or nondelivery.
It is important to start as a team and it is also important to stop as one if there is a “next shift” as in a Foundation. As the staffs collide, the students collide and the space tangles.
Operating a number of schedules at the same time for different parts of the org can get complicated. Governments do this to ease off automobile and commuter traffic but then they (governments) do not produce much and it doesn’t matter. Half a dozen daily schedules running at the same time for one org can cause a considerable confusion.
The best schedules are very simple ones. You can have a schedule that has so many times in it, so many musters, that it is a full day’s work just to keep the schedule!
A grave fault in schedules is not allowing any slack between two time points. Example: Class ends 1600, next class, three blocks away, begins at 1600! Either one class has to let out early or everyone is late to the next class!
Schedules commonly omit any time spaces to take care of things. Example: 0900 on post. 0900 public lines open. Well, it’s going to take 15 minutes or more to get a post set up, so the schedule gets violated. Thus we have it saying 0900 when it can only be 0915! This makes schedules look unreal to people, so they drop out. A correct version would be 0840 on post. 0850 open for business checklist collected. 0900 public lines open.
Closing of lines costs a great deal. An extreme example is closing an org for 2 weeks “so everyone can have a vacation.” African orgs used to do this and would often lose their higher stats for months.
Closing orgs “during a congress” can cost. During one national congress, several franchises closed for a week and had to fight crashed stats for months.
Closing an org at noon or for supper can ball up lines and can have a heavy effect on stats.
All this “closing” is simply saying “we’re dead.”
Lines have a tendency to keep flowing when flowing and remain stopped when they are stopped.
If an org began at 0900 and, with a Foundation or second and weekend shifts, ran continuously until 2300 seven days their general stats would improve out of proportion to the additional time open.
Management orgs run very raggedly on schedules as their traffic loads vary so greatly.
It takes good observation and skill to write a good schedule for an org. If an unreal schedule exists or if one is too complex, it will not be kept. Peak loads have to be taken into account and their approximate times have to be established. There are also no-load times and to cover these with a full org is to fail to have an adequate org there for the peak loads.
Careful, real study, on the ground, watching traffic flows, has to be done to make a real schedule that will be kept and which boosts production.
A schedule which does not boost production or a schedule just to have one, are a waste of everyone’s time.
So select the principal particle the org handles. Use it to determine the times of peaks and no-loads, study what goes on in actual fact. And then write the schedule. And see that it is kept.
This will greatly improve org form.