When you are trying to get somebody to do something he should do, you are in effect trying to get him to wear his hat.

In trying to get things done you often feel you are running into “counter-effort.” (Contrary action or effort to your action or effort.)

The most usual counter-effort is NOT willfulness or mutiny or out-ethics. Most people consider these are the reasons they get opposition to worthwhile actions.

The most usual counter-effort is lack of a hat, defining a hat as a write-up, checksheet and pack on which the person is trained.

It looks like willful stupidity, waywardness, laziness, mutiny, antagonism or what have you.

Whatever the reason for it may be it must include lack of a hat.

The variations are enormous, almost infinite.

Example: Mr. A is trying to get Mrs. A to be a good wife. Mrs. A is in outright mutiny. Now it could be that Mr. A does not have or know his husband hat or Mrs. A has no wife hat or the neighbors or friends don’t have neighbor or friend hats or Mr. B has no social hat and is trying to estrange Mrs. A or he has no husband’s hat of his own; but whatever it is, it is a matter of hats. SOMEBODY (or all of them) in this is not wearing their hat.

I had someone in marital trouble look at me thoughtfully once and say, “I don’t have any idea what are the rights or duties OF a wife.”

Example: A Course Supervisor having trouble getting a student to study. He pleaded and argued and wore himself out.

He never realized this student DID NOT HAVE A STUDENT HAT. He could have saved all his energy spent in arguing and applied it to making up a student hat and getting it assembled and studied and would have gotten somewhere.

So we draw up an org board for an activity for several people.

It is all correct as to function and flows.

We put the names of the several people on it where they seem to be fitted.

The activity doesn’t go.

So we explain and drill the org board on the people.

It comes up to a flubby sort of cope.

The missing point now is HATS. Each one has to have and know his own hat and something about the hats of others.

Things will promptly get much better! The activity and the interpersonal relations and the lives of these people are greatly improved.

Personally they are running into much less cross-flow and confusion. So they have a happier time, less effort and more production.

A badly organized, badly hatted, badly trained group is at each other’s throats continually. To get anything done at all they have to operate at the level of correction instead of production.

Any ripple of emergency in such a group operates as a major impact.

There is still a missing element when one has org boarded and hatted and specialist trained an activity. This is PROGRAMS.

The sequence of flows and the changes or actions at each point plotted against time are in fact the major sequences and programs of a group.

Given a desired product a fully successful management can only be founded on the actions inherent in

1. A good org bd

2. Hats as write-ups, checksheets and packs

3. Hats trained-in

4. Sequences and programs known and followed.IT IS FAR FAR EASIER TO WORK ON AND ACCOMPLISH THOSE FOUR THINGS THAN IT IS TO COPE AGAINST THE COUNTER-EFFORT GENERATED WITHOUT THEM.

Naturally while getting this done, anyone has to cope to keep things going.

“Single-handing” means to handle things by yourself.

You can single-hand when you are all alone or you can single-hand in a large group that is supposed to be working or helping.

When only one man, senior or junior, is doing all the controlling and work of an activity he is said to be “single-handing.”

The term derives from the sea (like so many English words). Single means “one only” and “hand” means a sailor. “Handing” is the verb form of “single-hand.”

No other activity expresses so well the idea of “one man working” or “one man controlling.”

It is of course derogatory to others who are around and not working.

The phenomenon comes about by having non-org-boarded, unhatted and untrained people.

Now the oddity of it is that it can occur (a) when there are other people who are also supposed to be working (b) when there is an org board (c) when there are hats and (d) when programs exist.

This of course looks like “bad morale,” “apathy,” even “mutiny.”

The missing elements usually are

(a) The other people don’t know the purpose of the activity or what’s really going on.

(b) The org bd is unknown to them even when it exists.

(c) The hats are not checksheets and packs and have not been trained-in.

(d) The sequences or programs that should occur are not drilled in and if they were the no-hat situation would wreck them.

The point is even more amazing when a group with a purpose and an excellent potential product WILL BE POOR AND WILL FAIL if org bd, hats and sequences and programs are not fully known and drilled.

Groups are like that.

This is why Man and his activities succeed only in the presence of huge affluences or extraordinary personal leadership.

Lacking org bds, hats, training, programs that he knows and can do, Man flounders.

Leaders who are not org boarded, hatted and trained and programmed can make a fantastic mess out of a formerly well-organized group.

It takes some doing. But no one can knock the known org board apart faster than a senior. No one can knock off hats easier than someone in authority who does not himself know they exist.

Nero and his ilk destroyed the whole Roman Empire. That civilization was about as well org boarded and hatted as any civilization on the planet in recent millenia. Nero thought he was a lute player and composer and charioteer. These were the only hats he ever wore aside from that of murderer.

A few emperors like him and that was that.

The Christians had an org board, member hats and staff hats, post hats of a sort and constant training. And that was the end of the Roman Empire and the beginning of the Holy Roman Empire.

Way up in Pope Alexander the Sixth’s time (the days of Lucretia Borgia) when bishoprics were for sale and the member hats were forgotten, the Holy Roman Empire failed.

So there is plenty of history and example, even though the full tech was not even developed. You can see the dim counterparts of org boards and hats weaving their way through all Man’s yesterdays.

The history of the world is not written by wars and violence. It is written against an unseen background of beneficial products, org board, hats and programs.

The fantastic administrative skill of Arthur Wellesley the Duke of Wellington and the rigid org bd of Nicholas of Russia defeated Napoleon whose only skills were military genius and personal leadership and luck.

So when the head of something does not know about org bds and hats and programs he can single-hand things perhaps into temporary power but will wear himself out with cope and soon decline.

One can’t just run things. One has to put something there and the something is a desirable product, and org bd hats and programs and see they are grooved in properly.

And looking over history the most valuable product of an executive is holding the form of his org and providing his staff members with hats and programs well grooved in.It takes so much more time and effort to build up an org in terms of org bd and hats and get it to hold its form that one might not at once see its benefit. Trying to get a result without also building an organization inevitably winds up in single-handing, coping, overwhelm and eventual defeat.

The right answer is single-hand while you train up your people.

For one will wind up single-handing any post he has not org bded and hatted and programmed.

And that is true of even a junior member of a staff. If HE doesn’t hammer away to get in org bds and hats and sequences and programs, HE will wind up single-handing all his section — while they stand around making life miserable with inefficiency, goofs and flubs and obvious counter-effort.It isn’t labor against management or the people against government. One or the other or both aren’t on org bds and aren’t wearing their hats.

And in an interdependent society or a complex activity the final result of no org bd, no hats, no programs known is chaos. And very unpleasant chaos as well.

[Note: Page 337, paragraph 14 has been corrected to read, “Pope Alexander the Sixth’s time.” Earlier issues read, “Pope Alexander the Fourth’s time.”]