It is an observation that personnel, by critical definition, is “that function which creates havoc in one place in an org by trying to solve a personnel mess in another.”

Example: We have just gotten in our Div 6. It has two people. The org has been suffering for lack of Div 6 actions. Now we’ve finally got two people there and they are being trained up. Meanwhile there is a shortage of staff in CF. Personnel “solves” the CF problem by transferring those in Div 6 to CF in Div 2. There goes any progress on Div 6.

By solving one problem, another is created.

Also there is the fact that it takes a while to train someone on a post and get the post in order. So rapid transfers defeat any post training or competence.

We call this action “musical chairs.” That is a game in which people rapidly change positions.

So these transfers defeat not only the org on the third dynamic but also the individual on the first dynamic.

An earlier action similar to this went on. Then whenever Tech got an auditor trained up, Personnel would transfer the auditor to an admin post.

As the auditor was tech trained and not OEC trained, you began to find auditors in charge but they didn’t have any admin training, thus shattering, by ignorance, the org form and defeating the org’s production.

I’ve just seen a case where a staff member went on full-time training Class VI (very expensive) and was made HCO ES on his return. But had never had an OEC.

Using the Tech Divs as a “personnel pool” and taking tech people for admin posts thus defeats twice — defeats the org as a producing activity and defeats its form by not training people in admin (OEC) when they are going to be used in admin.

These personnel errors (or crimes) cause every staff member to suffer in terms of lowered income, lowered pay, lowered facilities, lower success. I doubt there is any org where these errors (or crimes) are not current at this writing.

To give the HCO ES candidate full-time training on the OEC or FEBC would make sense. Not Class VI! If you reverse it, you’ll see what I mean: we give a new staff member an OEC only and put him onto auditing. Of course that would be disastrous. It’s just as disastrous the other way around — taking an auditor who is a Class VI but not an OEC grad and making him the HCO Area Sec!

There is an optimum executive who is both an experienced, trained administrator (OEC and time on org posts) and an auditor. But an org would have to be in high production with lots of auditors before that could happen.

These errors are of long duration. They happen over and over. And they do more to destroy an org than any other action.

A. Making a hole in one place to remedy a hole in another

B. Training a person for tech but not admin and putting him in admin

C. Using the Tech Divs as personnel pools from which to man other divs

D. Rapid shifts of post

E. Leaving areas in an org unmanned.

The reason why these things are done all come under the heading of failures to recruit and properly train.

Org expansion often gets pinned by false economy in personnel. “If we hired anyone else, we would get less pay.” This completely overlooks the fact that if the org doesn’t hire more people it will go broke. An org has to be of a certain size to be solvent; it has certain basic expenses such as rent which makes it cost just so much to run. Yet personnel can be so poorly thought out that the org is kept at starvation level.

I heard one not long ago which takes a prize, “But we don’t need an Advance Registrar. We can’t afford one anyway. You see we have pcs booked in advance for ten weeks already as we don’t have enough auditors, so why should we have any further promotion?” An idiot smile went with this of course. Backlog became “advance registration.”

Orgs in various ways fix their income and prevent its increase. First and foremost of these is personnel.

In every org where I have acted as Executive Director, I have had a personnel procurement problem. In each case the problem was internally created. First I would get, “Well, units are low . . .” or “Nobody ever applies.” I would take it from there. I finally became very clever at these impasses. “What,” I would ask the Receptionist, “do you tell people who come looking for a job?” Cunning. “Oh them!” I would get, “I tell them we aren’t hiring of course.” I would set up a line from a specially appointed personnel person to me only and would shortly have enough people. I have run an org from eight people to sixty-three in thirty days and its GI from £50 to £3,000 in sixty days. Just by doing the usual. It created awful problems of course, like auditing rooms, classrooms, hand grooving people onto posts — it was busy. The favorite graveyard calm, so adored there before that, got shattered to hell!

I concluded many times then and conclude now that it is a characteristic of an org to refuse new personnel and to keep them off. In approaching this problem in an org, I am afraid experience has taught me to begin with that assumption and handle it from that viewpoint.

So I normally set up a line that can’t be stopped and get people on post. Then I force in training on posts. And I personally inspect and talk to every section every day about what they need and how it’s going and keep up their section production.

LRH Comms tell me they cant get execs to inspect their areas daily. And personnel shortages show that others do not blow the lines open on recruiting and even prevent handling.

So here is one area where I do some things in managing a production org that not many others do:

1. Force recruitment

2. Train on post

3. Daily inspection and comm with everyone in the place in his post area

4. Concentrate on section and individual production

5. Let people finish the job they are on.

The result of all this has uniformly been sky-high stats, sky-high pay, huge reserves and excellent tech produced.

So these are the magic solutions.

I do NOT empty out tech to fill admin. I do NOT encourage transfers. I do NOT create problems in one area by transferring to another. I will NOT accept that no one applies for jobs. And I don’t wreck one project by grabbing people off it to start another. I FIND NEW PEOPLE.

Behind every “impossibility” lies some great big WHY which if not found keeps things messed up. One area that “couldn’t get any auditors” had expelled 60% of the field from the church! Another area had dismissed 50% of staff every time the income dropped. Another area cut the staffs pay very low and then made it go lower each time the gross income fell. Another “never could find the right people.”

Sometimes internal squabbles are given a much higher importance than the org itself.

Some areas use “social acceptability” instead of stats to handle personnel.

Whatever the reason an org isn’t getting on, it is internal. It isn’t some other org or some senior management body. It’s right inside that org. Further, it has to do with personnel mishandling.

Any org at any time has not given as much quantity of service as the public demanded. If you continued to expand at the rate of demand, giving very high quality of service mind you, the org would expand to hundreds or even thousands of staff members.

Somewhere, when that doesn’t happen, personnel mishandling has cut off the expansion.

So when we look this over, we find that quality of delivered product determines how much it will be in demand and that the only thing which will limit an expansion to meet that demand is personnel procurement, training and stability on post, getting the staff to produce and holding the form of the org and making it go.

When personnel commits the errors (or crimes) mentioned here and when management fails to do the 1 to 5 listed above that I do in an org, there will be a halt.

True, an org is complex. True, quality is hard to maintain. True, one has to work. But unless personnel procurement and handling is IN, all else will fail. So that’s the weak spot.

An undermanned division will empty.

An undermanned org will pay badly and go down.