
ORGANIZATION SERIES - PART 08 OF 20

[New name: How To Present Scientology To The World]


DEFINITION OF ORGANIZATION, PART I

A lecture given on 8 November 1956

[Start of Lecture]

Thank you.

Tonight, I haven't got very much to talk about. But I did want to
talk to you something about a subject which I haven't even added
up in my own head or in my own environment -- which, of course,
makes me an authority.

An authority is somebody who knows nothing loudly. It's an
absolute requisite -- absolute requisite -- for an authority to
know less about a subject than anybody else, more importantly.
And the subject must always be a subject about which nothing is
known.

To be a real authority you would have to pick up a subject which
was nonextant, you see, and become quite resounding on that
subject. Then you would be a real authority, particularly if you
said nothing ever. A real good authority simply sneers quietly,
whatever is said. That is very, very effective -- very effective.
It's a tactic I recommend to you if you ever get in there with a
medico or something of the sort and you don't know what to do,
why, just sneer effectively. You know, sort of... like that, you
know? Just a touch of...

Now, this is a subject -- about which I'm going to speak here --
about which I know very, very little, very little. Because very
few things are actually well organized, to know anything about
organization is therefore practically an impossibility since
practically nobody has ever seen any. You see? But you could
easily become an authority about organization because there is
apparently such a thing in the world as organization.

And I didn't realize that organization didn't exist, actually,
until 1950. And I noticed then that it didn't exist with an
exclamation point! Now, I'd rather suspected its existence
before, but I had never totally suspected the exclamation point.
The fact of no organization in 1950 was quite interesting, and I
thought it was something peculiar to the people and organization
with which we were dealing. I assigned it to us personally. I
couldn't look far enough to blame it way over there. So I said,
"Well, the thing to do about these organizations..." I said, "The
thing to do, obviously, is to hire some experts" -- see, hire
some experts. And then we really did go to hell!

We had one of the fanciest managers that ever managed anything.
He had been a howling success. I suppose the people that he had
managed for before are still howling. Now, we had press agentry
and promotion experience which had been so valuable in Hollywood
that Warner Brothers practically collapsed the moment that this
man left their promotion department. We had skill, but
unfortunately without an exclamation point.

I'm sure these gentlemen could have worked, had they known what
an organization was. Well, some people are very fast. They pick
up their cognitions rapidly. Some people are capable of
understanding a cognition when they see it and so on. I run comm
lags myself, and it sometimes takes me a little longer to find
out that I don't know about something or that I do know about
something, or do recognize it. But when I do -- or don't -- I'm
honest about it. Perhaps that singular difference there makes up
something for the comm lag.

But it's taken me about six years to find out thoroughly that man
doesn't know anything about organization and that there is a
camouflaged hole there that has been filled up rather adequately
by experts. And nobody can glibly tell you a definition for an
organization. Nobody can rapidly give you the size and shape and
general pattern for an organization. They'll give you some
patterns, but are they for an organization? See, that's a little
bit different.

Now, what belies this: we have such organizations as General
Motors and Westinghouse. And these are running concerns. They do
get things done. There's Boeing Aircraft and big, big companies.
They do build things; they do ship things away, and so on. And
obviously these companies have people in them that know about
organization -- obviously, or they wouldn't run.

Well, I say obviously they know all about organization until you
go to work for them, and then you get another view. You say, "How
do these airplanes ever fly?" "How is it that electric motors
made by this concern ever run at all?" We talk to their personnel
and find this personnel caught up in some kind of an
incomprehensible paper chain which seems to run this way: They
originate a despatch which comes to them for answering.

This is very common in the United States Navy, for instance. My
good friend and one-time close pal Robert Heinlein, the science-
fiction writer, was in Philadelphia and he was in the aircraft
factory. They pulled in all the science-fiction writers they
could lay their hands on during the war -- they even tried to
pull me in -- to Project Space Opera. And they were trying to
design various items and units, and so on, out of science fiction
into the world of reality. And naturally, the boys all dived back
on the track and picked up already-conceived patterns and
presented them. Unfortunately, we didn't have the materials with
which to build most of these things. But it's interesting that
the suit that is worn today by jet-plane pilots was designed by
that unit. It was designed as a spacesuit by that unit, and it is
worn today by jet pilots.

Many other bric-a-brac such as the satellites that we hear about
every once in a while (not the Red satellites but the pink ones
that Dr. Eisenstein is going to throw up there to confuse us)...
Anyhow, other things came out of this project. But what mainly
came out of the project is illustrated by this little story about
Robert Heinlein.

He heard that there was somebody in the country that knew about
rocket-orifice pressures -- how big a pressure you got at what
velocity for what opening. He heard that this was known, that
there was an expert somewhere in the country that could give him
these figures. So he originated a communication. Of course, it
was a naval-aircraft factory, and so he originated the
communication, put it through the proper channels and got all the
endorsements. It went out to Chicago and came back into
Washington and got here and there and so forth, and eventually he
discovered the name of the expert: it was Robert A. Heinlein.

Well, organization is an interesting thing. It's interesting
enough that if you ask a preclear simply to mock up an
organization, he inevitably mocks up confusions. It's one of the
ways of running confusions, is just to say to the preclear, "Mock
up an organization. Mock up an organization." You just keep this
up for three or four hours -- somebody that worked for Philco or
somebody -- and he line-charges. I don't know why he line-
charges, but he does! There must be something in those
organizations which belie the word organization.

All I am seeking to do here is to show you that we are starting
from scratch. It is very seldom that one can work away from
virgin ground, but we seem to be doing that just now. We are
starting with known data. A word, organization, exists. See,
that's known data. The rest of it's wilderness. You see, we look
out this way and this way, we see nothing but desert stretching
in all directions without even wrecked Egyptian tanks on them.

Well anyhow, we look over this, and we find out then that we are
in that comfortable state of mind of having a tremendous amount
of elbow room. That's always a nice thing to have when you're
starting out on a subject.

Well, is there anything to know about this subject at all? One
must always ask this question: Is there anything to know, or must
one invent something to know about it? Well, actually there is a
great deal to know about the subject, and actually it seems
possible that an organization can exist. It seems possible that
an organization could be defined. It seems possible that the
running of an organization could happen, not by accident, but by
plan. And it seems possible that one could ferret out these
various rules of organization so that one was not always running
from the general's latest idea on how the organization ought to
run.

That's awfully embarrassing to an army at all times, and it's
equally embarrassing to an electrical plant or something to have
an executive vice president who is issuing communiqus
consistently and continually about the subject of organization
modification when none has been built in the first place. You
see, that's very hard to do: to modify a nonexistent object.

The U.S. Navy has been modifying a copy of the British Navy now
since 1772, or whenever it was formed. And it's been doing a
very, very good job of modification. Someday they'll wake up --
oh, any day now they'll find out they don't even have a navy now,
see? Actually they're over in the Pentagon building at this time,
and so on. They've practically modified themselves out of
existence with their communication lines.

For instance, they have a terrific file system. This is the most
brilliant file system I have ever read. Gorgeous. The manual to
operate it is about that thick. It's to operate a navy file
system. It's just gorgeous. You never saw such order, such
neatness. Every number in that system has significance, oh boy!
Wow! Man, are you impressed -- right up to the moment you walk up
to a naval yeoman and say, "Uh... son, could you let me see the
personnel report sheets for last month?" Well, of course the file
system fails at that instant. But it's very, very pretty -- very
pretty there in that big, thick book -- very pretty.

I like that file system. It is the neatest and best plan not put
into action that I have ever inspected. Of course, it's a court-
martial offense not to head your letters out of that file book.
Oh, I am sure that men can be court-martialed, even shot. I think
it's perfectly all right to run away from the enemy, give
admirals a lot of lip, wear your stripes backwards, or almost
anything else. But don't omit those right numbers there at the
top of that endorsement or at the top of that letter. That's
pretty serious. That shows a disrespect for the Bureau of Naval
Personnel. Very serious thing.

Well, there are several numbers and letters in a line. Very hard
to memorize. I know I can't recall a single one offhand. But when
the numbers get up to about that big, why, it makes a cross-file
system the like of which you've never... See, every number in it
means a different folder or subject.

Now, you take officer's raincoats. Nobody could ever have such a
thing as "officer's raincoats," but you look in the file manual,
it's there! "Officer's raincoats: OA52." They got you, haven't
they? Now, you wouldn't think there would be "officer's raincoats
-- torn," would you? But you turn over here to "torn" and you'll
find it's OA52-3.

Now, you wouldn't think there was "officer's raincoats -- torn;
belonging to reserve officers," would you? They got you. When you
get the number about that long you've got the history of the
United States!

Now, I'm sure somebody in the Navy Department keeps a file system
of some sort because -- I'll just show you how good they are.
I'll show you how good they are. You know, there's a lot of cavil
about this. They say that after World War II and the Korean War
that they lost a lot of personnel. Well, that was actually World
War I they did that. A chap was ordered up to the Brooklyn
Shipbuilding Company, and he was up there until 1936 before
somebody found him in the files and sent him orders to tell him
that World War I was over. That's actually happened. They just
skipped him, you know, and he stayed on duty as an inspector of
nonexistent ships. And nobody ever could order him out because
they couldn't find his name in the files, you see; they'd lost
the files.

But I'm sure somebody keeps a file, because I myself have been
solicited for a Tommy gun. A rather unusual thing to be solicited
for, but they knew my name and they knew where I was located.
Isn't that terrific? I mean, it's really phenomenal. I mean, they
did; they knew my name; they knew the item that was missing and
so forth. Of course, it was the wrong navy, but that didn't make
any difference at all. It really was the wrong navy. It was "L.
R. Hubbard, Royal Australian Navy, Lieutenant Commander," I think
it was; something like that. "Please return to the United States
Navy the sub-Thompson machine gun which was borrowed from the USS
Chicago" -- that was the wrong ship, but that didn't matter; it
was the Travis -- "Please return it," and so on. Now, how they
got onto this, I don't know, because the Travis got sunk, you
see? And I don't know how they got into this, but somebody keeps
a file! That, I'm sure.

Now, you look at these numbers up on these letters and you have,
actually, the total concept of organization normally existing,
plus one thing, a command chart. No service, no electrical
company's office, nobody, should be without one of these command
charts. I'll show you what they look like. They're square -- I
mean, an oblong, a rectohedron or something, because everybody on
them at the top is pretty thick. And you have written across the
top here, it says Board of Directors, or Joint Chiefs of Staff,
or it says something at the top here. It's very impressive.
That's in bigger letters, see? And then you have two little
dingle-dangles that drop down from this and other signs are
appended to that. And one of them says Secretary of Navy, and the
other one says the War Department or something. And then this
dingle-dangles down into, well, other boards, you see: Bureau of
Naval Personnel, Chief of Naval Operations, Chief of Staff, so
forth. And this dingle-dangles down to another thing that says
Regiments or something, you see, Fleets or something like that.
And then this goes down to Commanding Officers Of. You got that.
That's pretty smart. And then this goes down to Officers Of, and
this goes down to Petty Officers Of, and this goes down to the
army and the navy, see -- rank and file, see?

That's how they do this. That's how they do this. And you've got
this beautiful... You know, it's... well, it's beautiful! You
never saw the like of these things. They're pretty. You know,
they're usually done on mahogany, Philippine mahogany, something
like that, you see them. Or they're done in great things: you
open up a manual and you keep unfolding, and you unfold them down
like this, and you fold them up like this, and there it says
across the top Joint Chiefs of Staff, see? Boy, is that... Tsk!
That's it! We've got something here. We know who's boss around
here. Obvious, it's the Joint Chiefs of Staff; they're boss.

A private wants to go on leave, he knows where he is supposed to
go. He isn't supposed to go up there at all; that's too high for
him. He's supposed to go see these people right above him, see --
his petty officers. And the petty officers, they're supposed to
go see the officer. The officer is supposed to go see the
commanding officer. The commanding officer is supposed to go see
the Fleet. And the Fleet is supposed to go see the Chief of Naval
Operations. Chief of Naval Operations is supposed to go over here
to the Secretary of the Navy, and the Secretary of the Navy is
supposed to go over here to the Joint Chiefs of Staff. You see,
that's the way it goes. Got it? Yeah. And then they say whether
or not he can have some leave.

Now... All right. Now, they forward this back, see, and it goes
like this: the Joint Chiefs of Staff up here, and then it goes
down to the Navy Department here, and then it of course goes over
to the Chief of Naval Operations, then it goes over here to
Fleet, and that goes down here to captains, and the captains go
to the officers, and the officers go to petty officers, and they
get down to the man, and he knows he can't have any leave. See,
it's simple! See, the whole thing works out. It's obvious, this
whole thing works out.

You think I was just indulging in some mockery, something like
that, but I wasn't; that's a command chart. It says who's boss.
And if you didn't have one of those things the whole place would
go to pieces, you know that! Nobody would know who to salute.
Nobody would know who to send the paychecks to, for whom to...
Well, nobody would know! That's all. You see? I mean, you'd just
be lost, and maybe it'd be a good thing.

Because the only thing difficult with this command chart is the
moment the guns start going, the little dingle-dangles vanish.
They just go missing. See, they... Before the first sentry takes
off -- before the first sentry takes off not to confront the
enemy -- these things disappear amongst the boxes. So you have
Joint Chiefs of Staff standing in the -- well, they never stand
in a first line -- but you have Joint Chiefs of Staff, or
something, sitting someplace else. They're not any longer on the
chart. I know; I've looked on the chart. You have troops down at
the bottom of one of these command charts. You can talk to one of
these charts by the hour and it won't shoot. Won't do a thing.

And I've been in the interesting position of sending a message up
through one of those things for a very important piece of
information that should have gone right on up to the top, since I
was operating a comm center. It was very interesting. Just as in
any company or something, somebody says, "A machine is broken
down. All production will now be delayed for the next ninety
days." He'd want to report that, you know. He'd think it'd be a
good thing. Somebody up at the top is liable to notice the whole
factory isn't running or something.

And so I tried to report this through one of these chains of
command, and I found out that I was really getting there. Only
they knew that that particular post and area had been wiped out
and taken a long time before, so they never bothered to answer. I
asked some chaps right here in Washington, I said, "Why didn't
you ever reply to those despatches? What was the matter?"

He says, "Well, you were wiped out a long time before that."

And I says, "I was!" It was obvious. It was right there on his
chart that those command channels didn't any longer exist.

Well, the very funny part of it is, the moment that action was
engaged, why, one found himself finally doing what I did: I
picked up a telephone, called the Secretary of Navy. See, and I
said, "I'm tired of this place. I'd like to leave."

And he said, "Yeah."

I said, "Yeah, I've got some important despatches. As a matter of
fact, we've got enough despatches here to practically sink the
Japanese navy if they had to carry them. There's a lot of traffic
and stuff like that, and so forth."

So he sent his plane down and picked me up and flew me home. You
think I'm just talking through my hat but that is exactly what
happened. Everybody knew the phone systems were out, and
everybody knew the command chart didn't exist anymore, so it was
very easy to pick up a receiver and say, "Give me Washington."
They wanted to know Washington where. I said, "Washington, DC." I
said, "Give me the Secretary of Navy." I couldn't think of
anybody else. That's quite a phone call from down in the South
Pacific through, and you just think that doesn't exist.

But then you think something else is wrong too. You think these
command charts exist. Well, they exist on a piece of paper, but
in actuality they are command charts and nothing else! That is
all they are. And that's the first thing you want to know about
organizations, is that they have command charts and that they are
command charts and not communication charts! And when you try to
put a communication through a command chart, you're in the soup,
inevitably wind up in Campbell's chicken with noodles.

Now, obviously we have to know who's boss, but this is no reason
at all why all channels should run through the bottleneck of the
whole organization who is always the boss. Do you see that if we
ran all communications through the Joint Chiefs of Staff, if
every officer in the South Pacific who was tired of being there
and couldn't see any of his own people left anyhow, and was
fairly suspicious that those snapping sounds in the air weren't
bees, had simply picked up a telephone and had found an operator
on the job, of all people, who was capable of putting in a
transatlantic phone call and said, "I want to go home now, and
I've got some despatches. Send me an airplane," and if every one
of them had been given an airplane, you would have had that many
Secretaries of Navy to take care of that many officers, you see?
So it doesn't operate as a communication chart and it won't ever
operate as a communication chart. And that is the first thing
wrong with organizations, is they take a command chart and say it
is a communication chart, and it's not.

A communication chart doesn't even vaguely look like a command
chart. Let me assure you, if the boss had to know everything
there was going on in the organization you'd have no organization
at all. It would make him so mad! The only possible survival an
organization can have is just to keep as many communications as
possible away from him. They bottleneck; he's arbitrary; he's not
on the ground; he doesn't know the situation; he has policies
he's executing which were originated in 1890. The best thing to
do is just keep the show on the road, obviously, not follow a
command chart. Pretty obvious, isn't it?

You start following a command chart, you start bottlenecking.
Therefore, all initiative in the organization is destroyed. And
if it is the purpose of a command chart to destroy all
initiative, then it should also be used always as a communication
chart. The command chart of an organization, when it becomes the
communication chart of an organization, results in the absence of
all initiative throughout the entire organization; everybody is
being policed. And that is just about 99 percent of what is wrong
with most existing organizations, is they have no knowledge of
organization.

Now, let's look at this. Let's look at this. A man is put on a
job to do a thing. He should have a stable datum for what he's
supposed to do. If he has a stable datum for what he is and what
he's supposed to do and what he's supposed to be, and if he
really has that as a stable datum, then he will be able to handle
all confusion that approaches him. He'll have comm lines. He will
act. But if that individual does not have a stable datum then he
is not a communication terminal. He will stop no communications,
and the command chart gets pushed into being.

If every sailor put on a post, or every soldier put on a post, or
every mechanic and laborer in a plant was put on a post and
couldn't hold that post or decide for that post, then naturally,
he would fall back on his next superior. And if that man couldn't
hold that post and wasn't a stable datum and felt insecure he
would fall back on his superior. And if he couldn't hold that
post and everything seemed to be confused around him and he
didn't know what he was, then he'd have to fall back on his
superior. And the next thing you know, you're at the general
manager, chief of the board, Joint Chiefs of Staff or whatever
you're going to call the top of the chart. Why? Because nobody
anywhere lower on the chart is a stable datum; nobody can stop a
communication anywhere on the chart. And so command charts in
that wise, in a very aberrated fashion, then become communication
charts, and so they are in this world we live in today.

Unless, then, we know these principles and so forth, then all
communication charts will be these command charts and every
organization there is will be run by one man only, and he'll run
himself to death and develop ulcers and that'll be the end of
that. Follow me?

Why does a communication chart turn into a command chart? Because
none of the communication points on it are terminals in fact or
actuality. Nobody there can stop a communication, so they all
collapse on the chief Got it?

Now, in times of abnormal confusion you would expect some of
these points to fall back and say, "Hey. What do I do now?" But
they ought to be certain enough in themselves and on their post
that when it's said to them "Well, our policy at this time is
just to ship everything we've got," they should say, "Well,
that's good enough for me. All right, this is your stock. It
belongs to somebody else, but I am on this point and therefore I
will just start shipping everything we've got. Thuh-buh-wuh-wuh.
All right, that's fine."

You could give all of these communication terminals a new policy
without unsettling their own stability, if that stability
existed.

So we find the first and foremost thing of organization of course
would be a definition of organization. What is an organization?
But to find out What is an organization, we have to look at what
composes an organization, and we find that an organization
optimumly would be composed of communication terminals. And if we
look it over and find an organization is composed of
communication terminals, then we decide that a communication
terminal had better have a communication line. So we find an
organization consists of communication terminals and
communication lines associated with a common purpose or goal. And
that is the definition of an organization and that is all there
is. Now, if you look for anything else, you're going to get wound
up in MEST. You're going to go splat against the walls or
something. That's all an organization is.

Evidently an organization is a number of terminals and
communication lines with a common purpose. The purpose associates
and keeps in contact with one another, the terminals and the
lines. That's all an organization is. It isn't a factory. It
isn't a house. It isn't a machine. It isn't a product. It's not a
command chart. That's all it is. And if you look it over in the
light of that simplicity, you can actually form one and get one
to function. One will actually function.

Now, there are several rules that go with this:

Every set of communication lines (being two: one going in and one
coming out) must have a terminal. Every set of communication
lines must have a terminal, and every terminal must have
communication lines. Isn't that idiotically simple? But
unfortunately, very few organizations ever follow this, and all
their confusion and randomity result therefrom -- all of it.
Because if there are too many lines and too few terminals, the
lines will snap on those terminals. If there are too few
communication lines and too many terminals, terminals will snap
on the lines. You can't get a communication terminal separate
from communication lines; you can't get communication lines
separate from a communication terminal. They go together. And
there have to be as many terminals as there are lines, and as
many lines as there are terminals.

Now, we find in every organization somebody who wears fifteen
hats, and he doesn't know it. He's the complaint department, and
he's the file clerk, and the shipping manager, and this and that
and a lot of other things. Now look, there's a set of lines for
every one of those functions. If this man does not know he is one
of these terminals, if just one is missing, then he'll use his
body for it. The lines will actually snap on to his body. He's
got to put his body in there the moment that he's missing a
terminal.

He's fifteen terminals. If he knows all fifteen terminals and has
a title for them, and he's got some exact geographical location
where he says the terminal ends, he's all right. I mean, the
lines end. He says, "That's a terminal. That's the complaint
manager and here is the shipping manager and over here is the
floor sweeper." He can do all of these things as long as he is
all of these things. He's got himself separated out, in other
words. He doesn't get tired. This is the oddest phenomenon you
ever saw.

So you say is there any practicality in reviewing this subject of
education organization-wise? Is there any practicality to it at
all? If he has a set of lines that he doesn't think he owns --
that he has no terminal for, in other words; he got the lines but
he has no terminal -- he resents it. He begins to buck back
against the lines. He takes his body and shoves them into the
lines -- tuh! After a while he says, "Work is so tiring. Work is
so tiring."

That's quite an interesting phenomenon. A person is what he is.
Anybody could hold down two hundred jobs as long as he knows he's
holding down two hundred jobs. He must have the job compartmented
as a terminal to match every set of lines that runs in toward
that job.

I'll give you an example: Somebody in this organization was
actually operating very thoroughly and very well, most of the
time, with a maintenance terminal -- maintaining buildings and
things like that. This person was actually wearing a hat called
Maintenance and had never suspected it. Never knew this person
had anything to do with maintenance at all. Was there anything
there connected with maintenance? "No, I have nothing to do with
maintenance." And yet all the time this person was handling two
lines, a set of lines which said Maintenance. Person had to ask
these questions perpetually: "Is that necessary?" "Can't we have
that?" "How much does this cost?" all in the line of Maintenance.
Job was wearing him out! Hidden job. Missing. The job was
missing. There it was. There was no job there. So what happened?
Every time something came in about maintenance -- somebody says,
"Should we get these new carpets?" why, that person would say
"No!" or "What carpets?" "What are you talking to me about? What
are you talking to me about carpets for anyway? Why are you
talking to me?" Get the idea?

Well, the reason they were talking to this person is because this
person had everything to do with maintenance that was really
important and didn't know it. The job had been assigned to
somebody else who never wore the hat. Over in a dusty corner of a
place there was a hat, all crumpled up, and it said Maintenance.

Well now, can the communication lines run to that unoccupied hat?
No. There was no terminal underneath that hat and as a result the
lines went and found somebody to run to. Got it? In other words,
a loose set of lines will all of a sudden go dahh. Get the idea?
They'll say, "Ah! Buddy! Huh!" All right.

Now, the other phenomenon which happens, doesn't occur to be
quite as important until you really look it over and have it
happen. You've got this amazing thing, you see? You have a
terminal with no lines, see? You've said to this person he's
Maintenance. And now he has no lines. There aren't any visibly
set-up lines. There's nobody to pass any communications to. There
are no vias. There are no further relay points, no lines at all.
What's this person do? This person at once does something very
fantastic: he snaps on to another set of lines. So here are your
lines, you see? Your lines are running very smoothly and
everything is going along, and all of a sudden, dah-dah-dat!
"What's the matter with my communication lines? Why don't they
function?" Well, they're stuck on the terminal called
Maintenance. What did he do? He didn't have any lines of his own
so he took to tossing stuff in your baskets. He started using
your lines. The terminal then found some communication lines.
None were set up. Got it? There's an affinity between these
things called terminals and these things called lines which don't
permit them to exist separately. But that affinity should not
result in a total, balled-up confusion the way it does in most
organizations.

You go into most organizations, you say, "Who takes care of
supplies here?"

"Oh, the office over there. The office over there."

All right, fine. Go to the office over there. "Who takes care of
supplies here?"

"Well, what did you want?" Wonder why they never answered the
question. People don't ask themselves that. "What did you want?"
they say.

"Well, I wanted to know where to deliver this package."

"Oh, just leave it right there."

"Well, all right. I'll leave it right there, so forth. Who signs
the receipt?"

"What receipt?"

"Oh, the receipt for the package, the delivery of the package?"

"I don't know. Uhm... I don't know. We'll have to ask Mr.
Smithers. He's out to lunch just now. Here, I'll give you... I'll
give you some directions here. The gateman usually does that. I
just remembered, the gateman does that. You go out and get your
signature from the gateman."

You go out. The gateman says, "I don't do that. What am I doing?
You mean, I sign for something? Where is it?"

"Oh, I left it back there on the porch."

"Oh, you did?"

You go back and it's gone. Well, anyway...

You say that was an unusual moment for that organization. No, it
wasn't. That's the way things go on all day long.

"Who's in charge of maintenance here?"

"I don't know."

"Well, who ordered their telephone fixed?"

"I don't know. Mine's working all right."

There's probably nobody wearing the hat.

Well, what happens? The outside world goes out of communication
with such an organization. Now, the outside world -- the public
at large -- is so unused to anything these days that looks like
organization that they demand that everybody in the organization,
whenever buttonholed, wear all hats, Now, watch this one.

Everybody in the organization, every person there, has got to
wear all hats inside the organization. So they come in, they want
some -- give you the idea -- they want to buy a new set of
paints. So they grab ahold of the fellow in the bedding
department and they say, "How much are your paints?"

And he says, "I don't know. You'll have to go over to the paint
department."

"Well, do you have a lot of paints?"

"Well, I don't know, ma'am. You'll have to go over to the paint
department to find..."

"Well, are... I don't know whether I really uh... should place an
order with this store or not. Uh... uh... what uh...?"

You listen to it sometime. Public walks in the door and they
insist that the fellow in charge of bedding sell the paints. They
insist that the fellow who is on the information desk (he should
know) should be able to tell them the quality of the bedding,
see? They're very certain that the elevator man is of course
totally cognizant with everything connected with the
administration, whereas the only thing he knows is the floors.
And we get this continually: The public, being uneducated into
the organization at all, keeps hitting it, and they insist that
every terminal in it...

Now, they themselves consider themselves a particle on a line at
best. They're a particle on a line, you see; they're not really a
terminal. And they come in and they snap on to any existing
terminal. And we have to consider them lines, not terminals. And
they just snap on to any terminal which exists, unless we have
signs about that high that we put in front of everybody as he
comes in and the sign says "INQUIRY THAT WAY."

And then we have somebody thoroughly educated in Scientology from
the word go that gets hold of them, remedies their learning rate,
and asks them then what they want in such a way that they will
actually say what they want, because in ten or fifteen minutes
auditing he will have found out enough about the person so that
the person will have found out what they want. You see? And then
you could direct them that-a-way toward the exact terminal they
are looking for. You got the idea?

But this is how, then, organizations get that way. They get that
way by being pounded out of shape by random comm lines that hit
the outside. So, what does it take? The whole organization, then,
has to have outside comm lines too, and is itself a single
terminal. It's a group of associated comm lines and terminals
which is itself a single terminal, and it has in-go and out-come
lines. You got it?

So that an organization which is being hit this way is actually
missing its first rampart. A particle, when it hits a terminal,
should stop. That's in theory. It says right there on the
backtrack, it says "Space opera orders number so-and-so and so-
and-so. All particles when they hit terminals stop." That
agreement had to be made a long time ago or nobody would have
known or been certain about terminals at all, and you wouldn't
have had any universe; and maybe that would have been a good
thing. Anyway...

Here you have, then, organization. It is simply a group of
associated terminals and communication lines, associated with a
common purpose, and the organization itself must itself be a
terminal with communication lines. And if you do that you got it
made in the shade. You can actually bury the command chart and
install an auditor.

What would the auditor do? Fascinating. It is an auditing job.
Now that we have a definition for it, now that we see what is
going on... We have particles and information and packages and
tanks, or anything you want, traveling up and down these comm
lines to these various terminals. We don't care what goes on the
comm lines; we've just laid the pattern. There's got to be
something there for it to run on. All right.

Now, what does this organization at large do to get itself in
that condition that it can follow that definition and can be an
organization? What would it have to do? It'd have to go hire a
Scientologist. I'm afraid that's the only thing it could do.
Because I don't know any other way to do it. I'm stupid maybe.
I've had to do with a lot of organizations. I never noticed
anybody around there doing it.

I used to think I was confused. I'd walk into a big publishing
company, for instance -- a big company, you know -- and I'd try
to find the managing editor, naturally. And I'd get the managing
editor, I'd get his ideas concerning the release of copyrights or
something, and we'd have a talk, and we'd do this and that, and
transact business and so on. Well, I got a idea after a while I
was confused because I could never find a managing editor that
would say he was the managing editor who would handle the
business he was supposed to handle. He always wanted to pass it
down the hall to somebody else, who wanted to pass it up the hall
to the managing editor. And all of my business usually floated
between the guy down the hall and the managing editor, you see?

Occasionally I would work it in this fashion: I would merely
pretend to have gone to the managing editor -- get his secretary
to forge his signature or something of the sort, you know -- go
to the fellow down the hall and fall on his head, you see, on the
basis that something or other, something or other, and we have to
have a decision on this, and then I was all set, you see? There
was nothing to it. I never did that, but I would have had to have
done it to have gotten anything really done at any time or
anything decided.

So I used to think I was confused, and maybe I was, but I was not
anywhere near as confused as the environments I was walking in.
Everybody was wearing everybody's hats.

I was working for North American one time -- Aviation. I was
working there -- short time; very short period of time -- till I
found out what I was doing, and I left. It's interesting to find
out what you're doing, after you've been put on a job after a
while. I was having an awful time, and I decided I didn't learn
fast. Imagine my surprise to discover after a short period of
time that there wasn't anything there to learn! Now, you see,
it's very often possible for you to consider yourself stupid
because you can't learn something, but at the same time there
might not be anything there to learn at all. Don't you see this?
It might be that you feel adrift in the army. They used to call
it "nervous in the service." You might feel that way, wen,
because you were sort of stupid. You just didn't seem to be able
to get the hot dope on which way you went and why. And maybe you
did and maybe you didn't find out that you were singularly in the
majority. See, you were in the majority there. Nobody else knew
either.

Now, let's go a little bit further than this. Maybe there was no
system to know. See, maybe in the flesh there was no system to
know. Maybe it was just all on paper. Maybe the order was all on
the order sheets but didn't exist in actuality at all, and maybe
what you saw when you saw tanks lined up or packages lined up or
something of the sort, and all going off very neatly, was simply
the initiative of some sergeant or second lieutenant, see? Maybe
that was just the initiative of somebody who had decided he'd
better get the job done there anyhow, regardless of what was
happening.

Well, I found this out one time, by the way, and before somebody
got wise to it and stopped me, I'd practically built half of a
ship. Found out we had orders to the tropics, and the war had
been a long war, so I decided I would put an air-conditioned
apartment up on the signal bridge. I did. I really did.

I mean, by that time I knew that everybody else didn't know there
was nothing there anyhow to know. All you had to do was pretend
there were terminals and pass communications on pretended
communication lines and you were all set. All you had to do was
walk in with a sufficient atmosphere of urgency, see? Everybody
ran on an emergency. So you rushed in with an atmosphere of
emergency with a very official looking piece of paper in your
hand and you said, "That's it." And then before anybody could
question you, particularly, you walked out, and they didn't know
who they'd heard from, but they knew it was sure important.

It's very disruptive when you get somebody around an organization
who knows this. It's a vicious thing to have in an organization,
particularly if the organization isn't one by our definition.

The only organization you could really wreck thoroughly and 100
percent would be an organization which didn't match up to this
definition.

Now, how would you get it in that kind of a condition? Very
simple, you would put people on the post. You would say, "How
many people are you? How many hats do you wear?" You would just
keep at him like an auditor, you know? It's auditing. It's
organizational auditing. "Come on. How many hats do you wear?
Come on, let's make a list of them. Come on. Are there any more?"

"Well, yes, and there's also wastebasket supervision."

"Ah, all right. Fine. Fine. Sure there are no more hats that you
are wearing?" "

"No. No. I think that's about all. Oh, of course, except Director
of Processing, that's my main job."

I mean, this is a silly thing. You ask somebody to start making a
list of all the hats they're wearing and they come out with some
number. Well, the funny part of it is, all right, so there are
that many hats. It's perfectly all right for one body to be
wearing two hundred hats as long as the hats aren't being worn on
top of that body. Let's get them out here, two hundred hats, and
let's make sure they all got comm lines -- otherwise they snap on
each other.

Maybe you change post; maybe you put somebody new on the post.
This person doesn't know he's wearing two hundred hats -- whole
organization eaves in on that spot. Why? The person didn't have
any idea of it at all. There was no label sitting up there saying
"Wastebasket Emptier." You know, this, that, the other thing, so
on, all these labels. The funny part of it is there was no basket
sitting there.

Now, what's this thing called a basket? A basket is something
silly. And you know what a basket is for, that's to keep things
in that you don't want to read yet, and wouldn't pass on anyway.
A basket is a low-order accumulator, and you're waiting for the
wastepaper drive of the next war. But the only basket that
actually accumulates is a basket which has no comm lines to it.
The second you put comm lines to baskets properly, they empty.

Now, a basket can sit there with nobody knowing that it is a
terminal or with it being twelve terminals and nobody knowing it,
and it'll stay in a confused condition. Nobody's ever sorted it
out. So, the Scientologist comes along and he says, "All right.
How many hats are you wearing " And he writes all these things
down. "You sure these are all your hats? Well, do any of these
hats combine with any of these other hats?"

"Oh, yeah, yeah. Oh sure, this combines with that and so... Well,
I guess that's really just one terminal: wastebasket emptier and
incinerator burner. I burn things in the incinerator and the
waste in the wasteb--. I guess that'd be one terminal."

"We'll group that under Manager of Disposal."

"Yeah, that's right. Come to think about it, if anybody died
around here, I would be the one that would dispose of the body
too. So that's right. That's a better terminal." See.

"So you have to say anything that's going to be thrown away
around here, I am the thrower-awayer or disposer-of-er, and that
is my unit. If anybody wants to dispose of something they see me.
That's correct. Yeah, what do you know!" You know?

And they get a higher stable datum for each one of these
terminals or their own function. And you keep working it over and
working it over and working it over with this person until they
finally get the idea of what this terminal is supposed to do.

Now, you ask them for a stable datum for the action of that
terminal. What is that terminal now supposed to do? Then they say
this, and they say that, and they say something else, and they
say something else. And then they say some-- And then they
correct themselves and they don't figure it's that. And then they
say it's something else, and it's something else, and it's
something else. And then they say, "You know, I probably could
state that more succinctly." And all of a sudden, "Say, you know,
a chief disposer would have the task of getting rid of things.
Yeah, that's it. That's it. That's the stable datum for that
terminal. That's what that terminal does. Oh, yeah, and there are
four other things that go under that here, too. Yeah, and that's
what this job is. Yeah, that is what this hat is. All right,
we'll put the hat on that very nicely."

Now we make sure that these baskets have communication lines.
That is to say, they get emptied, people come and put things in
them, that there's action connected with that underneath that
hat.

The stable datum will then as-is the confusion in the vicinity of
that terminal to the point where it will simply settle down to
two lines. It's magic, utter magic.

If a fellow finds his job confusing or the organization
confusing, what I've told you here seems fantastically simple,
but it fantastically works. It does fantastically work.

Now, it doesn't matter what's traveling up and down the lines,
with one exception: verbal messages.

Telephones are psychotic. They don't remember a thing. I know, I
picked up my phone upstairs the other day and I said, "What was
that auditor's-conference report about three days ago?" and it
didn't know. Didn't have a word to say. It just said, "Mmmmm." So
they're all awfully, awfully confused. Well, anyway.

What do you do about these verbal things? Well, actually they
aren't a communication which can travel along the lines of an
organization, and no matter how smart people are -- and the
people in Scientology are a lot smarter than people in most
organizations -- no matter how smart these people are, verbal
communications flying along these lines will somewhere or another
break down, and they have a great tendency to break down. They
break down with thoroughness, and when they break down they leave
an area of confusion around them.

Somebody walks in and he says, "Bill just called. He wants you to
phone him back about those books."

And somebody says, "Thanks." He's busy on a pantograph machine or
something of the sort, you know, and it's going bangity-bangity-
bangity-bang. "Thanks, yeah."

A couple days later meets Bill. Bill says, "What the hell is
wrong with you people out there!"

"What are you talking about?"

"Well, those books!"

"What books? Oh. Oh, yeah." It's very interesting.

Now, this all comes under the heading of even flow on the lines.

The way executives get ulcers is another story, but truth of the
matter is that a written communication is far preferable to a
spoken communication. They can be brief. They can be terribly
telegraphic. They don't have to be fancy. They don't have to look
nice or something, but they must be recognizable as a
communication of some sort. They must have some sort of a
destination and they must be from somebody, and they will travel,
then, along lines. And the funny part of it is a fellow can get
things done. He can sort these things out easily. Because you can
start and stop a piece of paper, but you can't start and stop a
verbal message.

A verbal message has the frailty of being an immediate and urgent
thing, and if everybody uses verbal messages, we have left
nothing but emergency. There's nothing but emergency left
anywhere throughout the organization. Nobody can start and stop
these things. You can't stop and start verbal messages. You have
to park them yourself all up and down the time track, remembering
all these vast details and so on, and it shouldn't happen.
Shouldn't be, because it disobeys, in the first place, the
proper-communication-lines-and-terminal rule which is set up.

Supposing we suddenly take a body out -- a body is missing for a
short time; we have to put another body in its place -- where
would we get all the verbal... I mean, in the body that's missing
now there are a lot of verbal messages. He can't file them in
this guy's skull -- not, at least, by current technology. The
replacement doesn't know them. Hasn't a prayer. He hasn't an
idea. Furthermore, he doesn't know what the stable datum is for
the job unless it's written down someplace.

All right. It's quite important to know what an organization is.
It's quite important if you're in an organization to know what
the organization consists of and what it's trying to do. It is
extremely important that you know how many hats you're wearing
and that you have a terminal for each hat. And it's extremely
important that you stay in communication with the remainder of
the organization along its recognized despatch lines, and if you
do so everything runs very smoothly and the organization will
function. But if you try to go on command lines, then you, or you
and somebody else, are wearing all the hats, and it's all bunched
up, and it's all very confused. And this would be all right if
the thing would run. It's perfectly all right to be confused if
things would still run, but they don't.

The whole study of organization is one of the most intricate
things I have ever tried to look into, so I have thrown it all
away and given you this lecture.

Thank you.

Thank you.

[End of Lecture]
