No matching fragments found in this document.
HUBBARD COMMUNICATIONS OFFICE
Saint Hill Manor, East Grinstead, Sussex
HCO POLICY LETTER OF 10 APRIL 1963
CenOCon
SHSBC Students
Franchise
Field
RE-ISSUE SERIES (12)
WHAT AN EXECUTIVE WANTS ON HIS LINES
(Re-issue of HCO Policy Letter of May 26,1959)
There are only four things which an executive wants on his incoming
communication lines.
These are:
1. Information
2. Appointments and dismissals of personnel for his action or
confirmation.
3. Financial matters.
4. Acknowledgements.
He does not want on his lines:
1. Demands for decisions.
2. Backflashes and can'ts.
3. Entheta.
Demands for decisions are always indicative of irresponsibility; people
want the executive to create the mistakes; and an executive can make
mistakes if he is asked to make decisions distant from his zone of action
equipped with insufficient data to make the decision correctly.
Backflashes, by definition, are an unnecessary response to an order.
This can get
fairly wicked. They are not acknowledgements, they are comments or
refutals.
Example: "Sell the bricks" as an order, is replied to by "Bricks are hard
to sell" or "We
should have sold them yesterday". This is a disease peculiar to only a few
staff
members. They cannot receive an order directly and are seeking to be part
of the
comm, not the recipient. This goes so far as senseless "Wilco's" or "I'll
take care of it"
when the executive only wants to know Is it done? Despatches or orders, in
most
instances, are held until completed. We assume that they got through or
rely on other
means of saying they didn't. Only a few situations require an
acknowledgement to an
order over long lines and all of these occur when there is doubt that the
recipient is
there.
In the matter of can'ts, an executive seldom orders the impossible and
generally
consults with people before issuing an order. A persistent "Can't be done"
means "I
am unwilling". I have learned this the long way. Person A on a job, saying
"Can't" all
the time, changed to Person B, receiving the same orders, discovered to me
that the job
could be done since B, on the same post, receiving the same orders, never
said "Can't"
and the job did get done.
Entheta means embroidered reports. Data is data. It is not opinion.
Data, not
entheta, brings about action. All entheta does is cut the lines.
To jam an executive's lines is a serious thing to do. The result is a
cut line. A
bottle-neck is created by staff when staff jams a line to an executive.
Eating up an
executive's time and patience destroys harmony, dissemination and income.
Depending on an executive for petty decisions, is sure to jam lines and
cost units.
The role of an executive is to plan and execute actions and to co-
ordinate
activities. To do this he gets people to do their jobs and establishes the
overall plan of