Expansion -- Necessary for Survival

May 3, 2008

Last Revised:  May 23, 2012 4:50 PM

I had "taken for granted" a vital part of my own Admin Scale. A very good friend questioned me on my viewpoint that, based on the Hubbard Management System, and taking into account the Admin Scale within that system, and finally looking at the concept, within that System, and portrayed within the concepts developed by and within the Admin Scale =-= was it always useful to assume that "the stat should always go up?"

He gave me the example of a company making air conditioners, or fans, and suggested that such a company would logically have "seasonal sales" related to how hot it was. This company could not logically expect to sell MORE fans when the temperatures were LOWER.

This question was one of the best I've had for making me look deeper into my understanding of the Hubbard Management System. As a result of this deeper look I made significant changes in my presentation about the Admin Scale (click here to read and look for those changes), and realized that I had to publish this page on "Expansion" as the "Necessary" form of "Survival."

The answer to the above query from my friend is:

An organization which allows itself to have outside temperature be cause over its production has chosen a poor product to manufacture. Just as the buggy whip manufacturers failed to see the impact on them of the new horseless carriage.

Also, any organization which does not have some element of spiritual betterment in their product mix is not serving all the parts of man and cannot expand well because of their deliberately restricted production.

It is not the outside temperature which prevents that example company above from finding other products they can make, using some of the same internal resources and perhaps even many of their existing (seasonal) customers.

No, as per below, the only choice any organization has is to aim at constantly increasing statistics of service delivered to their public -- otherwise they contract, diminish and fade away.

Also, expansion must achieve viability.

Also, click here for a detailed presentation on "constant expansion."

 

Here is that deeper look.

It is not very hard to grasp the basic principle underlying all organization.

It is an empirical (observed and proven by observation) fact that nothing remains exactly the same forever. This condition is foreign to this universe. Things grow or they lessen. They cannot apparently maintain the same equilibrium or stability.

Thus things either expand or they contract. They do not remain level in this universe. Further, when something seeks to remain level and unchanged it contracts.

Thus we have three actions and only three. First is expansion, second is the effort to remain level or unchanged and third is contraction or lessening.

As nothing in this universe can remain exactly the same, then the second action (level) above will become the third action (lessen) if undisturbed or not acted on by an outside force. Thus actions two and three above (level and lessen) are similar in potential and both will lessen.

This leaves expansion as the only positive action which tends to guarantee survival.

The point of assumption in all policy letters is that we intend to survive and intend so on all dynamics.

Karl Note: Note that LRH makes reference to "dynamics." They are very fully defined and described in other writings by LRH, but not here. For a simple understanding, consider that the word "dynamics" means "parts of a man's life, including spiritual parts."

To survive, then, one must expand as the only safe condition of operation.

If one remains level, one tends to contract. If one contracts, one's chances of survival diminish.

Therefore there is only one chance left and that, for an organization, is expansion.

PRODUCT

To expand, any company needs a demanded product and will and skill to produce and deliver it. It can be a service of an item.

If a company has a demanded product and will and skill to produce and deliver it, it must organize to expand. If it does, it will survive. If it organizes to stay level or seeks to grow smaller, it will perish.

This is easily observed in nations. Whenever one seeks to remain the same or to lessen itself, it usually perishes. It need not seek only to expand its borders. It can also expand its influence and service. Indeed, the effort to expand borders in a nation without increasing a demand for its influence and products is a primary cause of war. If a nation expanded the demand for its influence and products, it would expand without war. When a nation seeks to merely expand by force of arms and does not expand the demand for its products, one gets a dark age or at least a social catastrophe.

Rome, early on, was in great demand for it social technology and manufacturing skill and only a cruel streak in her made her wage war to expand. Britain for instance was ready to welcome Roman baskets and pottery and art and had been demanding them for nearly a century when Caesar's vicious ambitions actually wrecked the smooth progress of Rome by enforced expansion by arms in excess of demand for Roman products. This was one Roman product nobody wanted -- Caesar and his legions.

Psychiatry's product of further insanity was not in demand by the people but by the state which sought to crush people or at least hold them down. So psychiatry expanded by government regulation, not by popular demand, and so at this writing "expanding" into the legislatures and government treasuries and no expansion whatever of any demand from the public and no produce except slaughter.

The Roman Catholic Church once had a healing product, by actual treatment and by relics and miracles and was in great demand by the public and eventually even the barbarians. But she began to fight progress in science and knowledge and her product turned into exported ignorance backed by autos-de-fe (burning heretics) and thus ceased to expand and today is rapidly shrinking.

Buddhism, earlier than that, expanded continuously as it never sought new extension of territory other than that of learning. Buddhism failed in India alone because its monks became licentious, ceased to deliver true teachings and were swept up, most likely, in India alone, by the Muslim conquest of that unhappy country sometime around the seventh century.

Britain of the twentieth century actively sought to contract her empire and did so to the tune of internal economic catastrophe.

SINGLE PRINCIPLE

Thus it should be obvious that contraction leads to death and expansion to life, providing that one maintains a demand for itself and the will and skill to produce and deliver a product.

If, as ours is, the product is very beneficial and if we continue to produce and deliver, the demand is assured. In this we are fortunate. And we are also fortunate that, try as they will, no squirrel is ever able to duplicate our product since one variation (that of changed brand) leads to others and they promptly have neither product nor demand -- that observation is itself empirical. No squirrel has lasted more than two or three years in the past sixteen years. And there have been many. That they squirrel shows enough bad faith to drive away the public the moment the public hears of the original.

Thus providing we maintain the will and skill to produce and deliver we can expand and proper expansion that will continue is possible.

All our policy then is built on EXPANSION.

It assume we wish to survive.

And it stresses the production and delivery of a straight, non squirrel product.

It is calculated to ensure a continued and widening demand by ensuring that product remains good and beneficial.

The technology itself is complete but it expands also by experience of administration of it and simplifying its presentation.

But to alter the basics of the technology will stop expansion because it is what we are producing, not what we are building.

We are building a better universe. It has not been a good universe to live in so far but it can be.

Our punitive force is our ethics system and it exists to ensure the quality of the product and to prevent the blunting of demand for the product.

INTREPETATION OF POLICY

The organization then has all its policy rigged to expand.

It takes many things to ensure expansion.

Thus, when you are interpreting policy, it should be interpreted only against EXPANSION as the single factor governing it.

This can serve to clarify questions about policy. The correct interpretation always leads to expansion, not holding a level or contraction.

For example, policy bars the entrance of the healing field. This is solely because there is too much trouble with the occupiers of that field and only outright war (with no demand) could solve them. This seems to be a brake on expansion. It is only a brake on expanding by war in the absence of demand. Therefore the right way to expand is to gradually build up general public demand, let experience by the public see that we heal and when the demand is there and howling for us, reinterpret the policy or abolish it as a brake to expansion. As one can only expand by external demand for the product, if one seeks to expand in the absence of a specific demand for the product, one has war and war doesn't lead to expansion any more than burning heretics and other brutalities expanded the Catholic movement.

So one interprets policy against proper expansion that is proper.

CORRECT EXPANSION

Expansion which when expanded can hold its territory without effort is proper and correct expansion.

. . . . .

 

 

Summary: In understanding policy one must understand its key and that is expansion.

Only a Scientology organization has an unlimited horizon. But any organization must expand to survive.

The only ways you can "over expand" are to fail to expand with new demand and keep pace with it evenly with organizational expansion as well as numbers.

It is easier to expand than to "remain level."

Organizations and units which do not expand can not stay level and so contract.

Karl Note: August 14, 2011: There is an additional question in my mind. While I understand and agree with the concept that expansion is the basis of survival, I wonder about whether "parts" of an organization are also subject to that same policy.

That is, if an organization is making soap and makes many different types of soap, such as P&G "Ivory Soap" which floated, no longer much being made or sold:

Because Ivory is one of P&G's oldest products (first sold in 1879), P&G is sometimes called "Ivory Towers" and its factory and research center inSt. Bernard, Ohio is called "Ivorydale".

Ivory bar soap is whipped with air in its production and floats in water. According to an apocryphal urban legend, later discounted by the company, a worker accidentally left the mixing machine on too long and the company chose to sell the supposedly ruined batch because mixing air longer did not change the basic ingredients of the soap. When appreciative letters about the new, floating soap inundated the company, P&G ordered the extended mix time as a standard setting. However, company records indicate that the design of Ivory was not the result of accident. In 2004, over 100 years later, the P&G company archivist Ed Rider found documentation that revealed that chemist James N. Gamble, son of the founder, had discovered how to make the soap float and noted the result in his writings.[5]

Ivory's first slogan "It Floats!" was introduced in 1891. The product's other well-known slogan, "99 44/100% Pure", was based on the results of an analysis by an independent laboratory the founder's son, Harley Procter, hired to demonstrate that Ivory was purer than the castile soap then available. source

It would appear that Procter & Gamble simply kept changing the characteristics of "Ivory Soap" and using the "Ivory" name to attach to "other" soaps that did not exist when P&G started (detergents).

Does Vibrant Life keep separate VSD statistics on each separate product and work to keep ALL those stats increasing?

When "public interest" changes, or when new formulas are possible because of new availability of ingredients, does the old product change and carry on the stat of the previous product?

What if the most important product of Vibrant Life ("Life Flow" and its three present versions, Basic, Super and regular) represent some 80% of total Company sales and if new scientific data produces a very different remedy? Do we accept the reduction in the expansion statistic of Life Flow, but only when a plan is in place to change it, replace it or add to the mix?

And is it OK if the Company continues to expand while parts of are not expanding and those non-expanding parts are not subject to a "plan to change" either with a condition or product change or replacement?

I believe the LRH principles of "constant expansion" are completely valid, but there is a question on "what it is" that is expanding.

As I'm writing this at the age of 80, now retired, I marvel at the changes in this Company which may be found necessary or desirable?

Org executives and personnel are overworked only when they cannot afford to expand and thus cannot get the help they need to do the work, quite in addition to there being more problems made by contraction than by expansion.

Expansion requires an expansion of all factors involved and when something expands out of pace with the rest which is not expanding at the same rate, trouble is caused.

Source: HCOPL 4 December 1966, Expansion Theory of Policy, page 39, OEC Vol 0.

 

Quotes from L. Ron Hubbard are copyright 1994 © by the L. Ron Hubbard Library. All rights reserved.