Comm Lines Are Sacred

Within the Hubbard Management System is an "Essay on Management" which includes this excerpt:

He who holds the power of an organization is that person who holds its communication lines and who is a crossroad of the communications. Therefore, in a true group, communications and communications lines should be and are sacred. Communication lines are sacred. They have been considered so instinctively since the oldest ages of man. Messengers, heralds and riders have been the object of the greatest care even between combatants on enMEST missions. Priesthoods hold their power through posing or being communication relay points between gods and men. And even most governments consider cults sacred. Communication lines are sacred and who would interrupt or pervert a communication line within a group is entitled to group death -- exile. And that usually happens as a natural course of events. Communication lines are sacred. They must not be used as channels of viciousness and entheta. They must not be twisted or perverted. They must not be glutted with many words and little meaning. They must not be severed. They must be established wherever a communication line seems to want to exist or is needed.

The most vital lines of a group are not operational lines, although this may appear so to management. They are the theta lines between any theta and the group and the goal maker and the group. Management that tampers with these lines in any way will destroy itself.

The "content" of those pages is the creation of the Goal Maker, Karl Loren. The "group" in this case would be the web browsing public.

While the public has the web content in a stable and reasonably workable condition, as they want more of a connection with Karl, they become prospects and customers who want more of an interactive comm line -- wherefore come the hundreds of orders, phone calls, personal eMails and even the electronic educational courses created by Karl on the web.

In his most active early years, Karl not only authored the content of the pages, designed the products for sale, but even designed the programs that handled the interaction with customers, prospects and others who wanted this closer connection.

I designed one of those "programs" (what is called the Master/Entry Program) for keeping track of customers and orders. I didn't realize it at the time, but I built in a very large number of features which allowed me to use the same program to generate the type of information called for within the Hubbard Management System -- information used for the central and vital purpose of Managing the entire Company.

The "comm line" between that vital information and me was, indeed, sacred to me for far more than the purpose of keeping track of customers' names and sales information. That comm line produced hourly or weekly or any time range of statistics which I used to evaluate the results of many management activities, such as planning and executing marketing campaigns, measuring individual staff performance and predicting future needs for inventory purchase -- and more.

It turned out, also, that many of the features of this program greatly facilitated the continuing use of the comm line between me (or any Executive in Vibrant Life) and the public -- these features had to do with making it not only easy, but effective to use bulk mail and even bulk eMail messages.

I knew that the program I had created, based on use of "old" technology (dBase III), could and should be modernized using much newer program languages which would allow even more and better features for management by statistics and for facilitating communications with individual customers as well as groups of customers and the public.

So started a 10+ year quest for the person who already knew one of these new computer languages, or could learn one, so that HE could re-create what I had created, but "do it better."

I tried, myself, to learn some of the new languages, but I found that the programs (like MS Access and MS Excel and others) were so much different from the old dBase III I had learned and used, that I would have had to spend a great deal of time learning them. By then I had other projects I preferred to spend my time on.

So, looking for THE person to do this work took those 10+ years and I hired many, paid thousands of dollars and had many failed attempts.

Finally, in 2008, I found a person who said he could do it -- and he has done a remarkable preliminary job. That is Timothy von Hollen. He was paid as an outside contractor for the first part of his work. He then formed a joint venture with Karl Loren, using the umbrella resources of Vibrant Life, to develop the Master/Entry program further and to develop it into a proprietary product where he and Vibrant Life, from the joint venture, could start marketing.

The JV agreement also includes a provision whereby Tim can "buy out" the Vibrant Life 49% interest in the JV, and take the new product he will have developed within the VJ to the market place as the 100% owner (with VL getting continue use and any updates without further cost).

As of the writing of this Company Policy, Tim is the senior Computer/Program Tech Terminal at VL, with Sunil in India working on a contractual basis, and with Gordon Bateson (Japan) spending his last month with us to turn over his hat (mostly related to server activities) to Tim.

As I saw his work develop I came back to realize how sacred were the (internal -- from machine to management) comm lines he was creating for the management of the entire Company. The comm lines on the web were not affected by changes in the comm lines from the old "Master/Entry" program to the new one, but the information was needed from the new program to administer the business side of Vibrant Life.

I had capable staff, even some with long experience with Vibrant Life. They helped guide this new Program so that they could USE it effectively, but they never had the owner's viewpoint of HOW to manage the Company. Thus, I began to be concerned that the creation of this new Program might not include features which I had found vital for management purposes -- different from customer contact and sales purposes.

Those concerns are now allayed with the new Joint Venture which gives Tim the same goal as I have had and puts the entrepreneurial spirit in play to encourage Tim to take my similar attitude.

Thus, I'm pleased to turn over these sacred comm lines to Tim and look forward to Vibrant Life being well served by Tim's presence.