Future Planning

Future Planning

October 23, 2008

Last Revised: May 23, 2012 4:50 PM

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First Plan Under The New Era

Second Plan Under The New Era

Planning is often the province of that person in an organization who is most skilled and capable of observation, that skill being at the top of the "Key Ingredients Scale" as described in the Hubbard Management System and excerpted below.

Thus, the person who is best at observing might usually ALSO have the ability to dream, or in a more prosaic term, "PLAN."

The terms "GOAL" and "PURPOSE" are also muchly in the venue of the Observer, combined with a DREAM, or when more specific, a PLAN.

Mr. Hubbard uses the word "plan" with his own special definition and technology. This technology is explained HERE for the first brief look at the word as used in the Hubbard Management System.

Plans that result in accomplishment of the Purpose of the Plan, however, require a good organization and the knowledge and skill of creating, organizing and using an organization may NOT reside in the person who has proven best at observation and dreaming. The "observer," also being the dreamer, then, often needs to find some way to build or to acquire the organization that can make his plans become actuality.

It is common in many companies to say something like: "He was good for starting the company, but not for managing it after the bright ideas and research were finished." That may well be the description of Vibrant Life and founder Karl Loren.

I think I have found that way with the addition of one expert to our present staff, Clifford Woods. His job is to be in charge of PLANNING (the turning of plans into actuality WITH an existing organization (as well as with a revised organization), with Tim von Hollen currently as Deputy ED.

Here, just below is the Hubbard Management System explanation of where these and other terms belong in an organization.

Further below, HERE, is an explanation by Karl Loren, as to what role he has played and expects to play in this newly organized Planning activity.

Quotation from Mr. Hubbard:

When we look at organization in its most simple form, when we seek certain key actions or circumstances that make organization work, when we need a very simple, very vital rundown to teach people that will produce results we find only a few points we need to stress.

The purpose of organization is TO MAKE PLANNING BECOME ACTUALITY.

Organization is not just a fancy complex system done for its own sake. That is bureaucracy at its worst. Org boards for the sake of org boards, graphs for the sake of graphs, rules for the sake of rules only add up to failures.

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The only virtue (not always a bad one) of a complex, unwieldy, meaningless bureaucratic structure is that it provides jobs for the friends of those in control. If it does not also bring about burdensome taxation and threatened bankruptcy by reason of the expense of maintaining it, and if it does not saddle a people or production employees with militant inspections and needless control, organization for the sake of providing employment is not evil but beyond providing employment is useless, and only when given too much authority is it destructive.

The kings of France and other lands used to invent titles and duties to give activity to the hordes of noble hangers-on to keep them at court, under surveillance, and out of mischief out in the provinces where they might stir up their own people. "Keeper of the Footstools," "Holder of the Royal Nightgown" and other such titles were fought for, bought, sold and held with ferocity.

Status seeking, the effort to become more important and have a personal reason for being and for being respected gets in the road of honest efforts to effectively organize in order to get something done, in order to make something economically sound.

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Organization for its own sake in actual practice usually erects a monster that becomes so hard to live with that it becomes overthrown. Production losses, high taxes, irritating or fearsome interference with the people or actual producers invites and accomplishes bankruptcy or revolt, usually both even in commercial companies.

Therefore to be meaningful, useful and lasting, an organization has to fit into the definition above:

TO MAKE PLANNING BECOME ACTUALITY.

In companies and countries there is no real lack of dreaming. All but the most depraved heads of companies or states wish to see specific or general improvement. This is also true of their executives, and, as it forms the basis of nearly all revolts, it is certainly true of workers. From top to bottom, then, there is in the large majority, a desire for improvement. More food, more profit, more pay, more facilities and in general, more and better of whatever they believe is good or beneficial. This also includes less of what they generally consider to be bad.

Programs which obtain general support consist of more of what is beneficial and less of what is detrimental. "More food, less disease," "more beautiful buildings, less hovels," "more leisure, less work," "more activity, less unemployment," are typical of valuable and acceptable programs.

But only to have a program is to have only a dream. In companies, in political parties, useful programs are very numerous. They suffer only from a lack of execution.

All sorts of variations of program failure occur. The program is too big. It is not generally considered desirable. It is not needed at all. It would benefit only a few. Such are surface reasons. The basic reason is lack of organization know-how.

Any program, too ambitious, partially acceptable, needed or not needed could be put into effect if properly organized.

The five-year plans of some nations which are currently in vogue are almost all very valuable and almost all fall short of their objectives. The reason is not that they are unreal, too ambitious or generally unacceptable. The reason for any such failure is lack of organization.

It is not man's dreams that fail him. It is the lack of know-how required to bring those dreams into actuality.

Good administration has two distinct targets:

1. To perpetuate an existing company, culture or society.

2. To make planning become actuality.

Given a base on which to operate, which is to say land, people equipment and a culture, one needs a good administrative pattern of some sort just to maintain it.

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Thus (1) and (2) above become (2) only. The plan is "to continue the existing entity." No company or country continues unless one continues to put it there.
Thus an administrative system of some sort, no matter how crude, is necessary to perpetuate any group of any subdivision of a group. Even a king or headman or manager who has no other supporting system to whom one can bring disputes about land or water or pay is an administrative system. The foreman of a labor gang that only loads trucks has an astonishingly complex administrative system at work.

Companies and countries do not work just because they are there or because they are traditional. They are continuously put there by one or another form of administration.

When a whole system of admin moves out or gets lost or forgotten, collapse occurs unless a new or substitute system is at once moved into place.

Changing the head of a department, much less a general manager and much much less a ruler, can destroy a portion or the whole since the old system, unknown, disregarded or forgotten may cease and no new system which is understood is put in its place. Frequent transfers within a company or country can keep the entire group small, disordered and confused, since such transfers destroy what little administration there might have been.

Thus, if administrative shifts or errors or lack can collapse any type of group, it is vital to know the basic subject of organization.

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Even if the group is at effect -- which is to say originates nothing but only defends in the fact of threatened disaster -- it still must plan. And if it plans, somehow it must get the plan executed or done. Even a simple situation of an attacked fortress has to be defended by planning and doing the plan, no matter how crude. The order "Repel the invader who is storming the south wall" is the result of observation and planning no matter how brief or unthorough. Getting the south wall defended occurs by some system of administration even if it only consists of sergeants hearing the order and pushing their men to the south wall.

A company with heavy debts has to plan even if it is just to stall off creditors. And some administrative system has to exist even to do only that.

The terrible dismay of a young leader who plans a great and powerful new era only to find himself dealing with the old and weak faults is attributable not to his "foolish ambition" or "lack of reality" but to his lack of organizational know-how.

Even elected presidents or prime ministers of democracies are victims of such terrible dismay. They do not, as is routinely asserted "go back on their campaign promises" or "betray the people." They, as well as their members of parliaments, simply lack the rudiments of organizational know-how. They cannot put their campaign promises into effect, not because they are too high-flown but because they are politicians not administrators.

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To some men it seems enough to dream a wonderful dream. Just because they dreamed it they feel it should now take place. They become very provoked when it does not occur.

Whole nations, to say nothing of commercial firms or societies or groups, have spent decades in floundering turmoil because the basic dreams and plans were never brought to fruition.

Whether one is planning for the affluence of the Appalachian Mountains or a new loading shed closer to the highway, the gap between the plan and the actuality will be found to be lack of administrative know-how.

Technical ignorance, finance, even lack of authority and unreal planning itself are none of them true barriers between planning and actuality.

Thus, we come to the exact most basic steps that comprise administration.

The first is OBSERVATION. From beginning to end, observation must serve both those in charge and any others who plan. When observation is lacking, then planning itself as well as any and all progress can become unreal and orders faulty and destructive. Observation in essence must be TRUE. Nothing must muddy it or color it as this can lead to gross errors in action and training.

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Next is PLANNING itself. Planning is based on dreams but it must be fitted to what is needed and wanted and what men can do, even with stretched imaginations or misgivings. Planning has to be targeted and scheduled and laid out in steps and gradients or one will be laying railroad tracks that pass through oceans or boring tunnels in mountains that do not exist or building penthouses without putting any building under them to hold them up.

The essence of planning is COMMUNICATION and the communication must be such that it can be understood and will not be misunderstood. For unless those who oversee and those who do know what their part of the plan is, they cannot execute their share and very well may oversee and do quite some other action, leaving a monstrous gap and even a structure that ate up their time and funds but now has to be torn down.

The next is SUPERVISION, and supervision is dually needful. It serves as a relay point to which plans can be communicated and from which observations as reports can be received; and it serves as the terminal which communicates the plans as orders and sees that they are actually done. This give one the genus of the org board as a central ordering point which has other relay ordering points taking care of their part of the whole plan or program. These points are often also the points which care for local occurrences which must be handled, and their frailty is that they become so involved with local occurrences, oddities and purely local concerns that they do not or cannot give any attention to receiving, relaying and overseeing their part of the main plan.

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Then there are the PRODUCERS who produce the service or the structure or the product required by the Plan. Many plans are marvelous in all respects but putting somebody there to actually DO the required actions that make the plan real. The primary fault is to use persons who already have projects and duties to which they are committed and, with their local knowledge, see must be continued at any cost but who are forced to abandon existing programs or duties to start on this new activity, solely because the new activity has the stress given it in orders and the old activities are seemingly ordered left alone. Old companies and old countries cold be said to be "that collection of incomplete and abandoned projects which is confused and failing."

Finally there is the USER, those who will use or benefit from the program when it is realized and completed. When planning fails to take this element into account, only then can the whole program fail utterly for it, regardless of dreams, labor and expense, is finally seen to be of no value anyway. Thus all great programs begin with an understanding or a survey of what is needed and wanted and a nose and value count of those who will use it and a costing action in time, labor, materials and finance, compared to the value of it -- even if only aesthetic - of those who will use it in any way, if only to know they have it or to be proud of it or to feel better or stronger because they have done it.

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Thus one gets the points which are the true administrative points:

1. OBSERVATION even down to discovering the users and what is needed and wanted.

2. PLANNING which includes imaginative conceptions and intelligent timing, targeting and drafting of the plans so they can be communicated and assigned.

3. COMMUNICATION which includes receiving and understanding plans and their portion and relaying them to others so that they can be understood.

4. SUPERVISION which sees that which is communicated is done in actuality.

5. PRODUCTION which does the actions or services which are planned, communicated and supervised.

6. USERS by which the product or service or completed plan is used.

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__________

Administrative systems or organizations which lack at least the rudiments of the above system will not bring off the dream and will accumulate an enormous lot of uncompleted actions. Not a few failures, bankruptcies, overthrows and revolutions have occurred because one or all of the above points were awry in an existing organization.

The amount of heroic executive overwork which comes from the omission of one or more of these vital essential points accounts for the ulcers which are the occupational disease of those in charge.

Even if so reduced, an executive who fends off disaster while getting a system which satisfies the above points has an enormously bettered chance of winning at long last.

______

The dual nature of an administrative system or an organization now becomes plain.

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Let us pry apart (1) and (2) above. The effort to hold an existing organization together is really different than trying to get a plan into actuality. In practice one has an organization of some sort. It has functions and it has local concerns and problems. And it has programs and actions from past control centrals or which were locally generated.

To push in upon this plans which, no matter how well conceived or intentioned, are additional to its load will cause a great del of confusion, incomplete projects, left dangling and general upset.

To place new programs into action, two prior actions are necessary:

A. Put in a whole new system paralleling the old existing system.

B. Survey the old system and its existing programs to preserve them eradicate them or combine them with the new plans.

To leave (A) and (B) undone is to court disaster. Whether one is aware of the old programs or the old organization or not, THEY REMAIN AND WILL CONTINUE even if only as a pile of undone, unsorted papers nobody knows where to file or as a pile of odd unfinished masonry some future generation can't identify or will identify with scorn of administration in general.

New leaders are sometimes looked upon as a worse scourge than a foreign enemy and new patterns of rule are often subjected to overthrow simply because they did not, out of ignorance or laziness, do (A) and (B) above.

One sometimes finds a company unit or a military officer left in some unheard-of place for years, at continuing expense, guarding or nibbling at some project in a bewildered or philosophic fashion. The activity remains unremembered, unhandled when a new broom and new planners entered the scene.

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This can get so bad that a company or a nation's resources can be broken to bits. The old plans, disorganized, not known, discredited are superseded by new plans and new ambitions. The old plans are in the road of the new plans and the new plans prevent old plans from completing. The result is an impasse. And the men in charge, even at the level of junior executives, become even more puzzled and bewildered than the workers and begin to believe no plan can ever be done, blame the ignorance of the populace and the cruelty of fate and give up.

All they had to do was put in a complete new parallel system as in the (1) to (6) outline above for their new plans and to meanwhile preserve and continue the old system while they surveyed for preservation, eradication or combination of it. It is sometimes even good sense to continue old projects to completion currently with new projects just to maintain stability in the company or country and somehow find new finance and new people for the new plans. It is often far less costly than to simply confuse everything.

Furthermore, all NEW and untried plans should have PILOT PROJECTS which by test nd use must be successful before one incorporates them and their new workers into the old system as a parallel dependable activity.

A "chicken in every pot" as a campaign promise could easily succeed if organized as in (1) to (6) above.

_______

There is a lot to organization. It requires trained administrators who can forward the programs. But a "trained" administrator who does not grasp the principles of organization itself is only a clerk.

At this current writing man has not had administrative training centers where actual organization was taught. It was learned by "experience" or by working in an organization that was already functioning. But as the principles were not the same company to company and nation to nation, the differences of background experiences of any set of administrators differed to such a degree that no new corps could be assembled as a team.

Thus it was said to require a quarter to a half a century to make a company. But the number of ineffective bureaucracies and national failures which existed stated clearly that there were too few skilled administrators and too few training activities.

Man's happiness and the longevity of companies and states apparently depend upon organizational know-how. Hiring specialized experts to get one out of trouble is a poor substitute for knowing what it is all about in the first place.

Organization is actually a simple subject, based on a few basic patterns which if applied produce success.

If one would dream and see his dreams an actuality, one must also be able to organize and to train organizational men who will make those dreams come true.

L. Ron Hubbard

Founder

Source: HCOPL 14 September 1969, The Key Ingredients, Admin Know-How Series 22, page 191, Management Series I.

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Application of this within Vibrant Life

Karl Loren is easily categorized as a person with advanced skills at observation and with plenty of ability to dream.

His plans and organizational ability have been enough to build a $1,000,000 company selling a product that certainly saves lives while flying in the face of one of the most suppressive groups (medical doctors) on the planet.

But, his "planning" ability did not extend to successful use of the Hubbard technology for planning, including Programs, Projects, Targets and more. Thus, Vibrant Life has increased in size and planetary effect mostly within the scope of Karl's personal production -- he has not proven successful in building an organization that can, in fact, turn a plan into an actuality. As these partially successful programs were laid into place by Karl -- some never even started and some with some success, we now come to a new era of "PLANNING." As Mr. Hubbard describes above, it is now vital to

B. Survey the old system and its existing programs to preserve them eradicate them or combine them with the new plans.

Karl has made his own first survey of past (many undone) and current programs (many incomplete) HERE. These are the programs which we should "preserve" some, "eradicate" some, and "combine" some. That action now falls into the purview of the Director of Planning, Clifford Woods, with help from Karl and Tim.

Karl has tried to pass on the ownership, control and management to others, only to see them leave without solving Karl's needs in these areas.

Tim von Hollen, now appointed as Deputy Executive Director, shows great promise at taking greater responsibility and possibly solving Karl's needs for a succession in ownership and management.

However, the past few months, prior to the original date of publication of this Company Policy, have seen enough in the way of roller-coaster statistics and non-duplicated Policies, Plans, Programs, etc., to suggest that something different is needed if Karl is to meet his personal goals of retirement from Vibrant Life and time and resources to dive into his new Plan -- to establish a system of services, called the LLC System -- that allows a person chosen by him or his staff in this endeavor to be allowed to "have" an existence without "identity" and without "location."

Further this system portends to allow such person to "operate in the physical universe without an identity or location. This description is sufficiently cryptic to be a puzzle to the casual reader here, but those who are involved in the establishment of that system are aware of the full meaning and details of this system.

Clifford Woods, already appointed as "Senior Ethics Advisor" to Karl Loren, is now to take responsibility (with some sharing with Karl) for PLANS, "DIRECTOR OF PLANNING," reporting directly to Karl Loren who, presently holds the position of Executive Director. Mr. Woods now has full responsibility for the implementation of "planning" for Karl's dreams, including all those already laid out for Vibrant Life, and others.

The first plan needed and wanted by Karl is for Mr. Woods to establish a stable financial base for continued Vibrant Life growth. As a target based on past performance by the same staff we have now, the VSD of $15,000, steady and then increasing is what can be used for the initial plan.

This would be an "ongoing plan" that is in place all the time to do the "standard things" without a "special plan." What would be included here is general reliance on the current 300,000 monthly page views for bringing prospects to our web sites without any special marketing beyond that.

THIS plan would be to find and remove any "held-down stats" because of our own blunting of these 300,000 reaches with inadequate handling.

For initial planning purposes Mr. Woods will be paid from the source of the 20% of CGI which SHOULD be enough for the present salary level of $1,120 per week (Luis and Tim), not including Mr. Woods or Karl Loren. When the CGI REACHES $15,000 per week on a regular basis, that would be $3,000 per week for salaries, enough for the present staff, $750 per week for Mr. Woods, and $750 per week for Karl Loren, (total $2,620 per week) with some small excess.

This first plan is to achieve this level of VSD so that the salaries indicated above can be maintained on a consistent basis, and on the basis of continuation with no additional staff until the CGI increases appropriately. (Commission salesmen must have as their source the same 20% of the CGI.)

This probably means that Mr. Woods will teach/coach both Luis Martinez and Tim von Hollen on the self-assignment of conditions and the submission for approval to him of the appropriate formulas on at least a weekly condition basis.

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The Second Plan Under the New Era should probably be the salvage of the Christmas Campaign, for which I started the full programming, asked Tim to complete, but he did not do that within the time frame I expected. Thus, I think this Campaign is an excellent VSD-Booster at this time and fully compliments the First Plan, just above.

What is needed is a careful review of all the planning I had started with, some weeks ago, then coordination with Tim as to what more he has done to implement that program, and then a Plan/Program for implementing the Christmas Campaign so that it can produce the results described AND, at the same time serve as a hatting exercise for Tim on what planning is about.

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The THIRD PLAN was first originated by Clifford Woods as a bright idea offered to Vibrant Life -- that he had a source for "bulk eMail names" at a cost of only $800 for 2,000,000 such names, and that these were "senior citizens" and legitimate names, etc. Clifford's first draft of this plan is HERE.

We have never used a purchased list of eMail names, out of concern for complaints of spamming, etc. Nonetheless, when a list of names of senior citizens costs $800 for 2,000,000, that is about $0.04 each. If you predict 1/10 of one percent return, that would be like paying $800 for 2,000 responses, and each such response would have to buy, on an average FORTY CENTS to break even for just the cost of the names. With odds like that it seems well worth:

Design a great promo piece -- sent by bulk eMail
Include a "landing page" to capture the responses.
The landing page can be on an "anonymous web site" so that any complaints don't come to VL
If the landing page is well written, it should get a "click-through" rate of 1% to read a more forceful article, for instance, on heart disease -- or 20 people who want to read a well-written piece on the importance of buying Life Glow Plus.
If half of those people actually buy, and spend $300 over a one year period, the VSD from this campaign could be $3,000 in the first year -- almost a 400% return on our investment, measured in sales.
If those 20 people turned into 10 repeat customers, etc., the prediction exercise of this type of campaign does NOT require high accuracy on the first campaign, but a very good method of tracking the results.
The results could be 10 times better, or 1% of the above.
A mass eMailing of this type of well worth the small dollar risk.
This is a perfect NEW MARKETING PLAN we have never tried. It is our Plan Number Three in this new era.

The FOURTH PLAN is to revert Tim's interest to the Joint Venture and the finalization of the Master/Entry Program and emphasize the very early "beta testing" of this program in the possibile "lease" business model (rather than sale of a proprietary program). The new element in that otherwise completely "Tim-Directed Joint Venture" would be to incorporate very tight expectations on the financial viability of this plan as a (1) money-earning enterprise and as (2) a soon-arrival at a final completed product that needs no further "tweaking" for the continued use by Vibrant Life, and (3) has developed (possibly with Druhz-Soft in India, alternate soft-ware designers so that one or more, other than Tim, understand the program sufficiently to revise it.

The FIFTH PLAN is to look at a past successful action of getting new names and addresses.

The earlier success was using the "Write to Karl Loren" web pages. They used to generate large numbers of requests for personal responses from Karl. When he was answering these, personally, there were many new names added to our customer lists regularly.

Karl had a "library" of about 50 different (former of his electronic NewsLetters and articles from the web sites) -- all prepared in an electronic form so they could be added by "key click" from the Outlook eMail reply program. With Tim's change, as necessary, in the M/E program, this library can be recreated.

The answers, to be effective, do not have to have Karl's level of knowledge and reply, but need to be warm and real. This is a PLAN that mostly needs mechanical improvements in the "Write to Karl Loren" pages and the system for handling the inflow -- then two or three newly recorded of Karl Loren's lectures on CD to offer our eMail list a free CD AS WELL AS A PERSONAL RESPONSE FROM FL (we cannot promise a Karl Loren personal reply, but a good reply can be trained in on even new people so that we should be able to restore this almost lost method of getting in new names.

________________

Karl's expectation that the prospective new ownership, control and management of Vibrant Life is a separate issue from the prospective new ownership, control and management of the "LLC System," with Clifford Woods designated in those capacities for the LLC System (but with VL taking full advantage of the services offered in that System).

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

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