At the heart of Mr. Hubbard’s administrative discoveries is the Organizing Board or “Org Board” as it is more generally known. Developed in 1965, the Org Board is the diagrammatic pattern of organization, delineating every function necessary for successful group activity. In fact, the Org Board actually describes the ideal organizational pattern for any activity.

That pattern delineates activities—be they group or individual—in terms of seven essential divisions. Those divisions, in turn, lay out all duties, positions and actions necessary for a coordinated effort. The divisions 1 through 7 of the Organizing Board are laid out in a sequence known as the “Cycle of Production.” Again, this sequence is in no way based upon an arbitrary. When Mr. Hubbard speaks of a production cycle, he is not speaking in terms of an assembly line or the human machine that constitutes the organizational pattern in the corporate world. Rather, he is speaking of those specific activities that all production, whether individual or group, naturally follows. Point of fact, if one wishes to accomplish anything, he must perform these seven basic steps. In that respect, the Organizing Board is not simply the ideal method of successful organization, it is actually the only method of successful organization.

Having defined the ideal organizational form, Mr. Hubbard next provides the specific administrative policies upon which that form functions. These administrative policies are contained in a set of reference texts known as the Organization Executive Course (OEC). These OEC Volumes provide the theory and particulars of every working facet in an organization—from hiring personnel to the ethical conduct of employees, from promotion to quality control and more. In fact, there is a volume corresponding to each division of the Org Board, laying out the exact operations and functions of that division. In additional volumes known as the Management Series, Mr. Hubbard likewise provides all an executive need know on the subject of how to manage an organization, such as how to organize, how to be an executive, how to establish, how to handle personnel and even the art of public relations. Thus, the OEC Volumes provide the policies by which one runs an organization, while the Management Series provides the policies by which organizations are managed. 

Among the principles found in these policies is the very key “Conditions of Existence,” which Mr. Hubbard defined in terms of the degrees of success or survival of something. The basic concept is vaguely known to the astute administrator who speaks in terms of “corporate health.” But whereas the idea of corporate health implies only two states—good or bad—and offers no precise means of improving that health, Mr. Hubbard provides a great deal more. Specifically, Mr. Hubbard analyzed the various degrees of survival—from a non-existence state to a dangerous situation, to a condition of emergency to one of normal, affluence and power. Moreover, he has spelled out the necessary formulas or actions one must take to the improvement of any condition. That is, by simply performing the outlined steps, one rises through each condition to the next until one’s organization is indeed thriving. 

To eliminate any guesswork as to one’s operating condition, Mr. Hubbard further worked out the methods of monitoring organizational health by statistics. The statistic, as he defined it, is a number or amount compared to an earlier number or amount of the same thing. Thus, statistics refer to the quantity of work done or the value of it and are the only sound measure of any production or any activity, be it organizational or individual. Administratively, then, the statistic provides the barometer of organizational health, while Mr. Hubbard’s Conditions of Existence provide the means for improving that state of health. Correctly utilized, these tools allow for the exact isolation of troublesome areas and how to improve those trouble spots.