From: tedm@agora.rain.com (Ted Mittelstaedt)
Subject: Scientology & Business
Message-ID: <1991Jul20.062414.25718@agora.rain.com>
Organization: Open Communications Forum
Date: Sat, 20 Jul 1991 06:24:14 GMT

Well, I had the misfortune to spend 8 months of my life working for a company that was owned by a scientologist, and I have some pretty firm ideas about Scientology after "escaping" from it.

First, the Business/Financial section of the "church" is separate from the Faith/"Religious" section.

I have no quarrel with Scientologists who are only interested in the ""religion"" from a "religious" standpoint. They can wax poetic and defend their particular ""religious" beliefs" to their death for all I care. I place about as much faith in their "religious" bullcrap as I place in the Catholic "Church"'s "religious" bullcrap. I'm not in to organized "religion" and what I believe and my relationship to my "God" is my own business.

What I don't care for, however, is the "Church" of Scientology getting it'sfingers into corporations or businesses. Many of you may not know that in addition to the good science fiction Hubbard published, and the "religious"publishing that he did, that there is a gigantic library of what would looselybe termed as "Business Management" works that he published. Of course, mostof these books are not for general distribution, mainly because they are sofull of horse manure that they wouldn't stand a chance in the business academic world, they'ed be ripped to shreads. There are consulting firms outthere that speciallize in doing nothing but coming in to a scientologist ownedbusiness and basically telling the owner that he/she knows nothing at all about managing his business, and he/she quickly needs to dump a pile of goodmoney into the consulting firm for it to be able to "save" he/she's business.

The first thing these firms do is to "survey" the business. They'll spenda good 3 to 6 month's interviewing just about everybody in the companyindividually and asking them how they would "improve" the business, and whattheir personal views of work are. Of course, because you are supposedlytalking to an unbiased outsider, most employees will spend much time telling everything they know about that is going wrong with the business.

The next thing these firms do is then go to the owner and get them to dissamble the entire departmental structure. They pretty much strip away anyauthority any middle manager has. When the firm is at a boil, with all the employees not knowing who the hell they report to, these firms will then start re-assigning everybody's job descriptions until no one knows what they are supposto be doing. Of Course, the good employees start getting fed up and quitting about now, so the already low productivity is reduced even further.

Eventually, the firm is really screwed up. Now, these people go on the rampage, pulling out all the old files of interviews, and firing anyone who doesen't have the necessary "Moral" abilities (re: agrees with their methods)

Finally, you are left with a firm that is basically a bunch of incompetent people, who happen to agree with the Scientologist Method" usually "church" members. Now these firms go into the final phase, since the business is berefit of any real talent, they start hiring "Church" of Scientology members into the business. (yes, there ARE really competent people who belong to the "Church" of Sci.)

In the end, the firm eventually gets healthy again, but is petty much in the "Church" of Scientology's pocket. Most of the employees are "church" members who contribute heavily, and the firm of course makes regular donations to the "Church" of Sci. The outside consulting firm, having now done it's job, exits the scene for another 5 to 10 years Of course, their never far away, ready at a moments notice to repeat the "cleansing process"

Things to watch out for:

L. Ron Hubbard tried to define everything as a "Product" even services. Look for attempts being made to define obvious services as products. Example: "A baby sitter does not provide a service. She provides a product. The product is a well-babysat-baby" and other such nonsense.

L. ROn Hubbard claimed to believe in equality in the company. What actually occurs is that there are managers and supervisors, but they merely rubber-stamp business. No one EXCEPT the top executive makes any kind of real decisions. This includes such trivial nonsense as deciding the number of pencils each department is allowed to buy on a given week. Look for examples of all decision-type work needing to be approved by the top person. Pre-Done forms tend to be real prevalent here.

L. Ron Hubbard enjoyed assigning real strange english syntax to what would otherwise be normal business terms. He was also real good at the alphabet soup routine: taking an ordinary task and renaming it to words made up of the first letter of the phrase. Example: Walking the dog would be : a Well Walked Dog, or WWD. This makes the sentence "How are your WWD's this week?" a reality. Counseling or Advising became Auditing. Training becomes Personal & Professional Enhancment or PPE and so on. Services become Products.

Above all, Scientologist corporations depend on making the employee unsure of what their task really is, or whether or not their doing it well. Since decision making is concentrated at the top, Scientologist corporations usually heavily discourage individual inititave, and punish those who display it.

tedm@agora.rain.com

By the way, I like people, including people I know who are scientologists. I HATE scientology, espically those high up in the "Church" whose egos are keeping the monstrosity rollong

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