03/06-10   -   Press releases

Find out the Brute* of your enterprise

“There are four kinds of people: Those who make things happen. Those who watch things happening. Those who don’t understand what is happening. Those who make things not happen, but they themselves remain unnoticed".
The biggest challenge an entrepreneur faces today is how to build a strong team consisted of highly effective workers and officers who share the spirit of a team and how to choose them using a procedure which saves time and money. A really different team! In order, however, to succeed in this, he has to solve another more serious problem.

The disastrous 20%

“People cannot discover oceans unless they find the courage to
lose sight of the beach".

Most entrepreneurs have noticed that a percentage of employees manifest many undesired behaviors which damage both the company in various ways and themselves. This team of employees comprises about the 20% of the personnel, including the officers and the higher administration. Very often the entrepreneur himself belongs to this team, although this may seem weird.

What are the manifestations of this 20%?
- First of all, they manifest a roller-coaster behavior. One day they feel fine, the other very bad. One day they are full of energy, while the other day they are gnawed by the pessimism for the future, although their problems have not changed.
- Secondly, the make many mistakes. Although nobody is infallible, this team is particularly known for their goofs. They themselves lose precious time and make the others furious because of the troubles they cause (do not yet snatch the word “troubles" and confuse them with the bad people. There are things to follow about them…).
- Thirdly, they are involved in many accidents. Car accidents, accidents with the tools of the work – you know what an industrial accident means – and every kind of such unfortunate events are involved in their lives much more than in the lives of the rest of 80% of people.
- Fourthly, they often get sick. They don’t pretend to be sick. They are sick indeed. They are afflicted – and the others who have to finish the work are afflicted too.
- Fifthly, they are involved in clumsy handlings of people and situations. You wish you hadn’t let them handle this customerÂ… or this situationÂ… and now you run to handle it yourself, lest you can correct it.
- Sixthly, they have problems in the subject of money. What kind of problems? They cannot collect it, they cannot administer money correctly, they suggest the wrong appropriation of itÂ… and generally they are difficult in the subject of money. If such persons are in positions of an accountant or positions of funds direction, the income of the company is seriously inflicted.
Someone could say about this team that they move with a “disability"
towards life and they create problems to themselves and their collaborators. They create the problems either openly or due to their unwillingness to undertake their responsibilities and their general fear to act. On the opposite, many of them try to occupy the least possible “space" and limit their beingness very much in an effort to remain unnoticed. Others, however, end in being nervous or they cause nervousness to others out of their clumsiness.
What happened to those people?

The disastrous 2,5%

“As the years go by, we neither become better nor do worse but we become increasingly ourselves".

What happened to them is simple, unknown up to now and fortunately, their situation is fully and relatively easy to cure. What happened to their life is the existence of one, or rarely more than one, persons belonging to a less usual team; those who belong in the percentage of about 2,5% of the total population and these are the people with really bad intentions. They are so aware of their bad intentions towards their fellows – either colleagues or people of their own family –they manage to hide their substance fully (in most cases) and appear pretty reasonable and convincing. Intelligence is not their acknowledging characteristic – they can be moderate, smart or dull. If they are highly intelligent, then they are occupying key positions in both enterprises and politics. Well, this 2,5% of the population that is so wondrous in their devious aims, have two aims:
a) To make the most damage
b) To cover their real intentions.
They specialize in intrigues, the covert stabbings while they keep a friendly feature and the profile of a well-meaning person. They are sometimes ambitious and want, no matter what, to get promoted, sometimes they are low people and many times touch the limits of a pathetic one (it is worth to note that crying and the real tears – although crocodile ones – are their usual practice if someone gets them in a tight corner. Indeed they have got an enviable manner to appear as “victims").
However, they have some characteristics they cannot hide and are constantly evident. Out of these characteristics only, someone can easily find them. Even if they are much smarter than him!
How come?
Because these characteristics are so integrated in them, thus they are not able to trace them. They are simply there. They never imagine someone will find them and see their real face.

These characteristics are the following:

1) They speak in generalities when they convey something negative. “They sayÂ…. I heardÂ… it is said thatÂ… + the bad news. Why? First, in order to make us feel unsafe and then, in order that we won’t be in position to verify the truth of their words. Meanwhile, they are hiding behind their inaccuracies.
2) They convey bad news, either true or false. They very well know how to make you feel badly and consider that things are black, only because of the huge quantity of bad things they announce. They take advantage of a natural tendency of man which is summed up in the following law: the more you are bombarded by bad news, the more you limit your communication and action. And you are damaged not because of some mysterious power, but because you have limited your communication and your own action.
3) They re-convey the bad news, often embellished with imaginary and false elements, while they omit to tell the good news and they do not convey compliments. They have a problem with the other people’s advances, the professional development and promotion, the family success and happiness, and even the obtainment of a material benefit by others make these people raging and they start diffusing that it was obtained in an unlawful way.
4) Although sometimes they promise to change some behavior of theirs if they are put under pressure, they never do. Because their behavior is not sincere and they usually try to beat about the bush.
5) Their collaborators face intense problems, they are scared and feel as though they have some disability. Their close environment suffers. A good indicator in order to find such a personality is how well their close environment (professional, family and friends) get along. Their close environment manifests many of the problems of the 20% which are previously mentioned.
6) They leave many dealings open. All of us do this sometimes but we feel badly about it. They expend their grey matter not to close them but to prove they are justified not to close them. (Think that if someone closes many deals fast, he contributes to the survival of the team-company. These people in no case do they wish for flourishing and survival of the team they belong to or their colleagues.)
7) They are trying to solve the wrong problem. They do not solve the right one, not because they cannot do it, but because they simply do not want to solve it. But they have to seem like they are trying to solve something. Therefore they prefer the solution which does not bring a result.
8) Many times they confess, if they are forced to, their wrongdoings with no sense of responsibility about them. “Things just happened". All of us might, at some point, have done bad things. But we feel remorse about them. They do not feel remorse.
9) They support damaging actions and oppose the beneficial ones, especially the ones aiming to make the other people smarter and more powerful. They are shivering on the idea that someone else might become more able.
10) They support destructive teams. By destructive teams, we don’t mean only the teams which damage openly, like godfathers of the night clubs or terrorists. There are also some other, more insidious forms of destruction and respective societies who support them, like a life style with drugs, a corrupt way of living or anything that diminishes the level of a person. They build the whole enterprise in an atypical structure (family, fellow-students, fellow-pupils, fellow-villagers etc.). Thus working people obtain validity through their qualification to come from a specific society and not through their effectiveness; that means ineffective people are favored.
11) They don’t have good relations with the issue of help. They don’t help and many times they don’t want to get really helped. And when they reach to help", their intention is to destroy. Many times they react and express themselves in a violent way or with a feeling of disgust when they see something having to do with the issue of human help, e.g. a brochure presenting the donation of organs.
12) Finally, they have a wrong feeling of property. They are not honest at all in the subject of money and property.

The game, as we already said, is simple. The 2,5%, when it enters the company, stresses out the 20%, and this 20% causes many problems to themselves and the others around. Meanwhile, the 2,5% rubs its hands. And the proprietor sees his team fighting with each other without being able to help. However, if the proprietor belongs to the 2,5%, he is glad to see this fighting.

Deep introspection
“Every trip of thousand kilometers starts with one step only".

Now you know the game. Take a better look at your enterprise. You can do something about it. Remember that the 20%, after discovering the source of his problems (and we always mean some relation with a person belonging to the 2,5%) and after doing some handling (which we will talk about in a following article), he is then fully rehabilitated as an able and productive person. That means he returns to the category of ability he belongs to.
As for the 2,5%, do not try to change themÂ… it’s a waste of time and it’s highly probable, for as long as you are trying to change them, to find yourselves before sad surprises they will have created against you in other fronts that you don’t suspect of and you are not in full control. The best way is to move them off instantly. The more instantly and fully, the better...
After you have cleared the landscape, we go for organization full speed! In order for an enterprise to achieve a real development, it needs organization. However, with the full handling of the above groups of people exclusively, the organization can be achieved, and the respective increase in the income will be felt. Without handling of the above two categories, the effort to organize an enterprise stumbles. If the above two categories are not handled, the effort and the psychical tiredness demanded for even an elementary organization will make you (often enough) need to resign from the venture.
And don’t underestimate how differently everyone in your enterprise will feel when you take the necessary steps on these two categories. But most of all, perhaps you!

Bibliography: the present article is based on the discoveries by L. Ron Hubbard written in the volumes “Management Series" and his book “Science of Survival".

* Mark June Brut was a favorite person of Julius Caesar in ancient Rome. Although he had been multiply benefited by Caesar, he participated in the conspiracy that ended up in his assassination in Ides
of March in 44 B.C. According to the legend, while Caesar was falling dead, he said: “child Brut, also you?".