In our bureaucratic age, members of a group are often left feeling hopeless and ineffective in the face of seemingly insurmountable difficulties. Some may even come to feel they would be better off without allegiance to any group. But inevitably, no one can survive alone and denying oneself membership in a group is denying oneself the pride and satisfaction which can only come through teamwork.
In his research into the technology of groups, L. Ron Hubbard codified the key principles which members of any group should follow to attain its goals. These are offered in the following code, written in January 1951.
1. The successful participant of a group is that participant who closely approximates, in his own activities, the ideal, ethic and rationale of the overall group.
2. The responsibility of the individual for the group as a whole should not be less than the responsibility of the group for the individual.
3. The group member has, as part of his responsibility, the smooth operation of the entire group.
4. A group member must exert and insist upon his rights and prerogatives as a group member and insist upon the rights and prerogatives of the group as a group and let not these rights be diminished in any way or degree for any excuse or claimed expeditiousness.
5. The member of a true group must exert and practice his right to contribute to the group. And he must insist upon the right of the group to contribute to him. He should recognize that a myriad of group failures will result when either of these contributions is denied as a right. (A welfare state being that state in which the member is not permitted to contribute to the state, but must take contribution from the state.)
6. Enturbulence of the affairs of the group by sudden shifts of plans unjustified by circumstances, breakdown of recognized channels or cessation of useful operations in a group must be refused and blocked by the member of a group. He should take care not to enturbulate a manager and thus lower ARC.
7. Failure in planning or failure to recognize goals must be corrected by the group member, for the group, by calling the matter to conference or acting upon his own initiative.
8. A group member must coordinate his initiative with the goals and rationale of the entire group and with other individual members, well publishing his activities and intentions so that all conflicts may be brought forth in advance.
9. A group member must insist upon his right to have initiative.
10. A group member must study and understand and work with the goals, rationale and executions of the group.
11. A group member must work toward becoming as expert as possible in his specialized technology and skill in the group and must assist other individuals of the group to an understanding of that technology and skill and its place in the organizational necessities of the group.
12. A group member should have a working knowledge of all technologies and skills in the group in order to understand them and their place in the organizational necessities of the group.
13. On the group member depends the height of the ARC of the group. He must insist upon high-level communication lines and clarity in affinity and reality and know the consequence of not having such conditions. And he must work continually and actively to maintain high ARC in the organization.
14. A group member has the right of pride in his tasks and a right of judgment and handling in those tasks.
15. A group member must recognize that he is, himself, a manager of some section of the group and/or its tasks and that he himself must have both the knowledge and right of management in that sphere for which he is responsible.
16. The group member should not permit laws to be passed which limit or proscribe the activities of all the members of the group because of the failure of some of the members of the group.
17. The group member should insist on flexible planning and unerring execution of plans.
18. The performance of duty at optimum by every member of the group should be understood by the group member to be the best safeguard of his own and the group survival. It is the pertinent business of any member of the group that optimum performance be achieved by any other member of the group, whether chain of command or similarity of activity sphere warrants such supervision or not.
