For a person or group to reach a goal, they first have to know the basics about organization. Organization means the ways of arranging things and actions in order to bring about what a person or group wants.

A simple statement about organization is that it has the purpose to make planning become actuality. An actuality is something real, not just something that is only in someone’s imagination.

Organization is not a fancy system that has no purpose—that is a bureaucracy. A bureaucracy is a complex system of rules and procedures within a group that allows people to avoid responsibility and prevents things from getting done. People will try to get rid of groups and governments like this because they bring only things such as lowered production, high taxes and lots of control that gets in the way of those who are trying to produce.

Also, organization is not simply a way for some people to try to become more important than other people. If that happens, it could end up blocking those who are honestly trying to organize an activity to increase production.

Instead, to be useful and lasting, an organization has to fit into the definition of making planning become actuality.

Although a few of the most evil leaders of groups and organizations do not want improvements for their people, most everyone else in groups, organizations and governments wants improved conditions for their areas. Such examples could include more food, more pay or nicer buildings to live and work in. Actually, improvements means more and better of what a person thinks will be good and helpful for him and for his family, such as better education and jobs, cleaner neighborhoods to live in and nicer parks for the kids to play in. This also includes less of what is generally considered to be bad, such as war, crime and drugs.

Programs that most people approve of and support consist more of what is good and less of what is bad. “More food, less disease,” “more beautiful buildings, less poor housing,” “more free time, less work,” “more good jobs, less unemployment” are typical of valuable and acceptable programs.

But having only a program could still mean failure. For all sorts of reasons, programs can fail to reach their goals. The program is too big. It is not generally thought of as desirable. It is not needed at all. It would benefit only a few. These would seem to be the reasons why programs do not get done. But the actual reason is a lack of organizational know-how.

Even if a program was too big or only acceptable to some, or even if it was not needed, it could still be done. Any program could be done and bring about what it is supposed to if it was properly organized.

It isn’t that people’s dreams are not good enough. It’s that people do not always have all the know-how needed to bring those dreams into actuality.

The things that must be handled for good administration (the actions involved in managing or organizing an office, organization or specific activity) to occur are these:

1. To keep an existing company or country going.

2. To make planning become actuality.

If you had the basic parts of a group, organization or country, such as the land, people or equipment, you would need a system of administration just to maintain it.

So the (1) and (2) above really become just (2)—to make planning become actuality. The planning that has to happen is to keep the existing company or country going. And no company or country continues unless people are working to keep it there. So methods of administration, no matter how simple and basic, are necessary to keep any group going.

When a whole system of administration gets lost or forgotten, which can happen because of war or changes in the government, for example, then the group can collapse unless some other type of administration takes its place.

Changing a department head or a manager or even a ruler can destroy a part or the whole of a group because the old system becomes unknown or forgotten. It may no longer be used and the new system is not understood. Frequent transfers (changing people from one job to another one) within a company or country can keep the entire group small, disordered and confused. That is because these transfers destroy whatever sort of administration there might have been.

For these reasons, it is vital to know the basic subject of organization.

Even if a group is only defending itself against some disaster that is threatening it, the group still has to plan. For example, maybe a powerful storm is headed toward a town, so the town’s leaders have to plan how to help people stay safe. Once a plan is prepared, it then has to be put into action by opening schools and churches where people can stay until the storm is over or by having radio announcements telling people to move out of the area for a few days.

Some plans can be very simple. Take, for example, when enemy soldiers are attacking a fortress (a large building built with strong walls to protect the people and soldiers). The fortress has to be defended, which involves creating and doing the plan, even if it’s just the order to “Push back the enemy soldiers who are climbing up the south wall.”

Such an order is the result of very simple and quick observation and planning. Defending the south wall occurs by some system of administration, even if it’s just officers hearing the order and pushing their men to the south wall.

A company that owes a lot of money also has to make a plan. Its plan must solve how to pay the people they owe money to. Then they have to figure out how to tell those people when the money will be paid back to them. This sort of plan will allow the company enough time to make the money they need.

Leaders of governments often promise the people that they will do wonderful things. But when these things don’t happen, the leaders are not, as most people believe, trying to avoid doing what they have promised or trying to lie to the people. They actually are not able to put their promises into action, not because these promises are too big, but because most government leaders may know something about government but not much about administration. So they do not have the organizational know-how to make their plans become actuality.

To some people, it seems that dreaming a wonderful dream is enough. Just because they dreamed it, they feel it should now take place. They become very upset when this does not occur. Whole nations, businesses and groups have gone on for many years with their areas in confusion and disorder because their basic dreams and plans never became actuality.

Whether a person is planning big goals, such as more jobs and more money for the town he lives in, or something smaller, like repainting his house, the plans will not accomplish what is needed if there is a lack of administrative know-how.

Even if a person does not know about technical details or how to come up with the money he needs, even if he cannot get others to follow his orders, even if his plans are not very clear and well thought out—none of these are true barriers between planning and actuality.