The highest condition is Power.

Power is defined as a state where there is so much production that temporary stops or dips cannot pull it down or threaten it.

Production means the action of completing something. It’s finishing a job, project or object that is useful or valuable or simply worth doing or having.

In a Condition of Power, there is a very, very high level of production that is continuing at that high level. It has risen into a whole new range. There may be temporary drops, but there is so much production that these do not put the Power Condition at risk.

The question could be asked, “How much work can one man do?” Or “How many bricks can a bricklayer lay in a day?”

Of course, a person can only work so many hours in a day. He can only get so much personal production in a day. But he can get enough production in a day to support himself.

He can get his production up into such abundance that he can take some time off. That depends on his brightness and ability to do things without wasting time or effort.

At a certain high level a bricklayer will hit how many bricks he can lay. By increasing practice and efficiency, he can keep that level of production rising, a little more each day.

If he’s laying so many bricks that nobody is ever going to think of firing him, he’s in Power. That’s a Power Condition for a person.

A Power statistic is a statistic in a very high range; a brand-new range in a Normal trend (the general direction of something).

A Power statistic is not just a statistic that is steeply up for a long time. Nor is Power simply a very high statistic. Power is not a one-week thing. Power is a trend.

If you were to graph the Condition of Power, it would look something like this:

Power Formula

1. Don’t disconnect (stop communicating or being in contact with others). The first law of a Condition of Power is don’t disconnect. That will bring about disaster for both you and anybody else involved.

   People get upset and complain about other people cutting communication with them.

   For example, take the local boy in a town who suddenly becomes quite famous. After becoming highly powerful in the business area of New York City, he never again speaks to any of his friends in the old hometown. His old friends are so unhappy about this, it is almost impossible for him to speak to them.

   Here is what happens: If you’ve been in an area where you were very well known and you suddenly become a celebrity, other people won’t believe that you still want to talk to them. They are so used to people not using the Power Formula correctly. People fully expect that you’re going to break the first part of the Power Condition, which is “don’t disconnect.” They think you are going to disconnect.

   So, when you’re in the position of Power—don’t disconnect!

   You can’t just deny (refuse to recognize or acknowledge) your connections.

   What you’ve got to do is realize that they are your connections and then take responsibility for them.

2. Write up your own job or position.

   On this step you must put down on paper exactly what you do on your job and how you do it. Suppose you were a very, very successful receptionist, so successful that you were promoted to being a salesperson in your company. The first thing you would have to do is write up your whole job as the receptionist.

   Take care to write up your whole job and not miss anything. If you don’t do that, you’ll be left with a piece of that job for a long time into the future. A year or so later, somebody will still be coming to you, asking you questions about how to do the receptionist job.

   By writing up your job fully, you make it possible for the next person to take it on and keep it in a Condition of Power. He will know the exact actions he must not change and what actions he must continue to do. But if you don’t write these things up, then he could change them, and that is the most certain way that you will end up back on your old job again—never to move off it again.

   Your responsibility, then, is to write up the job and get it into the hands of the person who is going to take care of it and do all you can to make the job able to be held by someone else.

   In the example of the receptionist who was promoted but was pulled back onto his old job, he may say: “These new people that take over reception jobs are no good. They just don’t care.”

   Now, before he became so critical, he should have asked himself these questions: Did he ever write up the job? Did he ever really leave the job? Did he leave it in a condition that it could be left? And then after he left, did he just act like the job doesn’t exist or did he occasionally walk by and ask the new receptionist how things were going?

   There cannot be a sudden disconnection when you move off from a position of power.

   It is your responsibility to write up the job and get it into the hands of the person who will take care of it. Do everything you can to make it possible for someone else to occupy that job. Because you can be certain that sooner or later somebody is going to come along and occupy the job properly.