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When considering which HRMS is right for your company, it’s helpful to think in terms of functional components. Generally, modern systems cover seven areas, with varying levels of focus.Candidate management: Relates to employment offers to candidates and how you promote your brand to both the outside world and current employees who may wish to apply for internal jobs or make referrals. Critical for companies for which the candidate experience is a primary concern—from applying to resume management to interview scheduling to making offers, all the way through onboarding.Employee engagement: People who are more engaged tend to produce higher-quality work and more fully adopt the company’s values and execute its vision, so how an employee connects with leadership and colleagues is important. Often, the HRMS is the route to complete a training course, acquire a new skill, develop a career path, gain recognition or become a mentor.Employee management: There’s a reason this function is often referred to as “core HR.” Delivers a central portal to support analysis, reporting and compliance processes. It’s where you structure your workforce into organizational units, like departments or locations; define reporting relationships between managers and employees; and align payroll to accounting cost centers. It’s here where personal information is recorded and maintained, and this function is the cornerstone of efforts to offer employee self-service, maximize reporting and improve HR service delivery.Optimization: Gleaning information from the HRMS to develop a vision for the future workforce is a primary selling point. It’s also the least-utilized function of a typical HRMS. The real value of this function usually comes to the fore with a merger or acquisition, sharp economic swings in either direction or when executives exit. Companies that take a proactive approach to optimizing the workforce are more resilient to change, have higher retention of top talent and better employee engagement.Payroll: This is also a primary function of the HRMS—calculating earnings from gross to net or net to gross and withholding individual deductions and issuing payments can be made just as routine as paying the rent. Payroll functions comprise benefit elections and both employee and employer costs. Full-service payroll solutions also automate tax filing and deposits. Self-service functions allow employees to make changes to elective deductions, direct deposit accounts and tax withholdings and retrieve copies of earning statements without HR assistance.Workforce management: This is where HR teams track employee development, manager evaluations and disciplinary actions; record time and attendance; and ensure the company is providing a healthy and safe work environment. This is also where compensation planning, performance management, learning and incident recording functions reside. HR can develop timesheet structures, overtime rules, time-off policies and approval chains in way that maximizes automation, control and efficiency. The employee performance review process, complete with goal management, is set up in this function as well.Contingent workforce management: Related to primary workforce management and critical for companies where not every employee is full-time. Contractors, consultants, interns and temporary employees provide specialized skills, support local community initiatives or university programs and handle spikes in demand for labor. The HRMS does not wholly manage these relationships because these employees are not always on the payroll and are usually not eligible for benefits; but the work they do contributes to company success, and it’s important to track how many contingent employees are on board at any given time and the total costs.Once you have a clear understanding of which functions are most important, it’s time to dig into specific features.HRMS FeaturesAs with broad functionality, HRMS feature sets can vary widely from provider to provider, and cobbling together multiple products may limit the overall system. HR, IT, finance and other stakeholders should carefully assess which of these HRMS features are must-haves for the company.Benefits administration: Helps HR professionals develop plans, configure eligibility rules and make payments or deposits to benefits providers. Also offers self-service open enrollment and integrates benefit costs with accounting.Centralized employee records: Provides a single repository where all employee records are stored, updated and maintained. Allows for better reporting and lowers the costs of compliance and preparing for audits.Learning management: These features are designed to help employees acquire or develop skills through course administration, course and curriculum development, testing and certifications. Also enables companies to roll out and track required compliance training.Reporting and analytics: Delivers the ability to run operational reports to track HR information, complete compliance reporting, develop key performance indicators (KPIs) to measure HR process performance and embed HR metrics into financial dashboards for company-wide analysis, planning and decision-making. Also look for the ability to create ad-hoc reports.Rewards: Calculate salaries, hourly wages, variable payments for bonuses, overtime, sales commissions, shift differentials and merit increases while withholding regulatory and elective deductions, resulting in accurate net payments to employees at regular intervals. Benefits, like matching retirement fund contributions or mobile phone reimbursements, are sometimes included in this feature set.Talent acquisition: Recruiters are able to build career pages on the company website and intranet, create job requisitions and descriptions, manage positions, integrate open positions with job boards, manage resumes, track applicants through the recruiting process, extend job offers, perform background checks, administer pre-employment screenings and create job application forms, before handing new hires off to a generalist or the hiring manager to begin onboarding.Talent management: Enables HR professionals to develop and evaluate employees via performance reviews, goal management, and competency and skills test administration.Time and attendance: Delivers the ability to process time-off requests and manage time-off balances, employee scheduling and absence management and enables timecards to be integrated with payroll and projects.User interface: Because an HRMS can be opened to the entire workforce, a user-friendly interface is critical. Today’s systems feature employee and manager self-service, mobile apps, localization, personalized dashboards, workflow automation, role-based access controls and notifications to keep employees engaged and inquiries into the HR or IT departments to a minimum.Workforce planning: Provides the ability to plan and budget for workforce costs and measure against actual outlays for both current and future scenarios. May also be used to identify skill gaps, create succession plans and prioritize recruitment efforts.Additional features may be found in specialized HRMSs, and not every company needs a fully loaded system. If you decide to use multiple providers to form the HRMS, ensure all the products include an open architecture to allow for bi-directional data exchange, needed integrations and file uploads across the system. Using a single provider for an HRMS reduces the need for one-off integrations, which can be expensive, complex and difficult to secure and update.

Well this will be long, but nobody had answered this for some time, so here goes.Most of those who think that Landmark is a cult have not actually experienced the Landmark training, and do not know what kind of people participate. Further, in general, those who have been in an Introduction or the Forum may not have recognized a basic Landmark distinction, which I will here call the "myth of is." That is, we imagine that our judgments and assessments of things are real, and exist out in the world, so that we think that something *is* something else.Behind our judgments are reactions, responses, and our thinking, typically based on the past. Most commonly, when we think that "A is B," we have a collection of associations, and we place weight on them, and deprecate associations that would indicate that "A is not B." Once we think A is B, and if we believe our own thinking, we notice more and more reasons why A is B, and do not notice, or discount, reasons why it is not. In reality, and with every such conclusion, it is neither true nor false. There are resemblances between any two objects or categories, and ways in which they are different.The question essentially asks for reasons why people *think* Landmark is a cult, it does not ask if Landmark *is* a cult. However, if I were to simply list the reasons, with nothing else, it would look like an argument that Landmark is a cult. If I list the reasons and show defects in them, it would look like I am arguing that Landmark is *not* a cult. This is a trap that ordinary thinking leads us to, and the Landmark training is designed to interrupt this and step outside of the battle between "is" and "is not," into a realm of direct experience and, more, much more, a realm of "possibility.* That realm is also called, in the training, the "realm of enrollment." Enrollment is the quality of being "moved, touched and inspired," see What does it mean to be moved, touched, and inspired, in Landmark Forum-speak?People who are moved, touched, and inspired tend to become excited, especially at first. And so this takes us to the first "cult-like quality."1. Landmark participants become enthusiastic about Landmark, yet are often not able to explain what it is about. So there is an impression that they have been hypnotized into believing Landmark is the greatest thing since sliced bread. Actually, that metaphor doesn't capture it! The greatest thing since the invention of "thing!"And then, to discuss and point to a realm of experience that is not ordinary, new language was invented, often ordinary words used in new ways. Thus:2. Landmark has a specialized language. I call it "Landmartian," somewhat thinking of Heinlein's Stranger in a Strange Land. Grok it? When new participants try to talk about what happened in the Forum, they will often use these words, since they don't have practice using ordinary language to describe the "distinctions." And right there is a piece of Landmartian: a "distinction" is a mode of thinking, a way of looking at life that is neither true nor false, but that is *useful*.As an example, the Forum covers the "genesis of identity," how we came to be the people we think we are. It has been found, it's claimed, that, all over the world, across cultures, there is a single original declaration that we made, very early, "Something is wrong." And once we accepted that, we became searchers for what is wrong, something that would explain the way we feel, perhaps so we could control it, and we started in various ways to not notice the contrary.So there is a distinction: "Nothing is wrong here." People see this, from outside, and think that Landmark is promoting some panglossian "everything is wonderful." Is it? What if everything actually *is* wonderful, but we don't see it?Gotcha! If you imagine that I'm claiming that it is real that everything is wonderful, you are missing the point. So pay attention!Landmark is explicit: "Nothing we are telling you is the truth." It is not a "truth" that "nothing is wrong," it is a distinction, a tool, a way of looking at life that uncovers and opens and creates possibility.The entire concept of "wrong" is undermined, subverted, but only to open our seeing to what actually happens. "Wrong" is obviously a judgment, our very first (in the story told of identity formation).And when we think something is wrong, I see this every day, life does not go well. That is, and in general, we don't have power, happiness, effectiveness, peace of mind.Landmark distinctions are then taken out of context, as if this is what Landmark "teaches." Another one: "Life is empty and meaningless and it is empty and meaningless that life is empty and meaningless." Lots of people have trouble with that one. Mostly, they miss the second half and make the first half *mean something.* This distinction works together with another: "The human being is a meaning-creating machine." To state this within current scientific understanding, we evolved language which we use to understand life and the world, and we developed prediction, through "meaning."It is not that the "meanings" are wrong. It is that they are summaries, expectations, and are intrinsically limited. We create them, and when it is said that life is "empty" of meaning, Landmark is pointing to this native, unconditioned emptiness. That emptiness is also the foundation inspiration for at least one major religion, and I could argue that it underlies others as well. That emptiness is the realm of unlimited possibility, precisely because it is "meaningless." That is, it has no fixed meaning.Landmark is not saying that there is something "wrong" with meaning. It is saying that if we set aside, for a time, the meanings we created (or received), we will find something else. And it can be quite exciting to discover that and actually experience it. Hence, once again, the appearance of "cult." These people are excited about *nothing*!It's a standing joke, it may even be in the Forum format. Suffice it for now to say that it's hilarious.Okay, other "cult" appearances. One of the most obvious:3. We can find many pages on the internet where it is claimed that Landmark is a cult. Where there is smoke, there is fire, right?I can also find many pages on the internet that say that Barack Obama was born in Hawaii. Must be true? By the way, I've never encountered a "birther" in Landmark, but Landmark has no position on the birthplace of the President. It would not be discussed, unless somehow this was very important to a participant, in which case the participant might be reminded of why they are there. I.e., for themselves and how they live. Or they might be encouraged to go to Hawaii. Why not? Sounds like a great place to go and do some investigation. I hear the beaches are spectacular. Maybe some sheriff in Arizona will pay your way.4. Landmark sometimes sues people who say that it is a cult.(It is organized as a business, and the "cult" allegations definitely damage registrations, I've seen people who were positively attracted, then they went on line and became quite frightened, and "cult" is presented as something that will take over your mind, very very dangerous, and you know how weak you are, so don't check it out. You will not survive. Seriously, we see a page that literally says this, below.)What else? Okay, I decided to google "landmark cult" and see what I found.http://www.huffingtonpost.com/elizabeth-licorish/lululemon-cult-culture_b_3690378.htmlThere were other hits about Lululemon. This one, though, is amazing. Lululemon is highly successful, apparently, and pays a great deal of attention to employee training. The article begins with mention of Charles Manson. It has nothing to do with Lululemon, it is the author's personal story, leading up to:"soon after enduring Lululemon's intensive training program, I realized I'd been indoctrinated into a bottomless pit of groupthink I'd never be able to survive."And, within a few paragraphs, she describes the grisly crime scene photos from a tragic murder that took place in a Lululemon store, one employee murdered another in 2011. And the story concludes with this. The thesis is that somehow the motivational training sent the killer over the edge. All those smiles drove her crazy.So what does this have to do with Landmark? She says it in introducing alleged Bad Social Dynamics, as if she is shocked to find that some Lululemon employees can be blaming or judgmental or otherwise unpleasant."The Lululemon culture consists, on the surface, of catchy manifestos. Lululemon wants you to know it's "elevating the world from mediocrity to greatness" and "creating components for people to live long, healthy and fun lives." But, dig deeper, and you'll learn about Landmark Forum, the ultra-secretive, eerily cultish educational series, which Lululemon employees are "strongly encouraged" to attend.""Ultra-secretive"? What? The technology Landmark is using is quite well-known. The trainings follow "formats," which are "recreated" by trained Leaders. While the formats are copyrighted and confidential, there are millions of people who will tell you what was said and done. In fact, it's hard to shut them up, sometimes. (That is a cult characteristic, but I already mentioned it above.)In a way, there are "secrets," but they are open secrets, the kind behind any esotericism that requires a level of understanding to grasp. Outside that understanding, it's psychobabble or mindless feel-good, like she describes Lululemon. Yet her story is dark, menacing. Her very survival was at stake, they were going to take over her mind. She doesn't say, but obviously she quit. Definitely not a match. Either way, I'm sure.This one is much more difficult:http://www.xojane.com/newagey/landmark-forum-cultI've written about this page before.http://en.wikiversity.org/wiki/Landmark_Education/Abd/Criticism_of_Landmark/Abd_bliki#Sarah_Fazeli... and on a page linked from there.The head and subhead:"My (Scary, Destructive) Brush With Scientology Light""So. Is it a cult? Technically, no. But, if it walks like cult, talks like a cult, and preys on people like a cult, it just might be Landmark."Scientology Light. There is an historical connection with Scientology, but the mode of operation and the focus of Landmark is radically different. Over the years, I have known Scientologists. The comparison might be like calling a shave "guillotine light" (after all, the barber holds a long straight razor!) Scientology is, here, a scare word."Walks like cult" is just saying "cult" in a different way, because it supposedly resembles a cult, but that doesn't say what the resemblance is."Talks like a cult." Landmark does use specialized language. So do brain surgeons and people who train in any field. How the language is used would be crucial."Preys on people like a cult," then, is her actual story. She had a Bad Sales Experience -- assuming the story is basically true, though there are some aspects that are suspicious, such as the $300 deposit, when the highest deposit level in the U.S. is $200, so if she did not remember the deposit correctly, and it's an important part of her story, how accurate are the other details of conversations with Staff?Nevertheless, there are parts of the story that ring true, i.e., *something like them could have happened.* Especially the Forum story, if the Leader was having a truly Bad Hair Day, and lost it.People involved in registration can be "highly effective salespeople." Call it "pushy," if you like. They believe in what they are doing, and tend to believe that the Landmark Forum is the best thing anyone can possibly do. I understand why. They see the results all the time.Sarah Fazely obviously had some difficulty saying No and sticking to it. Her pre-Forum experience was a setup. She converted her personal experience into a dramatic story, applied to the entire enterprise: "all the unethical business practices, the high-pressure sales tactics, the abusive, emotional manipulation..."Her story omits some details that will be seen by those who know the whole registration process. She had paid a deposit (and apparently forgot how much it was, but she inserts and uses the figure repeatedly), and she did not appear for the Forum that she registered into. She did ask for a refund at some point, and was told she could get one, but did she want to reconsider? She said she'd think about it. And didn't do anything, obviously, until past the Forum date.The registration forms say that the deposit is not refundable. It's a very brief form, if you miss that, you are paying no attention whatever. In fact, refunds are often given, Landmark simply does not want to be *obligated* to refund.She does not say that she got her money back, but it's pretty clear that she did, and she does not mention the second previous opportunity to get her money back. It's standard in the Forum that at the conclusion of the morning session, participants are offered the opportunity to withdraw for a full refund. It's not uncommon that a few take advantage of it. Nobody boos, but, then again, it's not a public process, people don't stand up and say that they are leaving.Rereading her account, there are many other things that do *not* ring true. The emphasis on signing up for the Advanced Course, Friday morning, for example. Registration tables won't be set up until Saturday night at the earliest. Doing it before delivering the Forum technology would be colossally stupid. If the Leader did this, it was outside the format. Previously, thinking about this, I thought the Leader might have been under some pressure, though Forum Leaders are exquisitely trained. If I take what I've seen in the programs and multiply it by ten times, I can come up with something like what she wrote. Leaders can lose their patience. Because of the training, it takes maybe a second or two to resolve. If her story is at least somewhat true, something was awry in that Forum.I have only seen one Forum continuously. Mine. I've seen many other programs, such as the Advanced Course, many times. I've never seen anything like what she describes, but I do know that some participants can be confrontive. Since I haven't seen it happen, I don't specifically know what a Forum Leader would do with the situation described. But I could expect *part" of what Sarah says. The Leader would allow some conversation, and then would intervene, to move on with the program for those who want to be there. Sarah describes her as angry, but Sarah was upset, obviously, highly energized. Under those conditions, our ability to read others can be impaired, so I can't tell. Again, I would expect the Leader to ultimately assert control. After all, that's what she is paid to do. Run the Course.Sarah is amazed that she has friends who tolerated the Forum and got value from it. Most likely, the Forum her friends participated in was very different. The format was the same format, but the Leader, in this Forum, may have deviated from it extensively. Or Sarah's memory is very badly warped. Her story of being called "every single day for the next month" after her initial registration is suspicious, -- I've handled some of this and know the calling policy -- but ... she had, probably, signed up for the Forum happening almost immediately. Often these are not available, but if one does register into them, the full tuition is to be paid. So maybe the registration was accepted with something less, but still more than a regular deposit. It's all speculation. She might have gotten extra calls because she was not responding, with the Forum happening immediately.So some people think the Forum is a rip-off, and that the sales is high-pressure. It's definitely effective sales, usually. The training itself originated with sales training, salespeople need to be motivated and to tolerate high rejection, to stand for possibilities when it might seem impossible.The "conversation over pressure" is a common conversation in Landmark. Many people -- including Graduates -- think that Landmark "pressures" people. Landmark operates entirely on word-of-mouth for marketing. But I can speak to the Leader training (for Introduction Leaders, which then is the entry point for more advanced training). The training is, very much, not to pressure people, but to listen for their "stand" and affirm it. What do they want? And then how can they get it?Registering into the Landmark Forum is one way, and certainly not the only one, and, in the training, I was told to stop "trying" to register people, and just listen to them. And if appropriate, make registration available to them. And that there was nothing wrong with their choice, whatever it was.But everyone in Landmark is human. Sometimes we think we know what is best for others! And then act out of that, and this will then appear as "pressure."What else?Landmark is supposedly abusing volunteers, using volunteers to do work that should be paid. Cults do that, right? I'm one of these people. To get the most advanced training, I took the Introduction Leader Program. Those smiling people in the back of the room, sitting at registration tables at a Special Evening. I was one of those for a time. We are not paid in money. We get no commissions, nobody does. Staff is paid salary or by the hour. No, we are paid in a very different way, and everyone I know who actually took the Introduction Leader program says the same thing: this was the best training *ever.*This is a basic fact about Landmark. The entire operation is heavily volunteer. The corporation itself is owned by the staff, through an ESOP. Nobody is getting rich. Some Forum Leaders have been doing this work for almost forty years. Most, though, are much newer than that, and Landmark bleeds Forum Leaders, because they have skills that are in high demand in business. Most Leaders in Landmark, i.e., Seminar Leaders, Self-Expression and Leadership Program Leaders, and Introduction Leaders, are volunteers. Many of them are also successful business consultants. I've seen how they live.Forum Leaders, who commonly work full time, with extensive travel, are paid, there is executive staff at the headquarters that is paid, and center staff are paid. The latter, not terribly well, but they are not complaining, *because they love the work.* There is fairly high turnover. For example, the woman who did my Forum Welcome call -- the call that Sarah may have so strenuously avoided -- was an amazing person, a joy to talk with, and an excellent listener. Later, she set up opportunities for me that were ideal. She married the Registration Manager, and they resigned from staff, everyone applauding, they were going to have babies and he would, I'm sure, find an excellent job (networking opportunities in Landmark are extensive, plus anyone who had been a Registration Manager is expert at effective phone conversations). Staff generally comes from the Introduction Leader body. These are highly trained people, generally. Paid enough to get by.Landmark has never paid a dividend. It does usually make a profit, which is reinvested in operations. If more of the work was paid, tuition would have to go up (or Landmark would have to collect donations, which it doesn't do.) Nobody wants the tuition to go up. The corporate goal -- they share all of this in the Introduction Leader training -- is that the training be readily available and easily affordable. It is not that, for many. I did advanced training, being two hours drive away from the Center. So my big investment was in travel and occasionally lodging (for the New York weekend sessions of the ILP). Before that, I blew the engine on my car driving back and forth to Boston, coaching the Self Expression and Leadership Program, another volunteer position. And it takes time. Lots of time.Cult? Okay, how is Landmark *not* like a cult?1. Landmark heals families. It's one of the most common stories, and, no, a family not considered "healed" because everyone does the Forum. Sometimes family members do, but it's considered healed when people start talking to each other who did not talk for years, start being happy to see each other, start *being a family* when, way too often, that was broken. Cults divide families. Scientology will demand that members not contact "suppressive persons." Landmark has no such concept.(I have a situation with an ex-wife, adoptive mother of a daughter who now lives with me. She looked at the internet and concluded that Landmark was a cult, she said so and told our daughter that. *Never* was I encouraged to "make her wrong." Never was I encouraged to fight with her, and always the encouragement was to find a way to communicate and work together with her. I had old unresolved relationships (i.e., other marriages that had ended many years before). I was encouraged to call these women and take full responsibility for what had happened. I did, and miracles occurred. Old resentments and lingering doubts disappeared. It was freeing.)2. There is no dogma. As with 12-step programs, there is a kind of community consensus, but nothing that one must "believe" in order to fully participate. I've mentioned "distinctions." They are not "truth" to be believed in, but ideas to be applied, in a practical sense.3. There is no cult of personality. One does not hear the name of "Werner Erhard" in the programs except rarely, from a long-time participant, in a Seminar, perhaps, who shares some of his or her history. Erhard put the training together from many pieces, adding in his own experience, and that's what happened historically. But it came from many sources, and he *turned it over to the staff,* something that does not ordinarily happen with cults until the founder dies. That turning over is actually a part of the training, in the Self Expression and Leadership Program, where participants create community projects (which cannot have anything to do with Landmark), and it is suggested that one identify leaders *and turn the project over to them.* There is no idea that these people should be Landmark Graduates, and most are not. However, it's not uncommon that they *become* Graduates!4. Important People, Experts, have said that Landmark is not a cult. I never found this particularly impressive, but it is true.The "cult" idea is used to keep people completely away. People are afraid of being "brainwashed."However, suppose there were a service that "washed" your brain. You would not forget anything -- but all the accumulated crud of how things have gotten wired together, the collection of unexamined beliefs, often accepted when we were children, would be cleaned, so that we can tell the difference between what happens and what we have made it mean, and have choices.Scary, to be sure. Our very identity is wrapped up with those stories.However, suppose you look at people who have gotten the treatment. Their lives are working. They are cheerful, fresh-faced. They still have individuality, and, in fact, it's enhanced. (Many performers in Landmark!)When they are new, they are a bit unstable, perhaps. They may leave an unsatisfying job without being secure in finding a new one. Sometimes they leave a relationship (leading to another common cult accusation: Landmark stole my boyfriend !) However, meeting people who have done the work and who have become established in applying it, these people are not wide-eyed Gee You Had To Be There enthusiasts. They are settled and confident and seem to have peace of mind. They have no need to make you register, if they talk about Landmark. They are good listeners. *Usually.* People are individuals, not all are the same.Would you get the treatment? If it was free? If it cost $500? If it cost, say, $1350? That last price is the approximate cost of the full Curriculum for Living, i.e., the Forum, Advanced Course, and Self-Expression and Leadership Program, plus the single 10-week Seminar included with the Forum, if paid up at earliest opportunity. Advanced training beyond the Curriculum is most easily found in the Assisting Program, which is free. I have coached the SELP twice, and did the ILP as mentioned above. My real major cost has been getting to centers for the programs.)(The Forum does *not* generally complete the training. It opens the door. It has great stand-alone value, which generally appears to mellow with time. To some extent, the benefit also will fade if the work is not practiced, but the basic distinctions remain accessible. "There is nothing wrong here" is a Swiss Army Knife of distinctions, I've used it in situations that otherwise would have been -- or had been -- highly stressful, and miracles happened. It allows the brain to function, it's really like clockwork.)Handling conversations at Introductions, I learned, when people said, "I'd like to, but I can' t afford it," to say, "That's not the question. Do you choose to do this work? If you don't choose to do the work, the money is moot. If you do choose it, it's just a matter of logistics, such as getting there and maybe a place to stay."Some people are saying "can't" because they actually don't want to do the work, but don't want to say No. They imagine it would be rude, and then someone will argue with them to try to convince them that they are wrong to decline. But our training is entirely in the other direction. They are not wrong. They are making a choice, and our training is to *empower them to make choices," instead of being victims of "can't."Sarah Fazely did get that she needed to honor her intuition. That was a great outcome! She was not ready to take the Forum, she didn't want to be there, but she did not know how to say No. She actually understands that this was a benefit, or at last said so, but she has framed all this as some sort of opposition, that's all.No charge. She got her money back, as she could have gotten it back on at least two previous occasions.(People do the free introduction, which includes the Possibility exercise. People do that exercise and their life transforms. We hear about it years later, when they decide they want something more and they know where they can find it, and they register, and end up, then, in a seminar and tell their story. When people have a story of "can't," I don't get into an argument, I take them at their word, but translate it to a choice not to do it. I.e., perhaps they are not willing to rob a bank, open the kid's piggy bank, go into debt, or camp out at the Reg Manager's desk begging for a scholarship, so "can't" is a story, not actually the truth.So then, if they say they want to do it, I ask them if they want support. Generally, they say Yes, and one of them actually meant it! I followed up with him for about five months. When he'd say "I can't," I'd ask him if he could toss a quarter in a jar. Yes, he'd say, and then I'd ask him to do it. Clink. And I also invited him to a Special Evening in Boston, and got him there (two hours away from my house, up to three with traffic, and I live an hour from him). So he saw a Forum Leader in action.And then I got the call. An opportunity to register for the deposit only. (Not $300, as in the Sarah Fazely story, but $150, which is still the deposit figure in Boston.) Did I have anyone waiting where money is an issue? (I've never heard of this happening, before or since, but it probably does, it's just not talked about, for obvious reasons. Still, the point is *we do not know the future.*)Yes, I did. And I called him. He was truly excited. Then his voice fell when I asked him what he could pay. $50, he said. Now, I have little money, but this was my friend, and I had some credit open. I told him that I needed help cleaning up papers in my office, and asked him if he would work at $8 per hour if I loaned him the money. I knew he did not want to go into debt, but this was something that he could easily repay, and he'd enjoy it, because we'd then go out to dinner (cheap, but fun!). (When he was working, which was a problem for him at the time, he was making $15 an hour as a substitute teacher.) He immediately agreed and I called the Center and put it on my credit card.And he did the Forum and loved it. Of course he loved it! He'd been anticipating it for months! He actually investigated it, he didn't just see one introduction, he also went to a Special Evening, and he had also seen what had been happening in my life, I knew him before I'd done the training myself.He did do the work for me, but, in fact, I needed the money back more than the work, and he paid me some back as cash.And then he put the Advanced Course on a credit card! He negotiated the full discount with the Reg Manager even though he did not register during the Forum. On the Monday after the Advanced Course, he went for a job interview. I've seen this many times, it is simply not surprising that he got the job, paying him much more money than he had ever made before (he's over fifty). In the AC, someone paid his SELP registration ($220) -- people do that! -- and he completed that program, which is saying something. A lot of people do drop out, my guess is something like 25%. It's a lot of work!And then he just completed the Introduction Leader Program.Now, was it worth it? His life is radically transformed. However, his old personality is still around. It's easy to recognize, in his voice, when it comes up. It is the voice of someone whose life never works. Something is always wrong. People don't like him, and will discriminate against him because he has a "disorder." He's in pain from this or that condition. And then he's angry that people and life treat him this way, and he will argue that this is "real." He's got proof. Etc.Now, however, he can remember and recognize that this is his past, intruding. He knows where it all came from, he's identified the early childhood experiences. That is not part of the training, specifically, Landmark doesn't do psychotherapy, but recognition of the "genesis of identity" is common. Once in a while one will hear a Leader, hearing at the mike about some "racket" (persistent complaint combined with a fixed way of being), ask "And does this remind you of anything? Has this ever happened to you before?"What he accomplished in the training is no small thing. Completion rates in the ILP are lower than in the SELP. In spite of difficulties, with his job, with his schedule, with transportation, he completed. He has the capacity to say he will do something, and then do it.When he identifies his current response -- his emotional state! -- as coming from his past, he can let it go, and just let the current situation, the trigger for this, be what it is. And it then becomes clear to him what to do, as to actually handling issues. Sometimes, for example, he took on a task at work that was impractical for him to do, instead of declining. He didn't decline out of his past, he believed that it would be used against him, so he was not free to say No. So then he was rushed and overworked and made mistakes. And then he would be afraid that he'd be fired for making mistakes. When his old story was active, he spent much of his life in fear, and when we are in fear, we become much less functional.And that is just a simple consequence of the choices he made, starting at about age five. In the Forum, he saw that this *was* a choice, not "reality." And so he could begin to move on.Recognizing the source of his anxiety, he knows how to declare his own competence, that's he's actually safe.Piece by piece, this transformation is penetrating every area of his life.It's still quite fresh.He's taking the Communication Course next year, he registered when he could get the ILP discount. I've never done that course, it never worked for me to be there, though I had people offering to pay most of the tuition for me. I've been to many CC introductions. Great work, I'm sure, people who have done it say so.So, back to "cult." The Scientology bugaboo was raised. I have a friend who was a student of scientology. He spent about $10,000 in auditing and other fees, in a fairly short period of time, maybe a year, years ago.It is nearly impossible to spend that kind of money with Landmark, unless you do the Wisdom Course. Say the "Year End Vacation Course." About $3900 each, double occupancy. From the "nonparticipant double occupancy rate" it looks like the actual tuition is about $700 for the six-day session. However, this is top-drawer. I know people who have done the Wisdom Course (the regular Wisdom Course, which is $2900 for six 3-day sessions (i.e, a little cheaper per session than the Forum), scattered around the world, and all of them say it was fantastic, and these are some special people, every one of them. Successful people. They have no difficulty affording it.These are not the "losers" whom some imagine as populating the Landmark programs. That would be the biggest misconception I'd examine, if I were investigating Landmark. Find out what people who do the work are actually like.It is not "secretive." You can meet these people. I've often gone to a certain Seminar, and there was commonly a Wisdom Course Leader there as a participant, I think he is one of the designers of the Course. A retired minister and psychotherapist, as I recall, and he has an amazing presence, he *looks* like Wisdom personified. The Seminar Leader called him out for hiding. And everyone laughed.Every Seminar night, there is an Introduction for guests. In Seminar session 7, the whole evening session is open for the guests, they don't go off to a separate room, and the Leader is then typically a Seminar Leader (i.e., a more advanced distinction than Introduction Leader).Cult? Double positive that is a negative: Yeah, right.