Server Development
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Joined: Tue Mar 25, 2014 6:47 pm
Fri Apr 10, 2015 5:45 pm
corp management post
The Technocrat
Creation, Cultivation, Management and Manipulation of EVE Organizations
by Praxis Astra
EVE is a game that rewards teamwork. Those who organize themselves more effectively than the opposition will almost always prevail. As a leader of an organization, you face extended campaigns on three fronts simultaneously. Within yourself, against members of your organization, and against leaders of other organizations. This guide presently addresses the struggle within yourself and with your members.
This guide is also written to act as an immunological agent. See the Neurotechnicon.
This guide is written with thanks to Sun Tzu author of The Art of War, Niccolo Machiavelli author of The Prince and Dale Carnegie author of How To Win Friends And Influence People and my mom.
Qualities necessary for leaderhip in the EVE MMO
1. Charisma.
2. Ability to delegate.
3. There are lots of others but if you have those two, they care of the rest.
The most important quality you need to be a leader is charisma. This is not something that can be taught, or even identified. Its the thing that makes people want to have you in charge. The species needs it. It is possible to lead without charisma just unlikely.
Delegation is essential. There's nothing more common than the one man show and nothing more fragile. This is the first big battle many leaders face. You have to stop being a control freak long enough to trust people to do their jobs. If you delegate, people will feel more a part of what you are trying to build. If you want a family or group of friends, you don't have to delegate much if any. If you want anything larger delegation is non negotiable.
Struggle against Yourself
You have to be clear on what being a leader of a real organization means. And your EVE organization has to be treated as exactly what it is if its going to have any chance of functioning well: a real organization even if it is organized for real people to engage in fantasy activities.
Being a leader on any large scale means that most of your EVE time will now be spent coordinating what other people are doing, talking with people in and out of your organization, and Keeping An Eye On Things In General. Obviously a tiny 3 man corp doesn't require so much of this. But the more leashes you hold the less else you get to do with your hands. If you just want to spend time playing your character. If analyzing the big picture, moving pieces around a board like players, and spending time in secret meetings does NOT make your heart beat faster then you probably won't be a very effective leader on a large scale.
Being the leader of an EVE corp or alliance is almost always thankless. You now have other players depending on you. That's real. The fantasy part is that we are warring or mining in space. Be clear on that and you have the potential to be an excellent leader who people remember long after they no longer play this MMO. Confuse yourself about that and you'll be a laughing stock.
The main single personal task a leader has is putting his ego to use for him. This is a task of extraordinary delicacy. Your raging ego is the thing that at least partly impels you to want to be a leader. Its also the thing that's most likely to cause you to lose your empire. This is in fact a homeostatic mechanism that works for the benefit of our social species, which is nice. What it means to you is that you are on a tightwire, fighting for your balance. You must be clear on this in order to enhance your chances of survival and success: as a leader the first and worst struggle against your rule that you must win is the struggle against your own weaknesses. (This is not the struggle what will necessarily help you gain your empire, but it is the one you must prevail in if you expect to keep your empire.)
This must be more than your philosophy, it must be your policy, your praxis.
Struggle against your own followers
The second struggle you must prevail in is the struggle against your own "followers." You must guide, entertain, intimidate and provide for them or they will not stay in your club much less follow your orders.
Whining is particularly repellent in a leader. Now people feel that one of their children is at the helm. They despise you and themselves for being led by such a self pitying weakling. The energy they must expend concealing this from themselves makes them loathe you all the more. Get used to the fact that none of your followers care. About you or your imperial ambitions. They are not impressed that you have slaved for hours over speadsheets or tedious diplomatic negotiations. They know that you didn't do it for them even if you don't. Your desire to see yourself as a fine fellow who should be richly repaid for his many acts of altruism just might not be the kind of self serving story that the rest of us need to sign on for.
Machiavelli in The Prince gave the ruler his two famous options: to be loved or feared. One suspects difficulties with translation rather than such a fundamental misapprehension on the part of the Master. As a leader one is always loved and feared. The question is one of degree, not absolute choice between the two. Why would any savvy ruler abandon the field and not engage both kinds of emotion in his followers? For us, in an MMO, the question is answered because everyone is a member out of choice. We must opt for love, primarily. But that does not mean that your followers don't need to also fear you. In fact most if not all of your followers want to fear you part of the time at least. they want to know they are being led by a creature larger than them, simply someone who can do more. Who has earned their authority by virtue of this, no matter what other dastardly things they owe their position to. Despite claims of wanting fairness and the rule of law the fact is that if you can demonstrate, or simulate, your "superiority" your followers will forgive you an astonishing range of crimes both real and imagined. You must make your own decision as to how you want to use this. And never ever forget that if you can convince them that your crimes have been committed at least partly for their benefit, it will soon be as if they had never happened at all.
You will be expected to commit certain kinds of crimes, keep certain things secret, and to be working for certain kinds of personal gain. But this too is a tightrope that is held taut by your followers themselves. You must recognize this as an element of the environment that you as a leader inhabit and must adapt to.
One of the best examples of this is the decisions you must make as a leader about which truths to tell your followers and which lies to tell them. Do not make the basic error common among those new to authority and think that the members of your organization always want the truth. Just think of your family. Like them, your followers are capable of tearing you limb from limb if you are not prepared to indulge them in certain of their favorite lies. Knowing when to tell the truth and when to lie is a necessity for RL leaders. Here, in the twilight fantasy world of the MMO/schoolyard/playground where the best of us are spending more time than we know regressing, sometimes to our benefit and sometimes not, this is doubly true. We are in the midst of a lie. If we do not share certain lies all the time its like squatting and laying a turd on the ballroom floor. The party's over, dude. It goes from any number can play to what kind of place are you running here...
In an EVE MMO, for your empire to grow as large as it possibly can, you are best advised to adopt the usual honor among thieves approach among the members of your organization, no matter what outrages you routinely commit on "outsiders."
The fantasy is that you are a dictator of a mighty or not so mighty empire. The reality is that you are the unpaid COO of a volunteer organization that operates online. Arranging "payment" for your services is a risky thing beyond certain pretty minimum minimums. People hate to hear the money they donate going to staff salaries. That's just the way it is. You can arrange "occult compensation" of you feel the need to but be careful with that, especially with the desire to bring other "staff" in on that kind of deal. That kind of thing players don't forgive.
By the time the peasants get to the palace with their pitchforks and torches, you should have already absconded to some safe haven, the crown jewels and as much of the treasury in an offshore bank account as you could manage.
Struggle against other leaders
The third struggle you must win to be an effective leader is the struggle against the leaders of other organizations.
This is beyond the scope of the current essay to address in depth. In one magnificent manoever we are sidestepping the whole thing by sending you to Sun Tzu. His book the Art of War is one of a kind.
In order for any EVE organization to function with any reasonable degree of autonomy, it will have to somehow make povision for the three areas of pvp that the game is structured to let us play.
Military PvP
Economic PvP
Spy PvP
Of the three, the only one an organization can possibly choose to do without is economic pvp. You and your members can just run your corp or alliance by buying PLEX. Then you can spend your time doing whatever it is you want to do without chasing ISK.
Of the three, the most likely to be ignored is spy pvp. Its secret and scary and tedious and you have to do really mean things to other players like betray them. Worse, just thinking about it disturbs the fantasy that everyone blue to me is one big happy family and only the outsiders to my tribe are wicked.
Of the three, military pvp is the most obvious and the easiest to specialize in considering the availability of ISK though mission running, Havens, Sanctums, etc.
This guide is being written with the strategy of playing an EVE organization using all three areas of PvP in mind be it a corp or an alliance.
How To Make An Effective EVE Organization
What is the single most important thing you can do to make your corporation work?
A CEO asked me this and I told him it was getting his members to get into a standing fleet. Six months later he came back to me and thanked me. He said it made the whole difference in a lot of other things. It made a lot of stuff happen that would not happen otherwise. I love finding things like that. Its like a lever and a fulcrum built into your organization.
Get your members into a standing fleet. Get them into the habit of starting one. Why more hi sec corps don't have them is a mystery. Why more nullsec corps don't focus more on getting their members into theirs is a mystery too. The benefits you get from every single member in your standing fleet are so disproportinate compared with the effort required. And its simple. Simple is good.
Make every effort to publicize the fleet.
Drop and drag the link to it in a corp wide email, and the corp chat room periodically.
Get people used to being invited into the fleet when they log on. You can even put someone in the fleet in charge of inviting new members.
Making Fleets
Do not include system or corp name to make easy for spies to locate your op.
Open Fleet to:
My Corporation/Alliance (If you want only your corp and/or alliance members to be able to join)
Standings: Excellent (If you want, for example, friends with standings of Excellent to your CORP or ALLIANCE to be able to join your fleet.)
ALWAYS check HIDE DETAILS in advert.
Choose free move.
Make 2 Wings and Max squads
Unless you are actively commanding, bossing, or boosting the fleet, leave the commander, boss, and fleet booster position empty in case you go AFK.
Horrible or Wonderful Either Way This Is True for an Effective EVE Corp
And now the hideous truth. The moment when you, as uneasy as Blackbeard's eighth wife, slip that key out of the drawer you aren't supposed to and unlock that door. I've been there. Its all going well. Too well. You and your new corp have gotten through the honeymoon but are still having sex almost every day. You're relaxing. its happening. Its just..... That door. You trust your new spouse, oh certainly beyond a shadow of a whisper of a 151 KM warp to point's worth of doubt you do trust your newly betrothed and beloved or why would you have married them in the first place. Its just.....
That door.
So you open the fracking thing and after you do you almost wish it was seven heads on spikes with yawning jaws and maggots in their eyes because what's there is so much worse what's there are...
Spreadsheets.
There is no escape from them. Once your corp or alliance gets beyond a certain point you will need them. It is hard to tell when that point is because something will eat away at you like the thought of the key does Blackbeard's bride. And when you finally realize what it is, you, like all of us, will find spreadsheets.
I recommend a complete and total capitulation before the vastly superior force of necessity. (Sometimes simple surrender serves you best my friend.) In order to do so, just open a google docs account. (I said I never would and I did.) You can assign access to documents including spreadsheets to your officers. The horror. The horror.
Laying the Foundation For An Organization
Know yourself:
Be real about what being in charge means. A lot of work. The bigger the corp, the more work it will be. If you are not ready to spend most or all of your EVE time coordinating, analyzing, moving other players on the board, emailing, and in meetings, you should not consider leadership of any kind in any organization over, say, 50 characters/25 players.
As leader of the pack you are the designated daddy figure. Goes with the turf. Surprising at how much that's the case even in a silly computer game.
You are also the entertainment director. This is a game. These people are here to be entertained. You lose sight of this at your own risk.
You will be the administer of discipline and justice, what need there is for these things in your group, unless you let someone else do this job.
You will be the diplomat in chief.
You will be the guy with the plan.
Know your corportion:
Goal
What is the goal of your corporation? Having one and working towards it are more important than it seems at the moment. Examples: "To form a nullsec alliance." Or "The highest rated merc corp in Caldari space." Or "Make huge amounts of ISK manufacturing ships and rigs." Oh, and when you are recruiting, this is the kind of thing that makes you at least look like something other than the usual crew of yahoos without a clue. Yeah, well having a plan just might distract them from not having a (ahem) clue.
Know Your Plan or Strategy
Basically a list of the major points of your strategy. Keep it simple. No more than, say, 5 things. Remember that anyone with half a brain who sees you with a grand list most of which you have no intention of doing will not think respectful thoughts about you as a result.
Example:
1. Training teams in gate camping strategies.
2. Raising money though hi jacking cargo, lowsec mission running, and ransoming.
3. Buying the blueprints for every Caldari ship up to battleship class.
5. Etc etc etc.
Know Your EVE Corporation
The EVE corporation is one of the most fun toys I've encountered as an adult that didn't require boiling after use. It has lots of things for CEOs and officers to play with. OK before you go any further, read the stuff at this link. All of it. No excuses. Even if you've already read it. This is the nuts and bolts stuff much of which we are not going to go into here because we assume you've the sense of an eleven year old and have already read what CCP has to say.
wiki.eveonline.com/en/wiki/Corporation_management_%28Guide%29
Corporate management skills
You need
Corporate Management Self Explanatory
Ethnic Relations (This is the worst explained skill in the EVE universe and after repeatedly reading descriptions of it I gave up trying to understand how it works) Get it to four. I think.
You can also hire someone to set up the corp for you (usually somewhere around 100 million ISK) and you don't have to learn anything other than corp management to one.
Managing The Alliance
Its the same thing but on a larger scale
wiki.eveonline.com/en/wiki/Alliance
Stock:
You as CEO need to get this out of the corp wallet and into yours. Do it now, Right now before you forget. Other than that? Forget about it. It can be used for all sorts of interesting things, yes. True. Not denying it. You proceed at your own risk.
Corporate Bulletins
One of the features of a corp that is almost always ignored in badly run corps and used carefully in well run corps. Your corp bulletins are one of the only things, besides your corp contacts list, that makes your corp your corp. These are the rules of your game. Of course they are not as important in a small corp as in a large corp, but the necessity of using them is there no matter what the size of your corp. Assume that literally 99 in 100 of your members will ignore any web site you have no matter what you put there. The rules of your corp, the list of your officers, resources of special interest to your members, all of that needs to be in your corp bulletins. You wind up saving yourself vast amounts of work and even conflict. Nobody can say that you are not telling them what they or you are responsible for. And you get respect from the players of the caliber who understand this stuff.
Bulletins Should always include:
1. Voice Server info, mailing lists, chat channels (including the intel channel)
2. List of who the officers are and what their areas of responsibility are.
3. The goals and strategy of the corporation.
4. Bases of operation, routes, where to go.
5. Rules and regulations are fleet regs, NRDS vs NBSI, penalties, how to sell the corp ore, how to buy stuff from the corp, ship replacement, required load outs. Don't forget to include any key stuff your alliance holds you to.
6. Resources such as Estel Arador or other corps or characters who provide services of interest to members, as well as links to them.
7. Ongoing projects, weekly ops, stuff that the corp needs the members to donate.
8. Thank You's to members and non members who have done good things including sites or corps you think should be donated to. That last might depend on your corp.
9. Postings for jobs.
10. Links to sites of special interest to your members.
11. LINKS to Corp and/or Alliance fits.
Corporate Emails and Email Lists
Corps run off of emails especially since people are online at such different times. Try to keep the emails to less rather than more. Cute and funny stuff gets old pretty quickly if there is a lot of stuff going on and people are actually having to read most of that crap in their inbox.
As a leader you should consider using emails to enhance your image. A few stylistic points, like always sending your mails in a certain color font or always taking the trouble to sign your name and title at the end can help you craft your image.
You will need email lists to run your corp. Anyone at the director level should be on every corp mailing list even if they only rarely check on a particular list.
Recommended lists:
Directors List--for the stuff you want to discuss only among the directors. Make this one restricted.
Managers List--for your directors and managers. The default list for all your management emails.
Other lists:
All Members List--built into every corp. Just type the name of your corp in.
Other mailing lists can be pretty specialized and large organizations like alliances will have restricted lists. Some should be set up with access limited to names that the manager inputs.
Chat Rooms
Corp Chat
This is going to be the basic means of communications for the 90% of your members who won't ever come on voice comms or send emails or even read their emails. OK smaller corps have a higher percentage of people in comms but when you can have a 100 member corp and only about 5-10 people ever get on voice comms. Not certain why, but there it is.
Corp chat is something management needs to pay relatively close attention to. A lot of drama that is too threatening to perform in voice comms goes on in corp chat. Spies watch your corp chat. Carefully. Emails too.
Other Chat Rooms
Public Channel
You will probably need a public channel for anyone to come in, for alts, etc. This may or may not include your diplomatic channel.
Intel Channel
For info about war targets etc. Possibly access to this should be restricted.
Channels as needed
If you can get out of being a CEO with just two new chat channels on your screen, good for you. There needs be no special officer channel. Officers should be in voice comms. Other channels besides the two above can all be as needed, and dissolved upon you all leaving.
Web Site
For most corps its better to put up a listing in the EVE forums. Hardly anyone but prospective members and a few compulsive readers will pay any attention to your web site. Most web sites aren't worth paying attention to. Unless you are willing to put the work into it that makes the thing worth paying attention to, you are better off putting up a listing in the EVE forums, and evelopedia and leaving it at that. Put what needs be said into your corp bulletins and get on with playing EVE.
Decorations
You as CEO will have to determine what significance your corp gives to decorations.
I would argue that these are one of the most potent tools we have available to us as leaders as long as they are handled in a certain way. Don't give them out as a joke unless it is very clear, even in the name of it that it is a joke. Don't sell them or give them out on a whim. You do have an option of making them a big deal. Make sure the entire corp gets an email congratulating the player who got the award. Talk about in corp chat and voice chat. As long as you aren't self important or silly about it, even the players who sneer will understand that this is a big deal to you at least and everyone, even your detractors, instinctively knows that this says good things about you as a leader. Be plain, clear, honest that you think the group should be grateful to the player you are awarding the thing to and you'll have people taking your silly little corp seriously before they even know they're doing it.
Meetings
A meeting is a leadership op.
Everyone says they hate them but these are one of the most effective and entertaining tools at your disposal. If you can't throw a good meeting, call it a party. Hand out awards, decorations, presents. Make speeches about how great people are. Stage fights/debates between members of the Board over critical issues facing your corp. Record them and put them on your website. Drama at meetings is excellent as long as its your drama. You know you're doing something right when people are listening to the playbacks of your meetings and promising themselves they're not going to miss the fun next time.
Voice Server
Not optional. If you're too shy to talk to someone who is thousands of miles away, you have no business running a group. If you're too incompetent to find the money for a microphone, I don't want to take orders from you even in a computer game. If you think you can run an effective group through a chat room please stop reading now and go away.
Voice Comms are so central to running an EvE group that its hard to overstate their importance. In an MMO your voice is the most real human presence you have and it is the vehicle through which the key political features of the game are played out. All those people who only type in chat rooms don't have the weight of ONE person in voice comms as far as the actual political workings of the groups we belong to are concerned. If you want to be a political presence get into comms, get your allies into comms and give your opponents every excuse they need to stay out of them.
Calendar
You don't need it but why not use it? Here silly stuff like people's birthdays etc is totally acceptable.
Recruiting Your Leadership Group
One of the biggest mistakes CEOs and busy Directors make is that they put off recruiting the new layer of management that the corp needs as it grows. Your job as CEO (and on a smaller scale, as Director) starts off as a list of stuff that have become your chores and territory. Giving it up can be threatening, especially if you are good at it. Often we think of the new managers as added work. And for a while they are. But if you choose the right people they do that stuff and your main job becomes managing them, and being backup when they can't. Don't make the mistake of thinking that people mind being managed. They only don't like it when you don't do it right.
Your Leadership Group
This topic deserves a guide of its own, as long or longer than this one.
The daily care feeding and grooming of your membership at large can be done by one or more of the designated management team but if you wish to continue in your job as being in fact CEO or Alliance Executor you'd better be the one taking care of your leadership group. You have to manage your managers. These people are essential to your group's survival. The person who does this job is in fact the leader of the group no matter what their title.
If you want these people to continue to donate their priceless time to you and your stupid group you'd better not take them for granted. That gets ignored only for so long. And then, usually, you wind up with an enemy. It won't matter that the only thing you were guilty of was feeding them all the rope they needed to hang themselves. That's all it takes.
You MUST make appreciating and caring for your managers and volunteers your first or one of your first priorities. You MUST. YOU MUST. No matter how busy you are. Let something else slide.
YOU MUST MAKE APPRECIATING AND MANAGEMENT OF YOUR MANAGERS AND VOLUNTEERS A TOP PRIORITY OR YOU WILL LOSE ALL OF THEM.
The talent and dedication you waste will just leave without a word. Except the ones who will be angry humiliated at having volunteered to be used and taken for granted. They will betray you, steal, rip things up on their way out. (The funny thing is that the angrier they are at you, usually the more loyal they were at the start. Isn't that funny?)
Your members will see this pattern, even if you don't. The better ones leave. More and more the people who volunteer will be looking to steal from you, since now they come to the job knowing they won't get anything for doing it except what they take.
Leaders who can't or don't manage at least their key people are not leaders. They're just playing at it. It is ironic. Here in this make believe MMO land the only thing nobody respects you for pretending to be is a leader.
Laws of Governing Bodies
Below are a good set of guidelines for your managers and directors. If you can find one of these that is not an absolute necessity given the actual conditions that prevail in the game please let me know. I'll publish a retraction and make sure you get the credit.
1. We keep the difference between fantasy and reality clear. We are not the rulers of a mighty empire. We are the "employees" of a non profit organization. All the people who take our orders are volunteers. When we issue our "commands" we'd better keep that in mind, and make it work for us every single step of the way.
2. We take the time to thank each other for our work.
Groups founder because the people who run them forget this kind of simple politeness. (This one is SUCH a good thing to overlook if you want to carefully lay the foundation for utterly unnecessary festering resentment within your management team.)
3. We take the time to critique each other's work.
I've seen volunteer organizations fall apart completely, and in the end, it turned out that it was more than anything because nobody felt they had the right to say anything to each other no matter how badly anyone was performing because they are all volunteers. Which is true. But if your volunteer isn't doing their job or doing a bad job they are worse than useless. That's also true.
4. Honor among Thieves.
Especially when we disagree. More then than ever in fact. If you can't handle confrontations with the people in your own corp like a businessman you have no place managing or leading anything other than toy soldiers. If you are a scoundrel bleeding "your" corp dry you already know you have to at least appear this way.
5. We understand that a lot if not most of our EVE time is going to be taken up by coordinating the efforts of other players.
If the idea of spending your time analyzing the Big Picture, scheming, issuing "orders," and moving pieces in and out of play on the game board does not make your heart beat faster, this definitely not the job for you.
6. Expert authority carries the day.
Even though EVE groups are structured as dictatorships with the CEO/Executor being able to kick anyone out or end the club itself, expert authority will be the actual means of decision making and implementation 9 times in 10. Just saying.
Know Your Members
Your members are ubernerds fleeing their responsibilities in RL more often than not. They will be more grateful to you than they know if you remove onerous responsibility from their shoulders. All the spreadsheet stuff I call it. The nagging little details. Math. Spreadsheets. Strategy. In fact every single detail of living in EVE but those that relate directly to playing their characters will be something they are eager to turn over to you. Very much the same way we surrender our autonomy in RL in return for services rendered.
EVE players tend towards introversion, at least when they're playing EVE. Almost 90 percent of them don't even need or want to ever talk to the people they are playing the game with. Few are interested in their corporation aside from the details necessary to play their own character. Even fewer are interested in their alliance if they even belong to one. It is very important to the leaders of EVE organizations that they not lose sight of this.
It is your task to create reasons for them to care. Reasons for them to actually have an opinion about you one way or the other that would lead them to lift a finger on your behalf are something that you you you must provide and you'd better like doing it or you are going to suck at being a leader of a volunteer organization.
These people are here to be entertained. They are here to follow the path of least resistance. They are here to live out their fantasies. If you can provide them with an environment in which to do these things you will have what loyalty they have to offer a voice in a headphone. How much you and the scene you offer become more than that to these people is entirely up to you.
All that girly stuff that (let's keep a straight face now) men don't need like paying attention to people's feelings and sense of community and all that hearts and flowers stuff that is just simply supposed to not exist when the chicks aren't around is the key to all that power. If you are too much a sissy to go near that stuff your organization will fail and you will be an object of ridicule. If you are man enough to take that into account when you deal with other men they will die for you. And that's in RL. All you might get in EVE is that they show up to a CTA or two that they otherwise wouldn't, but you know, that just might be all you need.
MEMBER ORIENTATIONS
Extremely simple. You check the member list and anyone online who has joined in the last 2-5 days, you chat with them, make sure they have read the corp AND alliance bulletins. and get 'em on comms.
New Member Intake:
I will email you with someone's API info.
You have to
ONE: run the API numbers trough evemon or evehq to check skills, balance, alts, etc. we only accept full API
To Check their info in detail use this site.
games.chruker.dk/eve_online/test_eve_api.php
TWO: Interview in the TS3 server.
Making a formidable media presence:
Even a new corp can be made to seem like a towering institution in the game with the right media presence. What comes up when someone does a search on your corp's name does make a difference. Of course the unbeatable combination is ingame excellence and a media/marketing presence.
1. Forum post BUMPED 1X A DAY AND NO MORE about the corp. I include links to dotlan and EVElopedia in ALL my corp recrutiment posts.
2. EVElopedia page set up using the corp template and including the corp logo.
3. EVElopedia page for the CEO using the character template and including portrait. (other officers too, but CEO is a necessity)
4. Well thought out Corp Description including the goal(s) of your corp, officers, public channel. THIS is what people see in dotlan and all those other sites to judge you by.
5. Ingame ads. the three maximum with recruiters and a public channel.
6. Posting in recruitment areas in battlenet and other gaming sites.
7. Targeted ingame office rental in hi traffic systems so you show up on the rentors list. (Also where you corp description pays off.)
8. ACTIVE posts by the CEO and members in the EVE forums about the areas the corp specializes in.
9. Recruitment of suitable individual players who post in the corp recruitment area of the EVE forums.
10. Website, either your own or your alliances.
11. Public channel that is stocked with as many members as possible.
To Do Lists for Corps, Alliances, Officers
Corp as a whole:
1. Minimum of one (1) daily mining op. Ore and/or ice.
2. Minimum of one (1) Daily ratting PLEXing fleet
3. Minimum of one (1) Daily PvP fleet.
Individuals In Corp (managers etc)
1. Start standing fleets according to corp specs.
2. Morning systemwide scandown for wormholes, grav and other sites. Make the bookmarks available in a jet can etc.
3. Check web site.
4. Update bulletins, mailing lists.
5. Security protocols--daily.
6. Check corp wallet, contracts, mailing lists.
7. Check applications.
8. Update calendar.
9. New member orientations.
10. Payouts and reports for ops.
11. POS maintenance.
12. Moon Mining: Reactions mixing, hauling.
13. Recruitment and intake.
14. Diplomatic chores meetings etc.
15. Reports to the corp as a whole and each other as wo what we are doing and why.
16. Updating Corp Bulletins
17. Updating Website
18. Emails
When Promoting a member the following should be done.
1. ACCESSES
2. Add to necessary chats and mailing lists
3. Add link/name in bulletins, ads, emails, chat room notices.
4. Make sure they have a new title that shows up in their info window.
5. Send the entire corp an announcement.
6. Send the new officer a private email with accesses etc and congragulating them.
Titles: Titles are important. Even to the people who say they aren't. CEOs and Directors have the option of bestowing a custom title on anyone in the corp. This is right up there with awards. I've managed to come up with titles that delighted people in the past:
Clown Faced Madman-In-Chief
Teratogen-In-Chief
Machiavellianaut
Departments
Personnel Department
Communications
Responsible for the pipeline--moving people from chat room to the voice server. Oversees all chat rooms. Teacher/tutor. Updates CR log in messages. Acts as networker and introducer for people in all chats. Puts random interesting links and info in the chats. Gets conversations started in voice comms when people are silent. New member orientations.
Personnel
Oversees recruitment of new members and orientation of new members and makes sure people are connecting to fleets and Missions and other groups that would help them. Teacher/tutor.
GET PEOPLE INTO COMMS: If you got one person into comms a day who has not been yet, you will make me and the entire board very very happy.
Keep an eye on all corp chat rooms.
Management Stages
There are three stages of management in general.
Manager trainee
We find out if they are actually interested in being a manager and how well you do the job.
NO ACCESSES One month trial period. This could be longer if trainee is not very active.
Full Manager
Accesses: Communications officer, Contract Manager, Fitting Manager
+ other Accesses as per the Director and Department
Senior Manager
Gets much more sensitive accesses but not director level
All the accesses of a Full Manager plus those specific to department(s). And custom accesses should be possible.
Example Management Job Descriptions
Mining Manager: Leads and organizes mining fleets oversees payout logs for the fleet. Responsible for delivering loot log info to the VP and CEO and delivery of ore to the proper hangar. Teacher/tutor. Puts ops on Corp Calendar
Personnel Manager: Oversees recruitment of new members and orientation of new members and makes sure people are connecting to fleets and Missions and other groups that would help them. Teacher/tutor.
Mission Running Manager Oversees mission running. Coordinates delivery of salvage to agreed on delivery points for the corp. Teacher/tutor.
Communications Manager: Responsible for the pipeline--moving people from chat room to the voice server. Oversees all chat rooms. Teacher/tutor. Updates CR log in messages. Acts as networker and introducer for people in all chats. Puts random interesting links and info in the chats. New member orientations.
Fleet Mamager: Oversees the operations of the PvP division including training. Also mission running for the PvP folks. Corp Access: add and deltet corp fits, add and remove Ships and Equipment from the station you are headquartered at, and schedule events on the corp calendar, query donations div at HQ
Planetary Manager Coordinates all planetary interaction among members including delivery of products to agreed on delivery points. Teacher/tutor.
Trade Manager: Central clearninghouse for trade information for the corp. Manages trade ops. Coordinates Corp Market Warfare Teacher/tutor.
Moon Mining Manager: Designs Reaction production, POS Fueling, POS security.
Making A Standing Fleet
Making Fleets
Do not include system or corp name to make easy for spies to locate your op.
Open Fleet to:
My Corporation/Alliance
ALWAYS check HIDE DETAILS in advert.
We do not check any box that has the word “Standing”
Choose free move. Make max squads and 2 wings. Unless you are actively commanding the fleet, leave the commander position empty in case you go AFK.
CORPORATE BULLETINS I HAVE USED IN THE PAST
Bulletin 1: your basic member orientation
Welcome New Members: This is How You Do It
1. You really do need to get into the voice server. We use Teamspeak 3, information on how to join is below
VOICE SERVER INFO HERE
2. The following are the intel channel and other chat channels you are either required to join or have the option to join.
CHAT CHANNELS HERE
3. Register for the forums on our website
YOUR URL HERE
4. Fleet Finder on the fleet button on the left side of your screen to find where your new corp mates are fleeted up for diffferent projects.
5. Calendar, on the bottom left corner of the screen, is where you find scheduled events
6. Here's where we are and how you will get to us:
LOGISTICS INSTRUCTIONS HERE
7. Study the Standing Orders for both war and peacetime. They are here in the corp bulletins.
8. Ask Questions. Here are some of the people whose job it is to answer them:
ROSTER OF OFFICERS HERE
War Time Standing Orders
We put local chat in its on spot onscreen and use it to detect red icon enemies before undocking, upon entering systems etc.
We set up our watch lists. Watch for the list of enemy players in your corp email.
We use our directional scanners.
wiki.eveonline.com/en/wiki/Directional_Scanner_guide
We do not talk to the aggressors at any time for any reason. Only corp diplomats do this.
Indy players dock as soon as we see them. When mining you keep yourself aligned to a station, safe spot, etc.
We stay mobile The aggressors can use locator agents to locate you if they have your name.
When in groups we stay in voice contact using EVE audio or Fleet audio or our voice server.
We use safe spots when we undock or travel. If you do not know how to make safe spots now is the time to learn.
wiki.eveonline.com/en/wiki/Safe_spot
We have our overview tabs set up to include a WAR tab set for enemy ships only.
wiki.eveonline.com/en/wiki/Overview_scanner
We do not fly ships we cannot afford to lose.
We do NOT use autopilot.
We move necessary supplies and ships to a secondary base outside of HQ system.
We make sure our clones and insurance policies on our ships are up to date.
We have our jump clones up and ready through Estel Arador Corp Services or mission running.
wiki.eveonline.com/en/wiki/Jump_clone
We assume there are spies in all chat channels and voice comms and are careful about what we say especially in public chats.
We post any intel on the war targets in the intel channel(s).
Indy players don't undock with reds in the system.
We check emails and intel chats for updates when we log on.
We log off while undocked if we want to avoid being ambushed when undocking.
Bulletin for Stuff You Should Know About
Estel Arador Corp Services
If you want Jump Clones but Don't want to run all those missions
If you want hi sec jump clones without having to run missions to get a standing of 8 this is how you do it:
You have to train up informorph psychology. You get 1 jump clone per skill level of informorth psychology
You join the corp, set up your jump clones, and rejoin the Uinversity. They will not want you to be a member for long, as that would interfere with them maintainging their high standings. Just put in your re application that you left to get your jump clones and you will be welcomed back.
Read their corp description for a more detailed account of the process. And don't forget to make a donation. This service is saving you many hours and ISK.
You will need to do this before you go to nullsec because once you go to nullsec you can't change corp without losing blue status to your alliance. Leave at least one jump clone in hi sec so you can jump back and forth from null. In nullsec you can place jump clones without mission running anywhere in your alliance because you automatically have the standings to do so.
Please tell them we sent you!
THIS SHOULD BE A LINK TO THE CORPORATION: Estel Arador Corp Services
Bulletin for Fitz VonHeis
People think I'm joking when I say this is the only link you ever need to play EVE but this guy has listings of links in the forums that you never even thought of much less heard of. If there's an entire site devoted to salvage, he's got it there.
Some Plans, Programs, Ideas, and Guesses
Plan To Motivate people to come to CTAs
1. Attendance MUST be tracked very accurately for anything to have any chance of working.
2. We will use both the carrot and the stick.
3. We want to track attendance for security reasons too.
4. We also need to educate our members about how alliance finances and politics run giving them the big pcture of why they are needed. More about this in part B
CARROT
Alliance Decorations: WE WILL MAKE A BIG DEAL ABOUT THEM.
A. Presented at monthly alliance-wide meeting.
B. Alliance wide email notice.
C. PUBLICISED IN EVE FORUMS
D. These will come with awards of ISK, faction ships, implants etc.
E. Roster in Alliance Bulletins
F. Hall of Fame on Web Site.
G. Press Release to Evenews24
H. Alliance Decorations Director/Manager -- Job is to investigate, publicise and present awards.
I. Alliance pays Corps for alliance decorations.
J. Awardees entitled to certain title while they are member of TCU.
K. The MEN OF WAR Muster: A list, published on the website after each combat, of everyone who made it to the CTA. FROM THIS WE PUBLISH A LIST OF HIGHEST RANKED ATTENDEES. We want people chasing that elusive 100 percent. WE WANT TO MAKE THE 100 PERCENT MAN A HERO A LEGEND SOMETHING EVERYONE WANTS TO BE.
Examples of how to earn Decorations
Attend 5 CTAs
Attend 10 CTAs
Attend 50 CTAs
Attend 100 CTAs
Above and Beyond Call of Duty
Logistics Award
Leadership Skills Award
FC Awards
Victory Awards-very rare for all those present at historic battle
One Highest Honor Award
MONTHLY AWARD FOR HIGHEST ATTENDEES OF CTAS with bigggest rewards attached.
STICK
A. Monthly the names of the people who are not attending are sent to their CEOs.
B. Their own CEO or appropriate director contacts them and interviews them as to why they are not attending.
C. RL considerations can earn dispensations of course.
D. Publish a monthly "Not-Even-Weekend-Warriors" List of the people who have not given notice they need deferrment and have not shown up for CTAs. Mirror Image of the List of Honor.
E. Every month pick the worst offenders and thow them out of the alliance.
F. This should be publicised in an alliance wide email but that's all.
Link to an interesting guide on leadership in EVE orgs
http://www.tentonhammer.com/eve/guides/ ... ou_are_ceo
What is the single most important thing you can do to make your corporation work
1. Standing Fleet. Get your members into a standing fleet. Get them into the habit of starting one. Why hi sec corps don't have them is a mystery.
THE TECHNOCRAT CONTINUED
An Example of An Alliance Charter: The Stealth Syndicate Charter link to below
http://www.heartsandmindsalliance.org/i ... Itemid=232
Creation, Cultivation, Management and Manipulation of EVE Organizations
by Praxis Astra
EVE is a game that rewards teamwork. Those who organize themselves more effectively than the opposition will almost always prevail. As a leader of an organization, you face extended campaigns on three fronts simultaneously. Within yourself, against members of your organization, and against leaders of other organizations. This guide presently addresses the struggle within yourself and with your members.
This guide is also written to act as an immunological agent. See the Neurotechnicon.
This guide is written with thanks to Sun Tzu author of The Art of War, Niccolo Machiavelli author of The Prince and Dale Carnegie author of How To Win Friends And Influence People and my mom.
Qualities necessary for leaderhip in the EVE MMO
1. Charisma.
2. Ability to delegate.
3. There are lots of others but if you have those two, they care of the rest.
The most important quality you need to be a leader is charisma. This is not something that can be taught, or even identified. Its the thing that makes people want to have you in charge. The species needs it. It is possible to lead without charisma just unlikely.
Delegation is essential. There's nothing more common than the one man show and nothing more fragile. This is the first big battle many leaders face. You have to stop being a control freak long enough to trust people to do their jobs. If you delegate, people will feel more a part of what you are trying to build. If you want a family or group of friends, you don't have to delegate much if any. If you want anything larger delegation is non negotiable.
Struggle against Yourself
You have to be clear on what being a leader of a real organization means. And your EVE organization has to be treated as exactly what it is if its going to have any chance of functioning well: a real organization even if it is organized for real people to engage in fantasy activities.
Being a leader on any large scale means that most of your EVE time will now be spent coordinating what other people are doing, talking with people in and out of your organization, and Keeping An Eye On Things In General. Obviously a tiny 3 man corp doesn't require so much of this. But the more leashes you hold the less else you get to do with your hands. If you just want to spend time playing your character. If analyzing the big picture, moving pieces around a board like players, and spending time in secret meetings does NOT make your heart beat faster then you probably won't be a very effective leader on a large scale.
Being the leader of an EVE corp or alliance is almost always thankless. You now have other players depending on you. That's real. The fantasy part is that we are warring or mining in space. Be clear on that and you have the potential to be an excellent leader who people remember long after they no longer play this MMO. Confuse yourself about that and you'll be a laughing stock.
The main single personal task a leader has is putting his ego to use for him. This is a task of extraordinary delicacy. Your raging ego is the thing that at least partly impels you to want to be a leader. Its also the thing that's most likely to cause you to lose your empire. This is in fact a homeostatic mechanism that works for the benefit of our social species, which is nice. What it means to you is that you are on a tightwire, fighting for your balance. You must be clear on this in order to enhance your chances of survival and success: as a leader the first and worst struggle against your rule that you must win is the struggle against your own weaknesses. (This is not the struggle what will necessarily help you gain your empire, but it is the one you must prevail in if you expect to keep your empire.)
This must be more than your philosophy, it must be your policy, your praxis.
Struggle against your own followers
The second struggle you must prevail in is the struggle against your own "followers." You must guide, entertain, intimidate and provide for them or they will not stay in your club much less follow your orders.
Whining is particularly repellent in a leader. Now people feel that one of their children is at the helm. They despise you and themselves for being led by such a self pitying weakling. The energy they must expend concealing this from themselves makes them loathe you all the more. Get used to the fact that none of your followers care. About you or your imperial ambitions. They are not impressed that you have slaved for hours over speadsheets or tedious diplomatic negotiations. They know that you didn't do it for them even if you don't. Your desire to see yourself as a fine fellow who should be richly repaid for his many acts of altruism just might not be the kind of self serving story that the rest of us need to sign on for.
Machiavelli in The Prince gave the ruler his two famous options: to be loved or feared. One suspects difficulties with translation rather than such a fundamental misapprehension on the part of the Master. As a leader one is always loved and feared. The question is one of degree, not absolute choice between the two. Why would any savvy ruler abandon the field and not engage both kinds of emotion in his followers? For us, in an MMO, the question is answered because everyone is a member out of choice. We must opt for love, primarily. But that does not mean that your followers don't need to also fear you. In fact most if not all of your followers want to fear you part of the time at least. they want to know they are being led by a creature larger than them, simply someone who can do more. Who has earned their authority by virtue of this, no matter what other dastardly things they owe their position to. Despite claims of wanting fairness and the rule of law the fact is that if you can demonstrate, or simulate, your "superiority" your followers will forgive you an astonishing range of crimes both real and imagined. You must make your own decision as to how you want to use this. And never ever forget that if you can convince them that your crimes have been committed at least partly for their benefit, it will soon be as if they had never happened at all.
You will be expected to commit certain kinds of crimes, keep certain things secret, and to be working for certain kinds of personal gain. But this too is a tightrope that is held taut by your followers themselves. You must recognize this as an element of the environment that you as a leader inhabit and must adapt to.
One of the best examples of this is the decisions you must make as a leader about which truths to tell your followers and which lies to tell them. Do not make the basic error common among those new to authority and think that the members of your organization always want the truth. Just think of your family. Like them, your followers are capable of tearing you limb from limb if you are not prepared to indulge them in certain of their favorite lies. Knowing when to tell the truth and when to lie is a necessity for RL leaders. Here, in the twilight fantasy world of the MMO/schoolyard/playground where the best of us are spending more time than we know regressing, sometimes to our benefit and sometimes not, this is doubly true. We are in the midst of a lie. If we do not share certain lies all the time its like squatting and laying a turd on the ballroom floor. The party's over, dude. It goes from any number can play to what kind of place are you running here...
In an EVE MMO, for your empire to grow as large as it possibly can, you are best advised to adopt the usual honor among thieves approach among the members of your organization, no matter what outrages you routinely commit on "outsiders."
The fantasy is that you are a dictator of a mighty or not so mighty empire. The reality is that you are the unpaid COO of a volunteer organization that operates online. Arranging "payment" for your services is a risky thing beyond certain pretty minimum minimums. People hate to hear the money they donate going to staff salaries. That's just the way it is. You can arrange "occult compensation" of you feel the need to but be careful with that, especially with the desire to bring other "staff" in on that kind of deal. That kind of thing players don't forgive.
By the time the peasants get to the palace with their pitchforks and torches, you should have already absconded to some safe haven, the crown jewels and as much of the treasury in an offshore bank account as you could manage.
Struggle against other leaders
The third struggle you must win to be an effective leader is the struggle against the leaders of other organizations.
This is beyond the scope of the current essay to address in depth. In one magnificent manoever we are sidestepping the whole thing by sending you to Sun Tzu. His book the Art of War is one of a kind.
In order for any EVE organization to function with any reasonable degree of autonomy, it will have to somehow make povision for the three areas of pvp that the game is structured to let us play.
Military PvP
Economic PvP
Spy PvP
Of the three, the only one an organization can possibly choose to do without is economic pvp. You and your members can just run your corp or alliance by buying PLEX. Then you can spend your time doing whatever it is you want to do without chasing ISK.
Of the three, the most likely to be ignored is spy pvp. Its secret and scary and tedious and you have to do really mean things to other players like betray them. Worse, just thinking about it disturbs the fantasy that everyone blue to me is one big happy family and only the outsiders to my tribe are wicked.
Of the three, military pvp is the most obvious and the easiest to specialize in considering the availability of ISK though mission running, Havens, Sanctums, etc.
This guide is being written with the strategy of playing an EVE organization using all three areas of PvP in mind be it a corp or an alliance.
How To Make An Effective EVE Organization
What is the single most important thing you can do to make your corporation work?
A CEO asked me this and I told him it was getting his members to get into a standing fleet. Six months later he came back to me and thanked me. He said it made the whole difference in a lot of other things. It made a lot of stuff happen that would not happen otherwise. I love finding things like that. Its like a lever and a fulcrum built into your organization.
Get your members into a standing fleet. Get them into the habit of starting one. Why more hi sec corps don't have them is a mystery. Why more nullsec corps don't focus more on getting their members into theirs is a mystery too. The benefits you get from every single member in your standing fleet are so disproportinate compared with the effort required. And its simple. Simple is good.
Make every effort to publicize the fleet.
Drop and drag the link to it in a corp wide email, and the corp chat room periodically.
Get people used to being invited into the fleet when they log on. You can even put someone in the fleet in charge of inviting new members.
Making Fleets
Do not include system or corp name to make easy for spies to locate your op.
Open Fleet to:
My Corporation/Alliance (If you want only your corp and/or alliance members to be able to join)
Standings: Excellent (If you want, for example, friends with standings of Excellent to your CORP or ALLIANCE to be able to join your fleet.)
ALWAYS check HIDE DETAILS in advert.
Choose free move.
Make 2 Wings and Max squads
Unless you are actively commanding, bossing, or boosting the fleet, leave the commander, boss, and fleet booster position empty in case you go AFK.
Horrible or Wonderful Either Way This Is True for an Effective EVE Corp
And now the hideous truth. The moment when you, as uneasy as Blackbeard's eighth wife, slip that key out of the drawer you aren't supposed to and unlock that door. I've been there. Its all going well. Too well. You and your new corp have gotten through the honeymoon but are still having sex almost every day. You're relaxing. its happening. Its just..... That door. You trust your new spouse, oh certainly beyond a shadow of a whisper of a 151 KM warp to point's worth of doubt you do trust your newly betrothed and beloved or why would you have married them in the first place. Its just.....
That door.
So you open the fracking thing and after you do you almost wish it was seven heads on spikes with yawning jaws and maggots in their eyes because what's there is so much worse what's there are...
Spreadsheets.
There is no escape from them. Once your corp or alliance gets beyond a certain point you will need them. It is hard to tell when that point is because something will eat away at you like the thought of the key does Blackbeard's bride. And when you finally realize what it is, you, like all of us, will find spreadsheets.
I recommend a complete and total capitulation before the vastly superior force of necessity. (Sometimes simple surrender serves you best my friend.) In order to do so, just open a google docs account. (I said I never would and I did.) You can assign access to documents including spreadsheets to your officers. The horror. The horror.
Laying the Foundation For An Organization
Know yourself:
Be real about what being in charge means. A lot of work. The bigger the corp, the more work it will be. If you are not ready to spend most or all of your EVE time coordinating, analyzing, moving other players on the board, emailing, and in meetings, you should not consider leadership of any kind in any organization over, say, 50 characters/25 players.
As leader of the pack you are the designated daddy figure. Goes with the turf. Surprising at how much that's the case even in a silly computer game.
You are also the entertainment director. This is a game. These people are here to be entertained. You lose sight of this at your own risk.
You will be the administer of discipline and justice, what need there is for these things in your group, unless you let someone else do this job.
You will be the diplomat in chief.
You will be the guy with the plan.
Know your corportion:
Goal
What is the goal of your corporation? Having one and working towards it are more important than it seems at the moment. Examples: "To form a nullsec alliance." Or "The highest rated merc corp in Caldari space." Or "Make huge amounts of ISK manufacturing ships and rigs." Oh, and when you are recruiting, this is the kind of thing that makes you at least look like something other than the usual crew of yahoos without a clue. Yeah, well having a plan just might distract them from not having a (ahem) clue.
Know Your Plan or Strategy
Basically a list of the major points of your strategy. Keep it simple. No more than, say, 5 things. Remember that anyone with half a brain who sees you with a grand list most of which you have no intention of doing will not think respectful thoughts about you as a result.
Example:
1. Training teams in gate camping strategies.
2. Raising money though hi jacking cargo, lowsec mission running, and ransoming.
3. Buying the blueprints for every Caldari ship up to battleship class.
5. Etc etc etc.
Know Your EVE Corporation
The EVE corporation is one of the most fun toys I've encountered as an adult that didn't require boiling after use. It has lots of things for CEOs and officers to play with. OK before you go any further, read the stuff at this link. All of it. No excuses. Even if you've already read it. This is the nuts and bolts stuff much of which we are not going to go into here because we assume you've the sense of an eleven year old and have already read what CCP has to say.
wiki.eveonline.com/en/wiki/Corporation_management_%28Guide%29
Corporate management skills
You need
Corporate Management Self Explanatory
Ethnic Relations (This is the worst explained skill in the EVE universe and after repeatedly reading descriptions of it I gave up trying to understand how it works) Get it to four. I think.
You can also hire someone to set up the corp for you (usually somewhere around 100 million ISK) and you don't have to learn anything other than corp management to one.
Managing The Alliance
Its the same thing but on a larger scale
wiki.eveonline.com/en/wiki/Alliance
Stock:
You as CEO need to get this out of the corp wallet and into yours. Do it now, Right now before you forget. Other than that? Forget about it. It can be used for all sorts of interesting things, yes. True. Not denying it. You proceed at your own risk.
Corporate Bulletins
One of the features of a corp that is almost always ignored in badly run corps and used carefully in well run corps. Your corp bulletins are one of the only things, besides your corp contacts list, that makes your corp your corp. These are the rules of your game. Of course they are not as important in a small corp as in a large corp, but the necessity of using them is there no matter what the size of your corp. Assume that literally 99 in 100 of your members will ignore any web site you have no matter what you put there. The rules of your corp, the list of your officers, resources of special interest to your members, all of that needs to be in your corp bulletins. You wind up saving yourself vast amounts of work and even conflict. Nobody can say that you are not telling them what they or you are responsible for. And you get respect from the players of the caliber who understand this stuff.
Bulletins Should always include:
1. Voice Server info, mailing lists, chat channels (including the intel channel)
2. List of who the officers are and what their areas of responsibility are.
3. The goals and strategy of the corporation.
4. Bases of operation, routes, where to go.
5. Rules and regulations are fleet regs, NRDS vs NBSI, penalties, how to sell the corp ore, how to buy stuff from the corp, ship replacement, required load outs. Don't forget to include any key stuff your alliance holds you to.
6. Resources such as Estel Arador or other corps or characters who provide services of interest to members, as well as links to them.
7. Ongoing projects, weekly ops, stuff that the corp needs the members to donate.
8. Thank You's to members and non members who have done good things including sites or corps you think should be donated to. That last might depend on your corp.
9. Postings for jobs.
10. Links to sites of special interest to your members.
11. LINKS to Corp and/or Alliance fits.
Corporate Emails and Email Lists
Corps run off of emails especially since people are online at such different times. Try to keep the emails to less rather than more. Cute and funny stuff gets old pretty quickly if there is a lot of stuff going on and people are actually having to read most of that crap in their inbox.
As a leader you should consider using emails to enhance your image. A few stylistic points, like always sending your mails in a certain color font or always taking the trouble to sign your name and title at the end can help you craft your image.
You will need email lists to run your corp. Anyone at the director level should be on every corp mailing list even if they only rarely check on a particular list.
Recommended lists:
Directors List--for the stuff you want to discuss only among the directors. Make this one restricted.
Managers List--for your directors and managers. The default list for all your management emails.
Other lists:
All Members List--built into every corp. Just type the name of your corp in.
Other mailing lists can be pretty specialized and large organizations like alliances will have restricted lists. Some should be set up with access limited to names that the manager inputs.
Chat Rooms
Corp Chat
This is going to be the basic means of communications for the 90% of your members who won't ever come on voice comms or send emails or even read their emails. OK smaller corps have a higher percentage of people in comms but when you can have a 100 member corp and only about 5-10 people ever get on voice comms. Not certain why, but there it is.
Corp chat is something management needs to pay relatively close attention to. A lot of drama that is too threatening to perform in voice comms goes on in corp chat. Spies watch your corp chat. Carefully. Emails too.
Other Chat Rooms
Public Channel
You will probably need a public channel for anyone to come in, for alts, etc. This may or may not include your diplomatic channel.
Intel Channel
For info about war targets etc. Possibly access to this should be restricted.
Channels as needed
If you can get out of being a CEO with just two new chat channels on your screen, good for you. There needs be no special officer channel. Officers should be in voice comms. Other channels besides the two above can all be as needed, and dissolved upon you all leaving.
Web Site
For most corps its better to put up a listing in the EVE forums. Hardly anyone but prospective members and a few compulsive readers will pay any attention to your web site. Most web sites aren't worth paying attention to. Unless you are willing to put the work into it that makes the thing worth paying attention to, you are better off putting up a listing in the EVE forums, and evelopedia and leaving it at that. Put what needs be said into your corp bulletins and get on with playing EVE.
Decorations
You as CEO will have to determine what significance your corp gives to decorations.
I would argue that these are one of the most potent tools we have available to us as leaders as long as they are handled in a certain way. Don't give them out as a joke unless it is very clear, even in the name of it that it is a joke. Don't sell them or give them out on a whim. You do have an option of making them a big deal. Make sure the entire corp gets an email congratulating the player who got the award. Talk about in corp chat and voice chat. As long as you aren't self important or silly about it, even the players who sneer will understand that this is a big deal to you at least and everyone, even your detractors, instinctively knows that this says good things about you as a leader. Be plain, clear, honest that you think the group should be grateful to the player you are awarding the thing to and you'll have people taking your silly little corp seriously before they even know they're doing it.
Meetings
A meeting is a leadership op.
Everyone says they hate them but these are one of the most effective and entertaining tools at your disposal. If you can't throw a good meeting, call it a party. Hand out awards, decorations, presents. Make speeches about how great people are. Stage fights/debates between members of the Board over critical issues facing your corp. Record them and put them on your website. Drama at meetings is excellent as long as its your drama. You know you're doing something right when people are listening to the playbacks of your meetings and promising themselves they're not going to miss the fun next time.
Voice Server
Not optional. If you're too shy to talk to someone who is thousands of miles away, you have no business running a group. If you're too incompetent to find the money for a microphone, I don't want to take orders from you even in a computer game. If you think you can run an effective group through a chat room please stop reading now and go away.
Voice Comms are so central to running an EvE group that its hard to overstate their importance. In an MMO your voice is the most real human presence you have and it is the vehicle through which the key political features of the game are played out. All those people who only type in chat rooms don't have the weight of ONE person in voice comms as far as the actual political workings of the groups we belong to are concerned. If you want to be a political presence get into comms, get your allies into comms and give your opponents every excuse they need to stay out of them.
Calendar
You don't need it but why not use it? Here silly stuff like people's birthdays etc is totally acceptable.
Recruiting Your Leadership Group
One of the biggest mistakes CEOs and busy Directors make is that they put off recruiting the new layer of management that the corp needs as it grows. Your job as CEO (and on a smaller scale, as Director) starts off as a list of stuff that have become your chores and territory. Giving it up can be threatening, especially if you are good at it. Often we think of the new managers as added work. And for a while they are. But if you choose the right people they do that stuff and your main job becomes managing them, and being backup when they can't. Don't make the mistake of thinking that people mind being managed. They only don't like it when you don't do it right.
Your Leadership Group
This topic deserves a guide of its own, as long or longer than this one.
The daily care feeding and grooming of your membership at large can be done by one or more of the designated management team but if you wish to continue in your job as being in fact CEO or Alliance Executor you'd better be the one taking care of your leadership group. You have to manage your managers. These people are essential to your group's survival. The person who does this job is in fact the leader of the group no matter what their title.
If you want these people to continue to donate their priceless time to you and your stupid group you'd better not take them for granted. That gets ignored only for so long. And then, usually, you wind up with an enemy. It won't matter that the only thing you were guilty of was feeding them all the rope they needed to hang themselves. That's all it takes.
You MUST make appreciating and caring for your managers and volunteers your first or one of your first priorities. You MUST. YOU MUST. No matter how busy you are. Let something else slide.
YOU MUST MAKE APPRECIATING AND MANAGEMENT OF YOUR MANAGERS AND VOLUNTEERS A TOP PRIORITY OR YOU WILL LOSE ALL OF THEM.
The talent and dedication you waste will just leave without a word. Except the ones who will be angry humiliated at having volunteered to be used and taken for granted. They will betray you, steal, rip things up on their way out. (The funny thing is that the angrier they are at you, usually the more loyal they were at the start. Isn't that funny?)
Your members will see this pattern, even if you don't. The better ones leave. More and more the people who volunteer will be looking to steal from you, since now they come to the job knowing they won't get anything for doing it except what they take.
Leaders who can't or don't manage at least their key people are not leaders. They're just playing at it. It is ironic. Here in this make believe MMO land the only thing nobody respects you for pretending to be is a leader.
Laws of Governing Bodies
Below are a good set of guidelines for your managers and directors. If you can find one of these that is not an absolute necessity given the actual conditions that prevail in the game please let me know. I'll publish a retraction and make sure you get the credit.
1. We keep the difference between fantasy and reality clear. We are not the rulers of a mighty empire. We are the "employees" of a non profit organization. All the people who take our orders are volunteers. When we issue our "commands" we'd better keep that in mind, and make it work for us every single step of the way.
2. We take the time to thank each other for our work.
Groups founder because the people who run them forget this kind of simple politeness. (This one is SUCH a good thing to overlook if you want to carefully lay the foundation for utterly unnecessary festering resentment within your management team.)
3. We take the time to critique each other's work.
I've seen volunteer organizations fall apart completely, and in the end, it turned out that it was more than anything because nobody felt they had the right to say anything to each other no matter how badly anyone was performing because they are all volunteers. Which is true. But if your volunteer isn't doing their job or doing a bad job they are worse than useless. That's also true.
4. Honor among Thieves.
Especially when we disagree. More then than ever in fact. If you can't handle confrontations with the people in your own corp like a businessman you have no place managing or leading anything other than toy soldiers. If you are a scoundrel bleeding "your" corp dry you already know you have to at least appear this way.
5. We understand that a lot if not most of our EVE time is going to be taken up by coordinating the efforts of other players.
If the idea of spending your time analyzing the Big Picture, scheming, issuing "orders," and moving pieces in and out of play on the game board does not make your heart beat faster, this definitely not the job for you.
6. Expert authority carries the day.
Even though EVE groups are structured as dictatorships with the CEO/Executor being able to kick anyone out or end the club itself, expert authority will be the actual means of decision making and implementation 9 times in 10. Just saying.
Know Your Members
Your members are ubernerds fleeing their responsibilities in RL more often than not. They will be more grateful to you than they know if you remove onerous responsibility from their shoulders. All the spreadsheet stuff I call it. The nagging little details. Math. Spreadsheets. Strategy. In fact every single detail of living in EVE but those that relate directly to playing their characters will be something they are eager to turn over to you. Very much the same way we surrender our autonomy in RL in return for services rendered.
EVE players tend towards introversion, at least when they're playing EVE. Almost 90 percent of them don't even need or want to ever talk to the people they are playing the game with. Few are interested in their corporation aside from the details necessary to play their own character. Even fewer are interested in their alliance if they even belong to one. It is very important to the leaders of EVE organizations that they not lose sight of this.
It is your task to create reasons for them to care. Reasons for them to actually have an opinion about you one way or the other that would lead them to lift a finger on your behalf are something that you you you must provide and you'd better like doing it or you are going to suck at being a leader of a volunteer organization.
These people are here to be entertained. They are here to follow the path of least resistance. They are here to live out their fantasies. If you can provide them with an environment in which to do these things you will have what loyalty they have to offer a voice in a headphone. How much you and the scene you offer become more than that to these people is entirely up to you.
All that girly stuff that (let's keep a straight face now) men don't need like paying attention to people's feelings and sense of community and all that hearts and flowers stuff that is just simply supposed to not exist when the chicks aren't around is the key to all that power. If you are too much a sissy to go near that stuff your organization will fail and you will be an object of ridicule. If you are man enough to take that into account when you deal with other men they will die for you. And that's in RL. All you might get in EVE is that they show up to a CTA or two that they otherwise wouldn't, but you know, that just might be all you need.
MEMBER ORIENTATIONS
Extremely simple. You check the member list and anyone online who has joined in the last 2-5 days, you chat with them, make sure they have read the corp AND alliance bulletins. and get 'em on comms.
New Member Intake:
I will email you with someone's API info.
You have to
ONE: run the API numbers trough evemon or evehq to check skills, balance, alts, etc. we only accept full API
To Check their info in detail use this site.
games.chruker.dk/eve_online/test_eve_api.php
TWO: Interview in the TS3 server.
Making a formidable media presence:
Even a new corp can be made to seem like a towering institution in the game with the right media presence. What comes up when someone does a search on your corp's name does make a difference. Of course the unbeatable combination is ingame excellence and a media/marketing presence.
1. Forum post BUMPED 1X A DAY AND NO MORE about the corp. I include links to dotlan and EVElopedia in ALL my corp recrutiment posts.
2. EVElopedia page set up using the corp template and including the corp logo.
3. EVElopedia page for the CEO using the character template and including portrait. (other officers too, but CEO is a necessity)
4. Well thought out Corp Description including the goal(s) of your corp, officers, public channel. THIS is what people see in dotlan and all those other sites to judge you by.
5. Ingame ads. the three maximum with recruiters and a public channel.
6. Posting in recruitment areas in battlenet and other gaming sites.
7. Targeted ingame office rental in hi traffic systems so you show up on the rentors list. (Also where you corp description pays off.)
8. ACTIVE posts by the CEO and members in the EVE forums about the areas the corp specializes in.
9. Recruitment of suitable individual players who post in the corp recruitment area of the EVE forums.
10. Website, either your own or your alliances.
11. Public channel that is stocked with as many members as possible.
To Do Lists for Corps, Alliances, Officers
Corp as a whole:
1. Minimum of one (1) daily mining op. Ore and/or ice.
2. Minimum of one (1) Daily ratting PLEXing fleet
3. Minimum of one (1) Daily PvP fleet.
Individuals In Corp (managers etc)
1. Start standing fleets according to corp specs.
2. Morning systemwide scandown for wormholes, grav and other sites. Make the bookmarks available in a jet can etc.
3. Check web site.
4. Update bulletins, mailing lists.
5. Security protocols--daily.
6. Check corp wallet, contracts, mailing lists.
7. Check applications.
8. Update calendar.
9. New member orientations.
10. Payouts and reports for ops.
11. POS maintenance.
12. Moon Mining: Reactions mixing, hauling.
13. Recruitment and intake.
14. Diplomatic chores meetings etc.
15. Reports to the corp as a whole and each other as wo what we are doing and why.
16. Updating Corp Bulletins
17. Updating Website
18. Emails
When Promoting a member the following should be done.
1. ACCESSES
2. Add to necessary chats and mailing lists
3. Add link/name in bulletins, ads, emails, chat room notices.
4. Make sure they have a new title that shows up in their info window.
5. Send the entire corp an announcement.
6. Send the new officer a private email with accesses etc and congragulating them.
Titles: Titles are important. Even to the people who say they aren't. CEOs and Directors have the option of bestowing a custom title on anyone in the corp. This is right up there with awards. I've managed to come up with titles that delighted people in the past:
Clown Faced Madman-In-Chief
Teratogen-In-Chief
Machiavellianaut
Departments
Personnel Department
Communications
Responsible for the pipeline--moving people from chat room to the voice server. Oversees all chat rooms. Teacher/tutor. Updates CR log in messages. Acts as networker and introducer for people in all chats. Puts random interesting links and info in the chats. Gets conversations started in voice comms when people are silent. New member orientations.
Personnel
Oversees recruitment of new members and orientation of new members and makes sure people are connecting to fleets and Missions and other groups that would help them. Teacher/tutor.
GET PEOPLE INTO COMMS: If you got one person into comms a day who has not been yet, you will make me and the entire board very very happy.
Keep an eye on all corp chat rooms.
Management Stages
There are three stages of management in general.
Manager trainee
We find out if they are actually interested in being a manager and how well you do the job.
NO ACCESSES One month trial period. This could be longer if trainee is not very active.
Full Manager
Accesses: Communications officer, Contract Manager, Fitting Manager
+ other Accesses as per the Director and Department
Senior Manager
Gets much more sensitive accesses but not director level
All the accesses of a Full Manager plus those specific to department(s). And custom accesses should be possible.
Example Management Job Descriptions
Mining Manager: Leads and organizes mining fleets oversees payout logs for the fleet. Responsible for delivering loot log info to the VP and CEO and delivery of ore to the proper hangar. Teacher/tutor. Puts ops on Corp Calendar
Personnel Manager: Oversees recruitment of new members and orientation of new members and makes sure people are connecting to fleets and Missions and other groups that would help them. Teacher/tutor.
Mission Running Manager Oversees mission running. Coordinates delivery of salvage to agreed on delivery points for the corp. Teacher/tutor.
Communications Manager: Responsible for the pipeline--moving people from chat room to the voice server. Oversees all chat rooms. Teacher/tutor. Updates CR log in messages. Acts as networker and introducer for people in all chats. Puts random interesting links and info in the chats. New member orientations.
Fleet Mamager: Oversees the operations of the PvP division including training. Also mission running for the PvP folks. Corp Access: add and deltet corp fits, add and remove Ships and Equipment from the station you are headquartered at, and schedule events on the corp calendar, query donations div at HQ
Planetary Manager Coordinates all planetary interaction among members including delivery of products to agreed on delivery points. Teacher/tutor.
Trade Manager: Central clearninghouse for trade information for the corp. Manages trade ops. Coordinates Corp Market Warfare Teacher/tutor.
Moon Mining Manager: Designs Reaction production, POS Fueling, POS security.
Making A Standing Fleet
Making Fleets
Do not include system or corp name to make easy for spies to locate your op.
Open Fleet to:
My Corporation/Alliance
ALWAYS check HIDE DETAILS in advert.
We do not check any box that has the word “Standing”
Choose free move. Make max squads and 2 wings. Unless you are actively commanding the fleet, leave the commander position empty in case you go AFK.
CORPORATE BULLETINS I HAVE USED IN THE PAST
Bulletin 1: your basic member orientation
Welcome New Members: This is How You Do It
1. You really do need to get into the voice server. We use Teamspeak 3, information on how to join is below
VOICE SERVER INFO HERE
2. The following are the intel channel and other chat channels you are either required to join or have the option to join.
CHAT CHANNELS HERE
3. Register for the forums on our website
YOUR URL HERE
4. Fleet Finder on the fleet button on the left side of your screen to find where your new corp mates are fleeted up for diffferent projects.
5. Calendar, on the bottom left corner of the screen, is where you find scheduled events
6. Here's where we are and how you will get to us:
LOGISTICS INSTRUCTIONS HERE
7. Study the Standing Orders for both war and peacetime. They are here in the corp bulletins.
8. Ask Questions. Here are some of the people whose job it is to answer them:
ROSTER OF OFFICERS HERE
War Time Standing Orders
We put local chat in its on spot onscreen and use it to detect red icon enemies before undocking, upon entering systems etc.
We set up our watch lists. Watch for the list of enemy players in your corp email.
We use our directional scanners.
wiki.eveonline.com/en/wiki/Directional_Scanner_guide
We do not talk to the aggressors at any time for any reason. Only corp diplomats do this.
Indy players dock as soon as we see them. When mining you keep yourself aligned to a station, safe spot, etc.
We stay mobile The aggressors can use locator agents to locate you if they have your name.
When in groups we stay in voice contact using EVE audio or Fleet audio or our voice server.
We use safe spots when we undock or travel. If you do not know how to make safe spots now is the time to learn.
wiki.eveonline.com/en/wiki/Safe_spot
We have our overview tabs set up to include a WAR tab set for enemy ships only.
wiki.eveonline.com/en/wiki/Overview_scanner
We do not fly ships we cannot afford to lose.
We do NOT use autopilot.
We move necessary supplies and ships to a secondary base outside of HQ system.
We make sure our clones and insurance policies on our ships are up to date.
We have our jump clones up and ready through Estel Arador Corp Services or mission running.
wiki.eveonline.com/en/wiki/Jump_clone
We assume there are spies in all chat channels and voice comms and are careful about what we say especially in public chats.
We post any intel on the war targets in the intel channel(s).
Indy players don't undock with reds in the system.
We check emails and intel chats for updates when we log on.
We log off while undocked if we want to avoid being ambushed when undocking.
Bulletin for Stuff You Should Know About
Estel Arador Corp Services
If you want Jump Clones but Don't want to run all those missions
If you want hi sec jump clones without having to run missions to get a standing of 8 this is how you do it:
You have to train up informorph psychology. You get 1 jump clone per skill level of informorth psychology
You join the corp, set up your jump clones, and rejoin the Uinversity. They will not want you to be a member for long, as that would interfere with them maintainging their high standings. Just put in your re application that you left to get your jump clones and you will be welcomed back.
Read their corp description for a more detailed account of the process. And don't forget to make a donation. This service is saving you many hours and ISK.
You will need to do this before you go to nullsec because once you go to nullsec you can't change corp without losing blue status to your alliance. Leave at least one jump clone in hi sec so you can jump back and forth from null. In nullsec you can place jump clones without mission running anywhere in your alliance because you automatically have the standings to do so.
Please tell them we sent you!
THIS SHOULD BE A LINK TO THE CORPORATION: Estel Arador Corp Services
Bulletin for Fitz VonHeis
People think I'm joking when I say this is the only link you ever need to play EVE but this guy has listings of links in the forums that you never even thought of much less heard of. If there's an entire site devoted to salvage, he's got it there.
Some Plans, Programs, Ideas, and Guesses
Plan To Motivate people to come to CTAs
1. Attendance MUST be tracked very accurately for anything to have any chance of working.
2. We will use both the carrot and the stick.
3. We want to track attendance for security reasons too.
4. We also need to educate our members about how alliance finances and politics run giving them the big pcture of why they are needed. More about this in part B
CARROT
Alliance Decorations: WE WILL MAKE A BIG DEAL ABOUT THEM.
A. Presented at monthly alliance-wide meeting.
B. Alliance wide email notice.
C. PUBLICISED IN EVE FORUMS
D. These will come with awards of ISK, faction ships, implants etc.
E. Roster in Alliance Bulletins
F. Hall of Fame on Web Site.
G. Press Release to Evenews24
H. Alliance Decorations Director/Manager -- Job is to investigate, publicise and present awards.
I. Alliance pays Corps for alliance decorations.
J. Awardees entitled to certain title while they are member of TCU.
K. The MEN OF WAR Muster: A list, published on the website after each combat, of everyone who made it to the CTA. FROM THIS WE PUBLISH A LIST OF HIGHEST RANKED ATTENDEES. We want people chasing that elusive 100 percent. WE WANT TO MAKE THE 100 PERCENT MAN A HERO A LEGEND SOMETHING EVERYONE WANTS TO BE.
Examples of how to earn Decorations
Attend 5 CTAs
Attend 10 CTAs
Attend 50 CTAs
Attend 100 CTAs
Above and Beyond Call of Duty
Logistics Award
Leadership Skills Award
FC Awards
Victory Awards-very rare for all those present at historic battle
One Highest Honor Award
MONTHLY AWARD FOR HIGHEST ATTENDEES OF CTAS with bigggest rewards attached.
STICK
A. Monthly the names of the people who are not attending are sent to their CEOs.
B. Their own CEO or appropriate director contacts them and interviews them as to why they are not attending.
C. RL considerations can earn dispensations of course.
D. Publish a monthly "Not-Even-Weekend-Warriors" List of the people who have not given notice they need deferrment and have not shown up for CTAs. Mirror Image of the List of Honor.
E. Every month pick the worst offenders and thow them out of the alliance.
F. This should be publicised in an alliance wide email but that's all.
Link to an interesting guide on leadership in EVE orgs
http://www.tentonhammer.com/eve/guides/ ... ou_are_ceo
What is the single most important thing you can do to make your corporation work
1. Standing Fleet. Get your members into a standing fleet. Get them into the habit of starting one. Why hi sec corps don't have them is a mystery.
THE TECHNOCRAT CONTINUED
An Example of An Alliance Charter: The Stealth Syndicate Charter link to below
http://www.heartsandmindsalliance.org/i ... Itemid=232