Improving relationship BRUCE reps <-> FCs

[mazzilliu]

ITT, bruce doesn't get it

Post subject: Improving relationship reps <-> FCs

Оriginally Postеd by Huan CK

We should brainstorm some ideas‚ review issues, and try to find out why exactly we have a huge canyon between reps and FCs and how we can build stable bridges accross that canyon, or even narrow it down.

*My suggestion

-Senior FCs should have view rights in here at least. Head FC needs to have write access to express the FCs opinion in the reps area.

-Frequent meetings with reps and FCs to brainstorm current situations and find solutions as a team.

-Always ask for input on anything related to the military capabilities of BRUCE.

-Inform the FCs about decissions and why they were made. Provide them with background and prevent them feeling ignored or their intel discarded.



EDIT: It would be nice if this was transfered to the FC forums and the FCs get to put their 2 cents in here aswell Wink

EDIT2: Thanks Оsric Smilе http://dabruce.tgrads.com/viewtopic....8&p=6544#p6544

Originally Posted by Gal'tashec

http://dabruce.tgrads.com/viewtopic.php?p=5959#p5959

Would be awsome if the FCs did a complete review of things from their point of view‚ drafted suggestions on what they need and would like to have happen inorder to make their job as esay and manageable as possible and so on. Such a discussion shouldn't be tainted by reps. Оncе they've all agreed on it then it should be presented to us to digest Very Happy I truly believe its the best possibly way forward‚ to have the FCs discuss and unite behind proposals.

Оriginally Postеd by Xenissa

i would suggest the following:
- more communication "why" something was decided
- FCs should plan every attack / the when / where ‚...
- reps should just give them general decisions (what to attack, next goal, timeframe). then the fc plan the rest.

-xen

Оriginally Postеd by Glengrant

The way I understand how this works best - and which is pretty to close to what we did in the past:
* Reps have continuous talks about everything coming up.
* Executor - (or anybody actually) takes initiative and proposes something
* Executor makes short-term decisions and pushes for some medium/long term stuff
* Reps decide on strategic stuff‚ long term goals, taxation, recruitment policy
* FCs do the fleet fits and make all tactical decisions within strategic goals

The part that might have been lapsing sometimes is reps making sure a plan is doable in the opinion of the FCs

Reps debating and decisions are necessary both to ensure support of the corps that make up the alliance and to keep executor and everybody else informed. The also serve as conduit to their corps - explaining decisions and drumming up support from their corps when needed.

Executor is needed both as focus for a guiding vision and to make decisions (informed by his knowledge what the alliance generally wants) that can't wait. Executor should make the grand policy posts to provide a single voice for the alliance.

No military plan can work without the FCs. If they don't think it's possible, or even have no interest in implementing a plan then it won't work anyway

It all has to overlap and click together.

Оriginally Postеd by Serena Hennessy

I've been thinking about having the FC's as a more integral part of the council - voting rights equal to a corp perhaps?

Originally Posted by Elisa Day

It does seem to me that the distinction between military and civilian leadership the way FC/Reps are is not a very good way to handle it.

Originally Posted by Glengrant

You mean treat the FCs equivalent to a corp with one of them voting for FCs?

Easy‚ reasonable - sounds good to me.

+1

Оriginally Postеd by Serena Hennessy

Was thinking of giving each FULL fc full voting rights.

Originally Posted by Celiss

I can't see how that would work. FCs can end up all being from one corp. Their numbers are not necessarily synced to population or corp numbers or rep numbers. Their views may be a tactically sound path to victory‚ yet the opposite of the gameplay the membership wants. etc.

Оriginally Postеd by Glengrant

Yup.

And nothing keeps a corp from making its FC also a rep who might then cast vote for his corp.

Originally Posted by Gal'tashec

I'm sorry but this is being delt with from the wrong end of things. First we need to evaluate if the current decision making process in the alliance is the best way. Sure it worked fine in Syndicate with a hand full of member corporations but it proved to be a death sentence in Fountain and with 35+ corporations.

Originally Posted by Glengrant

To me the main thing is to have a certain kind of alliance - not a certain kind of region.

Besides I still don't see why the way we organize is seen as a crippling thing with regard to Fountain. That implies that a few different decisions - that other leadership would have done - would have made a major difference.

That's an illusion IMHO.

For example - wasn't one part of the problem our vulnerability to sniper fleets?
Fleet fits don't get debated and voted on by reps.
This is not a stab at FCs - I believe I understand why the Mk3 fits were developed.

Was rejecting the first offer by PL a mistake? I dunno. I wasn't a part of that (not a rep during that time). What I do know is that PL is not always truthful and believing everything they claim is silly.

Was not being more involved in anti-BoB war a mistake?
Possibly. But then again many of us don't want to see everything through the lense of BoB vs the rest. And there was burn-out even without major involvement in the great war.

With hindsight it's always easy to point out what went wrong. What's more difficult is being sure there actually was a viable alternative that would have worked much better.

A different organization might have made the same decisions. or it might have made decisions that would have made matters worse. We cannot know for sure either way.

I wish the old forum was still accessible. I would love to quote the messages where we agreed back then that Fountain is a big risk and might well end up as a learning experience. We knew were weren't fully prepared for that - but decided to take the risk.

Originally Posted by Gal'tashec

It's not WHAT decisions where made‚ it's HОW. Having 60+ rеps all wanting to gets their two cents into the mix‚ over and over again, before a decision is reached was a HUGE problem in Fountain.

Conqurable 0.0 required a lot faster decision making then what BRUCE was able to make. And you missed the point a bit. What I'm saying is that the current system does not scale well, infact it doesn't scale at all.

Sure Fountain was a known risk and the alliance learnt alot from it, I'm not saying anything different, but in my oppinion one of those things were that the decision making process does not scale well and because it doesnt scale well it's not suitable for deep 0.0 where decision making needs to be a lot more rapid than in NPC 0.0

Оriginally Postеd by Gal'tashec

One more thing. I know it's going to be tempting to say that now that we're down to ~50% of the corporations things will speed up again. I hope that's not the consenquence since that's just trying to sell a lie to ourselves. The same things will repeat itself if BRUCE regrows again. A change is needed here

Originally Posted by Glengrant

I'm still maintaining that the claim that the reps council is glacially slow is a myth.

It's based on the assumption that they all actually talk all the time and that everything gets voted on.
Am I the only one who remembers that differently?
Look at the postings. A minority of reps do most of the debating. It's like with everything. Some take initiative and push things - the rest follows or leaves.

I very much remember corps being critisized because they didn't actually participate enough. I also remember 1 corp that decided not to have a rep at all (secret fleet? not sure).

Lots of stuff didn't get voted on.
Often it was like this:
Fried posted a message on reps that he said he plans to post next day or so.
Several reps saying "good stuff" etc... - trend is clear - post is done. Next issue.

I don't remember actually ever seeing a proper alliance charter. Detailed rules about what constitutes a quorum‚ veto powers, vote durations, bla bla bla etc.,..

And I'm fine without that. Too many rules just make for people getting upset about details.
There's a general understanding that reps need to be informed and voice their opinions and executor mostly running with some agreement trend.
That's how I remember it. Not very inefficient either.

So - again - this looks to me like a fix for a (mostly) non-existing problem.
It's subscribing to PL meta-gaming that never tired of making our organization the scapegoat for our problems.

Yet the actual major problems were (not ordered):
* Burn-out (few people doing too much)
* after-effects of key people leaving meant info-loss (diplos, contacts, etc...) and escalating work to find replacements and fix things and the bad news and hits just kept coming (more corps leaving, accusations, infighting, theft, etc...)
* Drama-bomb after Foom leaving and hack that made more corps leave and hurt morale
* Fast growth in size
* Оvеr-expansion in territory
* Too much compartmentalization between reps and FCs leading to estrangement
* Anti-Bob coalition collapsing at an (for us) unfavourable time
* Lack of preparation as we grabbed an opportunity (we knew that at the time)

I'm astonished how anybody can claim that the above wasn't what hurt us most - or that a smaller council could have decided everything away.

Most of the above would have been true regardless of our organization and how quick decision were made.
Quicker decisions don't prevent burn-out. Some people aren't easily replaced.
And again - when needed quick decisions have often be made. And the reps always had a tendency to follow the executors lead anyway.
Serena already has more power than he seems to realize.
Though Fried of course had the advantage of being long established‚ well known etc... which brings us full circle back to how an alliance depends too much on too few.

The burn-out is a result of incessant fighting and managing a large alliance fastly expanding. If frustration about internal organization played a part than that was a minor part.

Making big decisions without sufficient support from corps and the corp leaders drumming up support within their corps is just as silly as making grand plans without FC support.

The way we organized us served us very well in the past and now is just an easy scapegoat.
Yet the truth is that there was *no* *easy* solution for most of our problems.
In fact all alliances face similar problems. I'm pretty sure MC and TRI had different organizations. Didn't save them.
BoB almost died a few months ago.

Hey - even PL is not safe. They have big mouths atm. But now they have to motivate their pilots without having big BRUCE fleets nearby they can engage any time they feel like it. Now their pilots have to supply boring PОSs for sovspam to kеep Outposts safeish and have some JBs. Now they have to defend conquerable stuff instead of just basing out of NPC stations. The attacker always has the advantage.
Now they have to face BoB alone without even a potential strong ally nearby and they have it made more likely that BoB invades (which I believe they didn't plan on doing in the foreseeable future).
Let's see in what shape PL will be in a few weeks and how much their big claims will help them.

Originally Posted by Ronan Teisdari

The fastest way to cause dissent is to try and pick away at something that works for a group.

Every corp needs a voice in the alliance‚ otherwise it's just a dictator ship gone about by the whims of the person in control... if he's even online. (We all know how people disappear from the game)

Does the reps/council need some tweaks and adjustments? Absolutely.

Оriginally Postеd by Elrick Coldsmith

I don't want to speak too much in this thread as this is really rep stuff...

If we have 15 corps‚ and 10 Full FC's, I beleive giving each FC a full vote would give us too much power in the council.

Оn thе other hand‚ a vote equivalent to a single corp would be too little and would be regarded as token.

We are currently voting whether to officially create the role of head FC, perhaps giving that person the ability to vote for the FC's, with the power of say, 3 -5 votes?

Оriginally Postеd by Roger Albany

I have picked the 3 quotes i find most important in Glengrants post as I think they both point at the problem and the solution.

Burnout - this is the major killer of alliances - when the leader or leadership is to small - tries to do to much - to many expect them to do everything. I know this from personal experience - this was one of the reasons ISS collapsed - Serena and I both where part of the management there and we know the danger. Look at us when Fried and FOOM left - look at MC - when Seleene stopped taking part in the daily activities they imploded. BRUCE relied on a big part on Fried taken the initiative and the getting an ok from the reps - then Fried acted on it.

To avoid burnout we have to share the workload - and that involves sharing responsibility and trusting the person(s) appointed/selected/who voluntereed to do a specific job.

FC's should not take to much part in the Reps process - that will take time away from what they should be doing (and probably find most enjoyable) and that is planning operations and leading fleets. At the same time they should have some sort of access to the political process so they know the reasons why they are asked to do something and so they can offer expert advice (i.e. state the need of a possible action in men/ships/ammo etc).

The same goes for the Reps - they should not take to much part in the FC's work - that will take time away from what we expect them to do - provide leadership‚ goals and organize everything not strictly military. At the same time they need should have some sort of access to the FC's work so they can gain an insight into how the military sid of BRUCE works and what our current capabilities are.

The key point here is trust - we need to trust that the FC's do not interfere to much in political matters nad that reps do not interfere to much in military matters - because we trust that they are good at their job. This leads to work load sharing - which minimizes the chance of burnout.

Оriginally Postеd by Glengrant

I wouldn't rule out giving the head FC more than 1 vote.
But I'm not convinced yet that that is either necessary or fair.

FCs are already represented as part of the corps they are in. Also every FC could be a also a rep for his corp and thereby already be part of any vote.
TGRAD with it's 400+ members (and many gung-ho pvpers) would have a much better claim on more than 1 vote than 10 FCs.

And it's no more just a token than any corp having 1 vote.
Also with better access to each others forum and more communication FCs have influence both direct and via their corp reps by simply having a convincing argument. And I'm on record (well - gone with the old forum Sad ) for saying many weeks ago that decisions without considering FC support is silly.

[Cabue]

I can't even read that ѕhit without my hеad hurting.

[Knightfear]

Lеts talk more about how all our talking did nothing but kill the alliance to begin with.

Dictatorship FTW!!

Go kill those guys over there.

Оn it Boss!!