Tribal Band moving forward: Rise of Bureaucracy

After a few busy days of reorganization and a theft which has proven slightly damaging for their image (if not their finances), Tribal Band is ready to move forward, consolidate their group strategy, goals and tools, and try to leave their mark.

The much aired pseudo democratic system they embraced has been somehow discarded for the usual EVE regime in which a visible head hands over the relevant roles. However, one cannot help but notice that the amount of bureaucracy proposed seems to be excessive at this point. There is an awful lot of plans and lots of people to look up to, but (according to Triget) increasing the leadership size increases representation which in turn sounds like caring for your pilots’ opinions.

The following message was allegedly posted on the Tribal Band forums by Triget.

So, I’ve been throwing around a number of ideas over the past few days in between berating the leaders we have. It has been a while since we set up the leadership we now have, nearly three months, and I think we’ve learned a lot about what we have and need

Here’s what I propose we have:

The three alliance directors, each with a different focus.
Triget – public face, coalition relations, meeting leader, strategy etc. Public stuff.
Aura – IT, new corps integration. Service side internal stuff.
Kage – Established corp development, policy development. Client side internal stuff.

Logistics and Finance Directors – both coordinate on military deployments.
Crelic – Focus on managing SRP, and our isk generating sources
Slick – Focus on infrastructure, space development.

Diplomatic Director
Tallianna Avenkarde – cultivate contacts with allies and enemies, communicate a positive image of TRIBE publicly.

Military Director
Grimbold Dengrist – establish fleet doctrines, develop FCs, coordinate training

HR Director
Scientessa (if approved) – Examine potential new recruits, examine the performance of existing corps, educate corp leaders in recruitment

So, what have I changed here. For some directorships, I’ve started laying out roles and responsibilities. Certain focuses for the alliance directors, and some basic goals for the military and diplomatic directors. The first change I’m proposing is making both Crelic and Slick co-directors of of finance and logistics. They are already crossing each others boundaries, so why not get them de jure on the same page. The idea behind this is as we expand the logi and finance directorship, we will have a bit of redundancy and better coverage.

The biggest change I’m proposing is moving Scientessa from a officer to director, and creating a new directorship that would do many of the things that our alliance directors, me being the worst culprit, have not been able to do. In particular, work with our individual corps, assessing their development and activity, communicating between alliance and corp more fluidly, as well as finding, vetting, and presenting potential new corps to join the alliance.

Another change I want to see happen is to increase the size of the alliance leadership to bring in new blood and to be more responsive to our members. I see each directorship having 4-5 officers, with the exception of military which should grow to 4-5 reliable strat FCs, and 10 trained skirmish FCs who are in development to becoming strat FCs. Our diplo corps can remain 5 diplos. However, we need to grow the logistics and finance team by about 4 member, 2 working on some sort of finance, SRP and contracting comes to mind, and 2 focused on moving couriers from Chamemi. For the HR directorship, I would see 5 guys, each of which are assigned 10 corps to be liason for and provide our leaders with assessments.

The Alliance Directors
This directorship is the most political of the directorships, and possesses the unique ability to set policy, be involved with the planning and implementation of the goals of all the other directorships, and name other directors.

In almost all matters the three alliance directors are equals. The one major difference is that Triget is the public face of the alliance and speaks with the voice of all. Thus, to make this easier, I’ve made the titles Alliance Director, with this public role being the Alliance Executive Director.

The role of the Alliance Director is to lead. Leading by example, leading by support, leading by setting policy, leading by giving directives. The Alliance Directors are to assist and advise the other directors. The Alliance Director is to introduce alliance projects and work to get those projects completed. The alliance director should be always ready to resolve issues quickly, to respond to alliance member’s needs. The Alliance Director should see the big picture, not only in the alliance, but also throughout the game. The Alliance Director should be knowledgeable, knowing the politics, history and mechanics of the game. The Alliance director should be all these things, because his voice is often needed in many parts of the alliance.

This is perhaps the most important role of the Alliance Director: To work tirelessly to preserve, nourish, develop and grow the alliance. The Alliance Director must constantly combat any danger to the alliance and to the legitimacy of the alliance leadership. All alliance power flows through the Alliance Directors, but the source of that power is legitimacy, trust and credibility. Political order in eve is frail. You cannot truly force anyone to obey, thus we must convince them. The Alliance Director should work to convince them to be a part of the alliance through several methods. The first, is simple argumentation. Lay out the reasons for being a part of the alliance. The second way to do this is by crafting the alliance culture. Why would they leave if everyone in alliance is one of their bros. The third way is through crafting a narrative. This makes guys want to stay because they are a part of a big, exciting story. All these things are the responsibility of the Alliance Director.

As it stands, we are not expanding this directorship.

Military Directorship
This is the largest and most important of our directorships. EVE is about blowing stuff up and that’s what the military director works on. Let me start by laying out the responsibilities of the military director.

First, develop and train a FC core, arrange a structure and a way of noting which FCs are capable of which tasks. We have this set up as StratFCs and Skirmish FCs. There is more specialization capable here, but developing good FCs takes time.

Second, establishing fleet doctrines to standardize our large fleets, and our SRP. This requires constant attention to the changing fleets of potential foes and attention to the ability of our members to train for new doctrines.

Third, ensure training of our members. This is either through providing fights for them to gain experience in or delegating someone to having intensive training exercises. Additionally, there should be resources available to newer pilots for their own education.

Fourth, plan and execute deployments, offensive campaigns and defense of our space. This will involve coordination with FCs, allies and the logistics directorship to pursue and reach ever changing goals.

As we stand now, we are on solid footing, but the pool of trained FCs needs to be expanded, particularly in the EU and AU TZ. People to whom tasks are delegated should watched closely to ensure that they complete their tasks. General pilot education and FC training needs to be formalized and increased. Fleet doctrine should be changed to either dual plated oracles or Bleagle fleet. Our military information needs to be more accessible. This means a fully developed wiki with fitting info and fleet theory to explain to pilots and FCs how ships are to be flown. Fleet ops need to be presented in a way that maximizes participation. This could be by creating a narrative about the fleet and its greater meaning, or by having an op tracker app on the forums.

Finally, our capital pilots need to be trained correctly and organized.

Logistics and Finance Directorship
This directorship I see as more straightforward than the others. There are concrete things that regularly need to be done, tasks to fulfill and responses that need to be answered. Let me lay out each of these sets of responsibilities.

First, alliance infrastructure. This means the JBs, Ihubs, stations, beacons, and upgrades. The L&F directors maintain all of these, ensuring they meet our standards and ensure a seamless use by our members. These are crucial services that reflect our competency as an alliance. All stations and Ihubs should be set to exit reinforcement at 0200 hours, and JB towers with enough stront to ensure that they can be timed when attacked.

Second, the growth and expansion of the infrastructure. This is a response issue, where people need upgrades installed, they request and we take into consideration new JBs, new beacons, and talk over station placement. Upgrades in particular, since corps are providing these we need to be very responsive to. We need to be gauging the use of our space and infrastructure and expanding according to demand.

Third, making sure our alliance project with the cobalt moons is properly maintained, that we have enough contracts to continuously feed the nanotransistor towers. This involves acquisition and transportation of fuel and such to the contracting system. Additionally, fuel should be on hand for the JB towers. Much of our logistics to PB is handled through private individuals with our alliance transportation standards.

Fourth, military logistics. This is the provisioning of military activities. There are a few parts, the supplying of fit ships for quick reshipping, the transportation of fuel for our capitals and the handling of sov warfare related items, SBUs, TCUs etc.

As it stands now, Crelic and Slickdogg are the co-directors of this directorship, with no officers. They have done a damned good job, but because of the way roles are, much of the work they have not been able to do has been done by myself and ammzi, with the occasional help of others. I would like to solidify roles, by saying Slickdogg handles infrastructure and crelic focuses on the contracts and fuel supply. Handling upgrades should be a shared responsibility. Military logistics should also be a shared responsibility, but we need a point man for this. Historically its been Ammzi or Grim, and I would say that Ammzi would be the best guy to handle offensive sov logistics. But we need more guys for Crelic and Slick to delegate things to. Also, we need guys who can respond to our members needs in EU and AU time. Simple transportation should be delegated as well. In other words, we need more officers in logistics. They don’t need all the roles of the directors, just whatever is necessary to get things done.

HR Directorship
The purpose of this directorship is to have a group of people, with a single leader, whose entire alliance role will be to find, assess, and develop corporation and members.

The reason this directorship is being create is first an outgrowth of Scientessa’s amazing work as our alliance corp recruiter. Second, our alliance has a serious need to assess the corps we have, and if they are not meeting the standards of activity and contribution to alliance, they either need to be developed or removed.

Noone I know of is better able to head this than Scietessa, so unless someone has an objection, he will be a director and part of the TRIBE directors. Because he’s taking a different role, he’ll have a few people taking his current position and working under him. In addition to these officers, he will have officers tasked with being liaisons for a group of corps. I envision this as 5-6 officers, each with about 10 corps to interview, and keep track of. As they build relationships with their corps, these officers will give Scientessa reports and if help needs to be given, or they need development, these officers will be our spot men for that.

Thus, we need to examine corps as they enter the alliance, after they are in the alliance for a month, and as the continue as upstanding members of our community.

Requirements for our corps has always focused on activity. Sometimes, activity doesn’t show up on KBs, because either there are no fleets in a given TZ, the corps is logi or indy focused and there are not enough fleets. Thus, we need to have people who can ask the questions for us, who can see what is going on in a corp, and either help that corp reach our standards or escort them to the door.

Diplomacy Directorship – I asked Tali to do this because I was tired of writing
I do everything that you antisocial nerds can’t do due to your chronic aspergers.

My duties include maintaining the public face of the alliance on kugu and FHC, maintaining our Twitter (which I have been lax on), maintaining relations with our allies, our friendly neutrals, our frenemies, and our out right enemies.

What I don’t have time to do I get Demerlis, Ammzi, Wilhelm or Ross to do, and if you can’t get a hold of me I would PREFER you try to get one of those guys to do it rather then do it yourself, as they need the experience.

I can do something a little more formal, but unfortunately the hydrogen gas plant that I call work decided that it would prefer to be in a state of potential explosion rather then nice and safe and boring as usual.

If you don’t hear from me again, I have left instructions that none of you get my stuff

While Triget is trying to put the right people in the right jobs, and using a hell of a lot of words to do so, there are still quite a few important things apparently not fully developed yet like a reliable bunch of FCs or ship doctrines which plays against them. The new directors will be busy indeed. I will be so bold as to say that life is not going to be easy at all for those dealing with public relationships.

Being under constant scrutiny from their benefactors/partners and those who mock them, and in a territory where Pizza, C0Ven, ROL, Kadeshi/Nulli or Vera Cruz are not uncommon, it’s in their best interest to finish sorting these things out as soon as possible.

Their short term success depends on whether they can create a more cohesive group and give their pilots a distinct place to belong. A common personality which may help them shake off the “filler alliance” vibes and the bad press they’ve been getting.

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