Saturday 13 June 2015

On BRAVE middle management.

There's a meme, a narrative, going around that BRAVE has some awful, paralyzing, bureacracy that prevents us from achieving anything. Here's my view, just posted in a response to someone parroting it:

Middle management gets used as a buzz-phrase to encourage people to feel contempt for the people who step up.

If you fall for it you've been played.

Who are these middle managers?

People like me, Avaren, Christopher and a couple of dozen others who are stepping up to FC. The guys who oversee us Junior FCs - Extrems and Negativelight - are super nurturing and helpful, I've never seen anyone upset or discouraged by either one.

The Dojo is, imo, quite stunning. I was in E Uni 5 years ago and while very professional it was so much more cold and unwelcoming. Here literally anyone who is unsure can get help with anything, I've been playing 6 years and I still pop in quite often to ask questions. The level of helpfulness - even flying all the way to Empire to guide people - is amazing.

The recruiters seem to be doing a fantastic job, we have a constant stream of new people.

This week I got a new and sort of important job. Everyone I've talked to to get help for running the Alliance Tournament team has been really really kind and supportive. Kiu did a ton of IT setup and we have our own member group in CORE for the squad with private jabber and mumble. Kite Co set up forums. Lychton and Kelnon have done everything I've asked. Wiros and Agonist X have been brilliant - we already have an amazing advert.

The idea that we have some sort of snarled up middle managment bureaucracy that just snaps at each other and wastes each other's time is the complete opposite of my (admittedly limited) experience. It really is just propaganda based on a dreary 4 months old soundcloud featuring mostly people who have left.

I'm not saying it's perfect, there's occasionally things that grate, but for a group of amateurs doing a hobby the organisation we have here is outstanding.


In other news I'm now BRAVE's Alliance Tournament team captain. Welp!

3 comments:

  1. Great article, quite right!

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  2. I'd say middle management in the case of Brave doesn't generally apply to the FC chain. It applies to the CNM, specifically the way the CEOs interact together to make bind decisions without being in such with the Alliance Executor. Notice in the latest SOTA the CNM will be changing the way it interacts internally and with the executor. As an example of badd middle management there's my story, where a MILDIR was able to get the CNM to vote out a corporation merely by a sales pitch to the CNM where the CEOs didn't know anything about the corp other than what they were told by the MILDIR, and apparently unaware that the corp had been let in by an agreement between the corp CEO and the executor. The Executor was then forced to overrule the CNM in order to keep the corp as he originally wanted. But then after drinking a lot of beer and talking with the MILDIR he decided to go back on his own plan and kick the corp anyway. Was bad. Real bad.

    And that is not even mentioning the whole debacle with framing me with a real life threat to get me coalition banned because I opposed the MILDIR. The story is all online. Everyone knows about it. Shows a clear case of mob rule. Brave's answer is to clamp down on the reddit so the incompetence will happen behind closed doors and maintain an ability to feed the Braves the party line while making internal changes to the CNM communication.

    Brave CLEARLY has a middle management problem that they are trying to cover up and make improvements on behind closed doors. This is a CNM issue. It has nothing to do with all the great work done by Nancy, Lumpy, Lquid, and multiple FCs, particularly the innovative ones like W Rush and others such as yourself, and of course Blue Ice.

    Sad to see that Brave's answer is to create a situation where certain parties can feed everyone whatever lies they want unopposed on internal forums, though.

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    Replies
    1. I'm very sorry about what happened with you, Jan.

      All I can say is that for me it's working.

      I think sometimes it's about patience. An earlier idea I had to contribute something constructive to the alliance got shot down. Then a couple of months later they've given me the chance to do a really exciting project.

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