Zone organzational structure - Council should be driving change!

[Ephemeral]

Note to forum staff, I am posting this here but would rather this be posted in the Council area.

As we all know the zone has taken several steps in the right direction in removing the previous ‘monarchy’ that the staff organization had become. It previously had an archaic system where a person had to move up through the ranks via a ladder which included more and more empowerment as the player accomplished each step. There is now an elected Council which is still untested but has the opportunity to evolve into a more successful organization.

But there are still key pieces to this transformation that are missing and if not implemented will bring a quick halt to the current progress. Staff is currently organized (more so in the last 6 months ) into ‘departments’. But there is a major malfunction in its current form; people are still not held strictly responsible each of their departments. Why? Answer is simple, we still have vestiges of the old system in which control decisions are made by people outside of the department. These responsibly undermining decisions can come from ‘above’ or even from other departments.

When will each department have total control of their features? When will other people stop making decisions and dicking around with departments that they don’t have to answer for? When will upper staff stop making decisions for these departments? If we don’t have the right people in running the departments than they should be removed and new people hired.

Contrary to popular opinion, running this zone is not about getting ‘productivity’ out of staff. When you build an organization that strictly hires/promotes/fires based upon productivity you end up with a pile of shit. Less informed people will point out things that are getting done as evidence that progress is being made but this is a smoke screen. The truth is that you cannot build a great organization by hiring people to be productive, you build a great organization by hiring people for their judgments.

TW staff has for too long been built and rewarded for only being productive. It has gotten us tons of new ideas, features, arenas, leagues, configurations. And where has it gotten us in terms of keeping the zone sustainable?

IMO the Council really needs to address the inability to hold each department responsible for their specific areas. Each department should have objectives and be evaluated on those objectives periodically. No one, and I mean NO one, should be allowed to make decisions that are not a direct part of their department. Upper staff (Deans) should only drive the zone’s highest level objectives and ensure that the evaluations are done correctly. Some decisions might need to be made in cooperation with other departments, upper staff is also responsible to coordinating (and mediating) those type meetings.
eph

[Vatican Assassin]

Thanks staff for getting tw up, also the last vestiges of your ancient monarchical regime must be swept away.

[bkgmjo]

Did you ever follow the way of a democratic decision between just upperstaff members? Those "discussions" usually take months to years and in the end one person just puts a half-assed version of whatever he/she thinks is right in and annoys everyone else or the idea is dropped and forgotten until someone revives it a year later. Imagine the time spans on a zone-wide discussion. Put in the council like Greek's oracles and let them discuss and throw in ideas, but do not put it on them to make final decisions. Also keep the mad preachers who write essays on forums or game chat and just react if you see people suddenly following an idea. Dictatorship or a feudal system in the end is the only way to drive any online service efficiently. May it be into the ground or to glory.

[Ephemeral]

bkgmjo,
There was nothing in my post which said there should be a move towards a democracy or management by committee. In fact, I am espousing moving away from the current system of diffusion of responsibility; which is allowing a free pass for most decisions due to having too many people involved. I am advocating allowing each person to be held responsible for their specific area but this cannot be done until they are given complete autonomy.

I did say that upper staff might have to get involved on some decisions which might span across several departments. Typically these type decisions are about 'priorities'. For example, the Pub department and the TWD department both are asking Dev for immediate help.

I concur that any management style will be impacted but some of the challenges that face this zone. Those challenges include managing an all volunteer staff and dealing with the geographic diversity of both the staff and the player base. But IMO these are the same in any methodology that is used.
eph

[Pressure]

Eph, I respect you for putting so much time into each one of your posts to get your point across and impact this game I've loved for so long. It means a lot that there are still people out there who care as much as I do, because that makes this zone what it has always been. I just don't have the time to be proactive about it anymore.

Having said that, if you have such good ideas why aren't you a member of the council or on staff? (I didn't read this post btw)

[Ephemeral]

Pressure,
I tried staff for about 3 weeks but left, at the time it was not an environment that I would have been productive in. I wanted to help the zone with new player retention only and had no real interest in ‘advancing’ to host events and type zoners. Frankly helping new players was a losing battle, everything seemed stacked against it. You would invest 20 minutes in helping a new player and then an event would be called, pub would die, and the new player would leave. When I mentioned the need to think through how staff was holding events in staff chat; well...let's just say that it wasn't a popular opinion.

I also made several posts in the staff forum to attempt to move the organization more towards elected positions with a greater player representation. Less than 50% off staff read the posts and few bothered to reply. I will say that some of what I was yapping about has indeed been followed thanks to Demonic, Poid, and M_M. Poid flushed out the idea of a improved staff structure and with Qan’s help they formed the Council.

I originally threw my name in the ring for the Council but later backed out. IMO the current Council position in the zone’s organization is incomplete and has its hands tied unless the zone also makes changes to its procedures. I realize that this is being done as a slow evolution but I do not agree with this approach; it greatly increases the chance that the Council will not succeed. The only outcome I saw for me being on Council in its current form was burnout for both myself and those whom I would have constantly been bitching to.

So while the Council was a step a the right direction much more work remains in fixing how the zone works. If the Deans turn their attention to fixing these processes I would very much like to see if I could contribute at the staff/Council level. I also have other resources which I would be willing to donate.
eph

[Exalt]

tl;dr, but I vote eph as head council member, due to his ability to have the attention span to write super long posts during all times of the day, whereas I can only do it while I'm either bored at work or stoned.

Edit:

Okay, so I read it. Eph, I understand your points, but I don't really understand where you're going with it. You just kind of pointed out a problem without giving any solutions on how to change/fix it. Are you suggesting that the council basically be overseers of staff? Like, we are the watchdogs that make sure shit gets done and gets done properly? Or what? Or are you suggestions the council does this in our own department(s)?

BTW, the only thing I disagree with you on is on Deans focusing only on higher level things. There HAS to be some kind of "king" that has a final say so in any form of government, whether that be a president, a prime minister, an actual king, a despot, speaker of the house, whatever. Someone has to have a final say so, although that can be appealed or overturned in different systems. It just is impossible to run things when you compartmentalize EVERYTHING. Any company in the world that compartmentalizes everything is highly dysfunctional and screwy. The only reason to do this is to keep things secretive on purpose, aka the FBI/CIA does it. That isn't something we want in Trenchwars. Groups need to be able to work together and communicate/coordinate with each other, because everything that happens in each division correlates to each and every other division as well. Simply put, compartmentalizing trenchwars staff is a bad idea IMHO.

[soup]

Stop with the essays, please. Every post is so unbelievably long, make it shorter. You probably make really great points but no one is going to bother reading it all (except for a few nerds).

[Ephemeral]

Exalt,
Lost me, what do you mean that I have not offered solutions? The solution is as plain as I can make it; give each Department real control and stop allowing others to make decisions which impact what someone else is supposed to be responsible for. I have also touted making a high level plan for the zone and then developing departmental plans that fit with it.

Perfect example of these processes/procedural issues was the decision on the April Fool’s map. Kyn, the guy who is supposed to be in control of Pub, was not online April Fools morning. Several staffers though ‘gee, Kyn isn’t here and we have used a April fools map before, so let’s just change it.’ The map stays up until the next day and Kyn gets a text telling him that pub has collapsed, for hours there was less than 2-3 ppl playing it.

We have had years of ‘group’ control and the mandated cross training resulted in many people feeling like they had the autonomy to make decisions in areas they weren’t responsible for. We hired people who really wanted to contribute but found themselves doing tasks/jobs they really weren’t interested in. We burned out large numbers of good people. Continuing in that direction and not seeking any changes is crazy if you expect different results then the zone has had for years. Jump on the clueless bandwagon of trying to keep making changes to the product without fixing HOW the product gets managed. But good news is that you are on the Council (with what? 3-4 votes) so prove me wrong and make good things happen but not addressing the broken processes and procedures.
eph

[Ephemeral]

Stop with the essays, please. Every post is so unbelievably long, make it shorter. You probably make really great points but no one is going to bother reading it all (except for a few nerds).

Understood, this will be my last post here in these forums. They certainly aren't helping anything. No hard feelings and wish the best of luck to the zone and community.
eph

[Turban]

way to get trolled by someone who doesn't even have the attention span to read for thirty seconds.

[Vatican Assassin]

This game was not meant to last forever, enjoy it while you can and stop worrying about the water getting higher. A golden bird that flies away, a candle's fickle flame, stop pining over yesterday, tomorrow's just a game.

[soup]

way to get trolled by someone who doesn't even have the attention span to read for thirty seconds.

Says the Finnish nerd who uploads shirtless pics to tw gallery. Retard.

[soup]

The word "troll"/"trolling" is vastly overused. Which word would you have used 10 years ago if I made that post?

I'm simply being honest. Eph makes some great points and has great ideas. I have read most of his posts in the last few weeks but every single time they are way too long. Try to shorten it, add some key points et voila.

[2pac]

tw staff wont do a damn thing to save this game it took them half a month to get the real zone back online, only the council can do something.