EVE General Discussion

tl;dr An attempt to outline what CEO's / Directors have to deal with to run a corp. Politics, Drama, Workload etc etc

Many of us, especially CEOs and Directors, are all to familiar with the burden that is bestowed upon us when we take up the position of either running a corporation or helping to run a corporation.

I understand that the views I express in this thread will not be comparable to most other corporations for the very simple reason that all corporations are setup and run differently. I ask that you keep this in mind as you read on.

Every CEO and Director has their own way of running the show. Again, this is dependent on a number of factors such as the amount of members you have, how active your are, how organised you are, and what your corp focus is. (different focuses may require more work than others)

For arguements sake, I will use my corp as a model for this thread. Important to note that I am the 2IC of the corp.

A bit of background first.

My corporation was founded close on 8 years ago and has been running solid pretty much ever since. I wish I could take credit for being around for that long but sadly, I came along much later. Our primary focus is ... well, it has shifted somewhat as we have grown and gained more experienced. I would say we are primarily an industry focused corporation involved in pretty much everything to do with industry. We do have a pretty competent PVP wing where industrialists can retreat to for a change and where dedicated PVP pilots can get their fix. Ofcourse having PVP pilots in an Industry focused corporation thats in a PVP alliance certainly helps keep the alliance happy, but I will not be dipping in that at the moment.

Moving on.

You have the amazing idea to start your own corporation. You chose a snazzy name and start spamming the recruitment channel for members (yes, many of you would have seen me in there :P). This is fantastic! You get a couple of members in your corp and start doing activities together. The current workload (as a CEO) is acceptible and you are able to spare a decent amount of time playing the game (instead of running the corp).

3 months on

Your corporation reaches 25 members. The volume of members is more demanding on your time and there is a need to start laying down some rules/policies etc. So you decide it is time for a website. Now ontop of your duties as a CEO, you now have to organise a website/forum. Luckily, you manage to find someone who has the skills to make a forum and control access using API authentication. At this point the workload is becoming a bit more than one person to handle and you find yourself spending a very large portion of your time ensuring your members are happy and your corporation is ticking over.

More members.

Your corporation swells up to 50 members and they come from multiple timezones. You are not able to be online 24/7 so you appoint a 2IC to run things in your absence. Ontop of this you appoint couple of Directors to assist in the running of the corporation. Depending on what you do they might help our with Recruitment, PVP, Industry etc etc. They will help take over some of the smaller tasks you have to do in order to free up some of your time to continue growing the corporation and implententing new policies. The website/forums require more work from your web dude and pretty soon it more a less becomes his full time job trying to keep all web-related stuff running.

6 months on.

You are approached by an alliance to join them. This is great news, you have been able to develop and grow your corporation to the point where it becomes attractive enough to join an alliance. However, the alliance has some strict requirements. You must continue to grow your corporation upto 150 members within 3 months. You must have a very clear and organised corporate structure. You must have a Ship Replacement Program in place. You must have x amount of members online and x amount of kills per month etc etc etc.

I can keep going on and on but as it is this is turning into a threadnaught. The above is what I consider the basic life-cycle of a corporation up to a certain point.

At some point ... the CEO, Directors, Officers, basically anyone involved running the corporation will not be able to cope with the workload and continued demand for their attention. The CEO rarely logs on anymore and when he does log on he has to deal with an inbox full of members problems/questions etc. Several convo invites at once. A wardec. A recent corp theft. A spy. etc etc, The end result.... burn out. I am sure that you do not need me to explain why this happens, but when it does happen it can be very detrimental to the corporation and in most cases, the corp will fold. This depends on how well and organised your corporation is.

This thread is dragging on and I am starting to lose my focus. The point of all this is to outline how involved and difficult it CAN be to run a corporation successfuly. Many corporations will never reach this point and will likely fold or just go awol.

The Point: KEEP IT SIMPLE! The less work you have to do to run a corporation, the better chances it will have at surviving the life-cycle.

I have learnt this the hard way. I have burnt out many many times before because I got too involved, took on too many responsibilies and just couldn't cope. I was no longer playing EVE but instead running a virtual business. I do that in RL, do not need it in my free time!

You may ask WHY? WHY did you take on so much if you couldn't cope? Simple. My love for the game. My determination to be successful and be the best. To feel like I had accomplished something in this amazing game. To me, being apart and helping to run a successful corporation that is accomplished in every aspect is the end-game.

@CCP - Please contact me for a private convo/mail so I can highlight what it is I am trying to convey in this thread. I have many ideas I wish to share.

Reserved - Ideas incoming.

use a team structure so you don't have single person dependencies in key positions, learn how to delegate, stop micromanaging

voila

Pretty much what The Mittani said.

Surround yourself with like-minded individuals and allow them to run things (within limits of course )

It also helps if you try to run things as a chairman rather than a dictator - ie form a consensus amongst the senior members rather than ruling with an iron fist.

The crux of the problem isn't the responsibility of running a corp. The issue at heart here is the lack of features in POS management which safely promotes delegation of duties. In it's current state you literally have to give away the keys to the empire to do it.

Hopefully, CCP is revamping the POS in a way to allow more flexibility with roles.

this works well when your directorate regularly logs in

and doesnt go off to play stwtor for months at a time

Just don't put in place any policies or rules, ignore your members, do whatever you want, and encourage mbrs to do the same.

voila

I can only imagine, which is why I'd never want to run an in-game corporation with more than maybe 25 people in it. That said, CCP is finally helping alleviate some of that burden by establishing private Corp forums on the official Eve-o forums. I think that sounds like a big win.

All of us CEOs who have been running corps for years know these things to be true, new guys, let this be an insight into what you will be dealing with if you want a strong and succesful corp.


I learnt far to late that the biggest problem is trying to micromanage your corp, sure you want be the one to control it, to be the hand that guides and to shape it to be what you want. You will often fail. Recruiting is hard until you reach critical mass, recruitment is then hard if your stats are rubbish. If your stats are good and you reach critical mass (over 30 but preferably 50) but you have a bad reputation or are in a failing alliance, you will still fail. This is hard truth and its important to recognise it so you can change. Find an alliance and position of strength and you will grow strong as long as you work at it, but as teh saying goes, dont work hard, work smart.

The main thing you need is a command team, start small, make sure you have at least one extremely trustable director. At over 50 members you will want 2 or more directors. At over 100 members what works for us is CEO - 2 directors and 3 officers working as a command TEAM. I trust my command team to do what needs to be done even if I dont log on for a week, or even 2.

You need directors and officers who actively do what you expect your regulars to do. You want some one who is ridiculously good at getting peoples comms and technicxal details sorted out quickly, you want someone to run the forum too. You will want at least one officer who is less interested in explosions and is happy to do alot of the crap behind the scenes.

Most importantly, share the load. Share the responsibility and make sure you share the power, make your command team feel as though they are in command, not just lackeys to you. If you feel as though you have to log on or the corp will begin to slide, then you need to look at your command team and make it better.

By doing the above Sons Of 0din has grown to be one of the premier pvp corps in FA, able to buy its corp capital hulls and skills, we are about to implement an in corp srf to supplement the FA srf and are now able to buy supercapitals for our best pilots, all the isk we make (and our income is very respectable) goes back to the corp on ways they can see. I can log on and go pvp with my corp as often as I like, because the pressure is shared, I have an awesome command team and we wouldnt be where we are if I had tried to lead alone.

That is all. Kthxbye.