Intergalactic Summit

You don’t have to be a baker in order to like or dislike a bread. Also, if the baker is not making good bread, it doesn’t really matter if he can claim he has been doing breads for ages and you don’t even know a single recipe.

Even though I never ran an alliance, I’ve been around flying with people in and out of them for a while, since I’ve become a capsuleer more than 5 years ago. In this sense, I’d like to offer what I think are the 8 major steps to successfully rule alliances, on a practical sense, because I’m a practical person and I think pretty speeches are just pretty speeches. I’ll even use practical examples when I find it’s appropriate:

Step 1 – Never forget that no alliance is bigger than the sum of its parts
Same applies to Corporations with regard to its members. No alliance is bigger than the sum of its parts, meaning that you shouldn’t think that an alliance is something by itself. An alliance is simply a group of corporations, each one doing something for the good of all. Ultimately, there’s no such thing as “the alliance does this or that”. What really is, is Corp A + Corp B + Corp C + … + Corp N doing something each one with their share of responsibility. Therefore, each Corp should always be listened and taken into account on every decision the alliance leader may take.

Step 2 – No Corp inside an alliance is too big or too small
It doesn’t make sense to think of an alliance with few strong corporations and lots of weak ones, or the other way around. An alliance is formed because people want to be stronger, so each member of given alliance is responsible for that in a way. The executor corporation is no stronger than the remaining of the alliance and if it is, the alliance has no purpose or selected wrong members or has wrong goals. Actually, Step 3 is connected to this one as follows

Step 3 – Don’t grow too fast…
Size is not important. Quality is important. I once was a part of an alliance called Beaver sharks. The alliance had a nice executor with skilled combat people, but they got surrounded by weak industrial corporations because the executor wanted to grow fast. The result was subsequent war declarations against the alliance by grievers who ended up being capable to dismantle it simply because the executor didn’t have control of every weak corporation that joined [and their mistakes]. Quality is what matters, not size.

Step 4 – Apply same rules to everyone
The most common thing to see is the alliance becoming a “reflex” of the executor corporation. There is nothing wrong with that. The problem is when the alliance tends to end up “serving” the executor corporation because of that, which is wrong. An alliance is not simply a Corporation hiring more people, and if it does, then it’s not an alliance, it’s simply a Corporation trying to recruit more people differently. When IPI was formed, for example, ILF’s ship replacement programme wasn’t applied to the remainder of the alliance, nor fleets where organized taking the remaining of the alliance into account. No planning was ever made in order to bring allied people into Intaki and participate in operations. Other corporations weren’t even consulted on important things when ILF took decisions. This is wrong, because this is not an alliance; it’s simply a corporation hiring more people the wrong way. You have to apply the same rules to everyone, or you are not ruling an alliance at all.

Step 5 – As an alliance ruler, you are responsible for each one’s actions
Yes, I’m sorry, but in the end, it is a fact. Don’t try to avoid it, or simply step aside of the alliance’s chair. As a ship commander is responsible for each of his crewmen actions, the alliance leader is not only responsible for each of the constituent corporation’s actions, but also for what each people inside each corporation does. This applies to every one of you, including the militias, to which in the limit the related empire would be responsible for their actions (if a Caldari Militia corporation engages in piracy, the State itself is responsible for that in my opinion). If someone did something wrong inside your alliance, don’t try to avoid that using excuses such as “the alliance is too big and we can’t control each one’s actions”. Be a man and try to fix the situation.

Step 6 – Have reasonable goals
Not much to be said here. Push people into something challenging, but don’t push too hard or beyond their capabilities. If you are small and not many of your constituents are industrials with a high output, don’t try to assign a goal of building a Leviathan. Have reasonable, achievable, specific goals that, step by step, will make you bigger and stronger. Having no goals at all is also dangerous, as people will become lost in time and losing faith in the alliance itself as a purposeless thing. Don’t be afraid to listen to people without pre judgments. Think of an alliance as a boat on which everyone is relying to get safely to the same destination at the same time.

Step 7 – Don’t be afraid to delegate.
Not much to be said here also. If you are the brain behind a successful alliance, concentrate on the macro management and let the micro management to other people. You are not God, although you may think you are. And if you are selfish enough to think the alliance exists to serve you and your friends only, therefore requiring from you that you stay over the control of everything every time, you’ll fail. Because again, you are not God. (continue...)