The Curious Tale Of CEO X

let me tell you the Curous Tale of CEO X.

Alliance X and Corp X were until recently a decent bunch of guys, kicking heads quite effectively and efficiently in w-space, keeping their heads down and off people's e-peen radars. The CEO had been away from game for 18 months, so a Director had taken the reins over and was doing his thing in a relaxed, laid-back manner, and all was well.

Anyway, the CEO of Corp X comes back to the game and re-subs his account. CEO X, we'll call him, walked back into the office and saw that the corporation wasn't what he had left 18 months ago. It was now split across 3 wormholes - one guy and his 5 alts were in a C5 bearing it up with capital escalations. There were others running reactions in a private C1. The main group were in a C2 with Y683/B274, which was different than before (in fact, they've moved 3 times in 18 months and he missed all of this) and this didn't suit what CEO X thought of as fitting for the corporation.

He laid down some edicts within a couple of days back in the game. The director who'd been running the show for 18 months was pushed aside. Edicts were handed down about moving wormholes, moving in with another alliance or corporation, changes to the way things were going to operate, what people would be doing, etcetera.

This didn't sit well with the people in Corp X who were used to the way things had been running for the past 18 months, just humming along, doing their thing, no dramas and no one demanding too much of their time and efforts for grandiose plans and misguided power play follies.

The disaffected members of Corp X decided they had more in common with each other than with CEO X. They formed their own corp (Corp Y), moved out of the wormhole and settled in Derelik of all places.  Oddly enough, they rejoined the same alliance as the corp they were just in, I guess in order to fly with the same guy they apparently didn't really ant to fly with anymore. Others in Corp X left for Lazerhawks, BRAVE, or various other entities.

CEO X has apparently gone AFK again, so all he achieved with his miscalculated and misguided attempt to wrest control of his creation back from the guys who kept it going when he was absent is to destroy the corporation, drive everyone away, and ruin his own game.

The salient point here, having done this myself in the past and learned from it, is that if you go on a long hiatus as CEO, when you come back either your corp has shrivelled and died without you at the helm and you need to rebuild, or it has moved on beyond what it was when you left. You may think your corporation is what it was when you left. This is erroneous. If your corp has been functioning without you for 18 months, and there are now 20 people who you don't even know, it is not your corporation anymore. If no one knows you from a bar of soap, then you aren't even a bottle of handwash. Coming back, hairy-chested, and pushing people around won't work. 


The moral of this story is a cautionary tale for CEO's and wannabe CEO's. I learned a while ago that being CEO doesn't make you a dictator, not in w-space. You rule by consensus. You create a corporate culture, which you have to live and breathe, and you attract and maintain people who fit in. Your people are your assets, not in the manner of being chattel you order around and dispense with, but in terms of being a pool of resources to call upon to get you, the CEO, the content you want.

You have to have standards, but you also have to ensure that you make them realistic. You also have to judge when a wormhole move doesn't suit your guys, because nothing kills a wormhole corp faster than moving wormholes when no one but the CEO wants this to happen.