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Running a corporation - harder than you'd think!


Every corporation starts out small, and they all have high hopes and dreams of becoming the next mega-corporation ruling over the universe and outdoing everyone else in every aspect of the game. Each and every player who decides to start his own corporation does so because he thinks he can accomplish something. Well, diary, I’ll let you in on a little secret: Take the average pilot today who starts his own corporation. The chances of the corporation still being active in two months are very slim, probably around 50 to 1.

Why? Because a very small part of Eve’s population actually has the skill or the balls to do what I do. It might sound cocky, but it’s the truth. Running a corporation is the hardest job in this game, and, yes, I say job. Things aren’t just going to happen by themselves. Let me take you through the basic steps of running a successful corporation.

I think I previously wrote a little about my corporation, Aztec Industries, run by my other character, Fenian. Today, I’m going to tell you a little about what it’s actually like running corporation and what you need to have to be able to pull it off.

Let's say you just formed your new corporation. The corp membership roster is one – you’re alone. The first thing you have to do is get out there and recruit. This is the one of the important as well as the most boring part of management. Hit the recruitment channel! What do you see? Two dozen other CEOs just like you, trying to make it in the big and active world of Eve’s corporation “recruitment warfare.” Directors and CEOs try everything they can trying to lure unsuspecting newbies into joining their ranks, only to be let down by fake promises and false hopes.

Nunber two, organization! Who’s gonna run things when you’re gone? Nobody. Unless, of course, you assign jobs to members who are willing to fulfill them. Recruitment director, mining director or whatever fancy-schmancy titles you want. You need management. You need to be capable of doing this and doing it properly. Keeping an eye out for everybody and making sure everything runs smoothly is a requirement. Just make sure you don’t give your directors too much access; there are cases where people have broken promises and just taken off with the lot! Be extremely careful when choosing who you put into a leadership/management role. Be sure they are competent for the job and have experience with the task at hand. Don’t assign a role until you’re convinced a person is actually needed to do the job (a five-member corporation doesn’t need three directors). Keep all your members informed of who’s supposed to do what within the corporation… communication is key.

Third, last but not least: doing what you promised. Upholding what your corporation stands for is very important. You can’t say one thing and do another. If you do, your members will leave. Keeping your members happy and keeping your word is the most important thing about running a corporation. Recruiting doesn’t help if you don’t have any members and the same goes for management–a mining director won’t do any good if nobody shows up for the mining operations.

That’s not all you need to be a good CEO. Skills come into it as well. To be able to actually start up the corporation in the first place you need to train those skills. Then as your corp gets bigger you will need more skills that take longer to train. The first skill you’ll need is Corporation Management. Should your corporation exceed 50 members you will need to get the Megacorp Management skill, and, after that, there’s Empire Control. The current maximum size for a corporation in Eve is about 1500 members; so far nobody has even come remotely close to achieving that. Accompanying those 3 skills there is also Ethnic Relations, which will increase the percentage of members you can have who are a different race from the CEOs by 20% per level. When you have all this covered you should have a pretty good corporation.

Be friendly and smile! Don’t be a bore to your members. You need to have a fun personality, have opinions and have the ability to make fast decisions. The people have to be confident that you know what you’re doing – never leave them in doubt. Answer their questions as professionally as you can. Keep your language clean and remember, as the CEO the people are going to come to you if they have problems. Too many problems? Don’t think you can handle the load? That means your members are not being kept updated on what’s happening, what’s been happening and what’s about to happen.
Eve offers an amazing corporation mail system – USE IT! You can get any message you need to deliver into your members' mailboxes in just a few seconds.

That’s my analysis on corporations and their management. Like I said before, managing a successful corporation is the hardest thing you can do in this game. If you decide to start your own corporation be ready to face the consequences–it’s a lot harder than most people think.

Next week I’ll talk a bit about what to look for when finding a corporation to join.

Regards,
Vegeta (a.k.a Fenian)