Two types of CEOs

Having been in the game now for over six months, I've had a chance to talk to several fellow CEOs about their style and leadership preferences. There seems to be lots of variation across the board, but I think that it really boils down to two types of CEOs in game.

The first type of CEO is the kind that is a great leader from the front. He goes out in his Armageddon or Brutix or Raven night after night leading fleets to glory, or grabs his Retriever and sits in a belt strip mining it to dust, cracking open a cold one and chatting with his guys about his favorite sports team or the latest changes made to the game. These are CEOs that I term as the "lead by example" leaders - men and women who are in the frey with their troops and get down and dirty every night, no execptions.

The second type of CEO is the kind that is a great coordinator and planner. This is the guy who has everything organized for his corporation - operations are planned in advance, everyone knows what they're doing and how they're doing it, and he takes care of all the paperwork to make it happen. Most nights he's on handling spreadsheets to make sure the corp stays in the black, and on rare occasions he actually manages to get out and fleet up with his guys, but this is infrequent and more time is spent handling the minutiae than anything else.

Each side has it's advantages and drawbacks. Leading from the front makes you more acutely aware of what goes on with your troops, but means that the paperwork stacks and piles up. Coordinating and planning takes care of the pesky paperwork but leaves your troops wondering if you're not secretly a machine in disguise.

There's nothing wrong with picking one style and running with it, but there are two ways to avoid falling into one or another. The first way is to take a hybrid approach and combine the two. Work with your guys a few nights a week and spend the rest of the time handling paperwork. This is the most practical approach but requires a fair amount of personal balancing The second way is to have one of your trusted lieutenants handle the paperwork or handle the time with the guys. This approach has some advantages, particularly if you lead from the front, but you can be left feeling left out of either end - if someone does your paperwork for you it may not be done to your specifications, and if someone is out with your troops all the time you may risk being replaced.

There are undoubtedly other ways to approach it but most styles involve one of these two methods at it's core.

Security in a corporate world

I'm sure that everyone in EVE has heard by now of the wonderful bait-and-switch move that GoonSwarm pulled on Band of Brothers a few months back. (For those who haven't, the summary is that Goon infiltrated BoB at the Director level of their receiver corporation and then proceeded to dismantle BoB from within) Corporate CEOs and Alliance leaders both look at this with no small degree of fear, because it illustrates greatly what happens when you lack good corporate/alliance security.

The concept of having your corporation or alliance destroyed from within by a high-level betrayal is the one concept that keeps CEOs awake at night. You never want to wake up and log on to EVE only to discover that the corp coffers have been cleaned and the corp fleet of shiny battleships or capital ships are now missing. But, as CCP has shown in the past, corporate espionage is as much a part of the game as anything else.

There are several ways for CEOs to help ease their nightmares and sleep more peacefully (without having to resort to alcohol or sleeping aids... or both).

First and foremost, know your Directors and trust them. No one should have the Director title within the corporation unless you know them well enough and have vetted them enough to trust them with your life (literally in game) and livelihood.

Second, have good practices in place for handling applications from prospective members. There are many ways to go about this - from requesting API keys for verification to screenshots of the EVE login screen to catch alts. As well, having probationary periods in place is a good idea - it shows the applicant that your corporation is both serious about them and takes their security seriously.

Third, pick someone trusted to handle your Internal Security work. This person should be suspicious by nature. Give them the appropriate roles and have them perform audits periodically to make sure that nothing is going on that shouldn't - people aren't receiving any roles or titles they shouldn't and things aren't appearing mysteriously in member hangars.

Fourth, handle corp goods with care. There should be one corporate hangar that only Directors and above have access to - and even there all items should be in secured containers. This will limit the amount of petty larceny that goes on within the corp hangars.

These are just basic ideas but implimenting them in one form or another can save a CEO lots of headaches down the road and reduce the chances of falling victim to corporate espionage.