Casual Raid Leader

The rumors of my demise have been greatly overstated!!!

For the last 5 days, I was on what has to be the worst timed business trip in history.  I scheduled the trip about 5 days before Blizzard announced the release date.  I just about cried right after they did.  So for those who are curious… I got to play the expansion an entire 2 whole days before I was whisked away on business.  So major suckage on that, but some interesting things come of it.

1.  I still am employed and that’s a good thing.
2.  I learned a lot that’s applicable to my job.  Score one for being able to do my job better and more efficiently.
3.  I learned a bit thats applicable to the game.

In case you’re wondering, I was away at what is known as CA World.  Its one of those vendor hosted types of events where yes you suffer through a ton of sales pitch stuff, but the reason you go is to network with peers and steal borrow ideas from people who are doing better than you or different things than you.  So in case you don’t know CA, they make lots of business related software.  That means I work on computers all day… yes I’m a security professional by day, a WoW enthusiast by night.

While out there, I had the distinct honor to sit through a Keynote speech by Jack Welch.  Jack Welch in a previous life was the CEO of GE for about 20 years.  That is an eternity by most business standards.  Now before you start rolling your eyes and thinking…. “OMG he’s going to gush over some overstuffed shirt of a guy who’s got no relation to my life”, understand that if you’ve never heard Jack talk, you have no idea.  This is a very down to earth guy.  He’s a guy who tells it like it is and isn’t affraid to say what I’d deem “non PC” things.  The guy was very very impressive to watch work.

Out of his speech, I really started to think about how it applies to management in general and lets be honest. If you are an officer or a raid leader, you are a manager.  You may not pay these people, but you manage them in one was shape or form.  So while his speech dealt with Management, lets talk about how it can be applied to WoW.

Candid, Open, Honest

One of the points that Jack Welch brought up first and foremost that stuck out in my mind was that strong managers are very candid with their people.  Weak managers coddle their people.  Now don’t confuse the word candid.  Candid does not equal cruel.  Candid means that you have the ability to share openly with your people as well as take feedback openly from your people.

Being candid is about being open and honest with your people.  Its about sharing with them when they are doing very well as well as sharing with them when they screw up.  If you never know that you’re falling down, you are doing them a disservice.  Jack’s point had to do with economic downturns.  Odds are high, that in an economic down turn people will be fired if they are in the bottom 25-50% of the work force.  If your boss never told you that you were messing up, wouldn’t you be surprised if they suddenly let you go?

The same applies in raiding.  If you have people who need help, then its about time that you have those very candid conversations with them.  Let them know what you view as the shortfall and discuss openly ideas on how to fix it.  From the same token, you must be willing to hear from your raiders what you did that messed up and how they would like to see things change.  That doesn’t mean that you have to implement every request, but you have to be willing to discuss your policies openly and the reasoning behind them.  Sometimes you might just learn something.

Enrich, Enhance, Slash

One of the more interesting if not controversial points I heard was what I refer to as the 20/70/10 rule.  The theory here is that if you’ve got a pool of raiders, the top 20 percent you ensure that you keep.  Basically you treat them right, you get them what they need to stay happy.  I’m not sure exactly how I feel about that, but from a business perspective I can see that.  You ensure you keep the best and the brightest.   The same could be applied to a guild as a whole, but its probably more applicable in a raiding guild than a casual guild.

Now the 70 rule is that the next 70% you let them know where they stand.  You follow the rules of candid conversation, but you also ensure that they have the tools they need to enrich or enhance their skill sets.  Basically you coach, you ensure they are growing.  Its also important that you look for leaders among the ranks and train and enhance those leaders.  Everyone can’t be an expert on every class.  So its important to have leaders who can train and grow those under them.

Now the unfortunate 10 rule.  This rule is basically one that states that the bottom 10% should just be dumped.  In terms of raiding, I’d view this as revoking their raiding rights.  These are the people who are in one way shape or form dragging you down.  If you have a pool large enough, your goal here is to trim that bottom 10% to always be raising the bar on the skill and knowledge of your top end raiders.  This means that if you constantly cycle the bottom 10%, then the next people that fill in, for the bottom 10%, need to be better than someone in the 70% to stay.  This constant cycling has the benefit of raising skill level, but should not be considered and extremely casual friendly environment.

Organize, Strategize, Share

The biggest point you need to do is organize yourself and ensure that people around you know where you’re headed.  I will be the first to admit that I’ve been extremely bad about this.  I’ve got this vision on where I want to go with raiding, but I’ve been extremely bad about transferring that vision to others.  So one of my big take aways is that I need to be very forward and candid about my vision.  This means posting my thoughts on where we go as well as what it will mean in the way of changes to the guild as a whole. 

This also means sitting down with the existing raid leaders and strategizing how we go about implementing the vision.  Does this mean all of my vision will remain intact?  No.  What it means is that the vision is a starting point.  Its my shot at where we should go and what we should do to succeed.  Beyond that, its a lot of back and forth to refine it and ensure that it still fits within the framework of our guild.

So for all of your benefit expect to see my vision and structure of raiding posted here this weekend some time.  Where we go from there?  Who knows?

This entry was posted on Friday, November 21st, 2008 at 11:19 am and is filed under Raid Leading, Tips and Tricks. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. Both comments and pings are currently closed.