Guild Bureaucracy: 7 Ways to Cut the Crap

bureaucracy

Does anyone here read Zen Habits? If not, you should add it to your reader. One of Leo’s (the blogger) posts focused on Steps to Take Action and Eliminate Bureaucracy. I was so taken aback by it that I set out to try to apply a few of his concepts to my guild. There are guilds that I know of that spend so much time on organizational aspects and discussion instead of the one thing that matters the most: Action. Let me share with you a few of the steps that I’ve taken to help streamline Conquest and make it lean.

Clear goals

I lay out the objectives in advance. My guys know that on Tuesday nights, Obsidian Sanctum is the first stop followed by both Spider Wing and Plague Wing. There is no discussion before hand about what we’re going to do. It is all premeditated and there is no confusion. We are going to down this boss starting at this time, end of story.

No meetings

A lot of guilds like to have guildwide meetings or officer meetings to discuss things. That’s what forums are for. I won’t hold guildwide meetings because I know some players get bored by them or just aren’t interested. The ones that want to weigh in on an issue know to do it on the forums where it can be discussed there.

No class forums or channels

Is it really necessary to have individual class forums or channels when you only have one Resto Shaman or one Feral Druid? I decided to consolidate the different forums and communications by role instead of by class. I set up tanking forums, healing forums, and DPS forums. It shortens the overall length of the forums and players don’t feel “isolated” From one another. Tanking Paladins can chat with their Warrior and Death Knight counterparts. Holy Paladins and Priests can discuss suggestions for fights like Patchwerk.

Shared bank tab

One of the bank tabs is known as the public tab. People can deposit and withdraw stuff they need from here. Stuff in the tab are generally items of little consequence like Frostweave Cloth or Chilled Meat. People can toss crap in here for other players to withdraw if they can benefit from it. Things like Enchanting mats or more expensive items get sealed in another tab and only an officer can get to them.

Prepared boss briefings

It’s one thing to read up on a strategy. It’s another thing entirely to apply the strategy with your guild. During my spare time, I’ll modify or implement a plan A ahead of time on the forums. I’ll frequently use Photoshop to draw X’s and arrows like football players. I’ll link to strategies on WoWWiki or Bosskillers. Below that, I’ll follow it up by inserting the names of players who have specific roles. I’ll note that Sydera will be healing Brio on phase 2 of this encounter. I’ll state that Kimbo will be taking care of certain ads. It doesn’t hurt to be specific.

Empowered raiders

Using popular raiding addon oRA2, I can set it to auto invite players of a certain rank within the guild and then auto promote officers so that they have an A next to them. All of my officers automatically get one as well as the tanks for target marking. When raids start requiring CC, I’ll auto promote Mages and Shamans so they can mark their own CC targets as it becomes necessary.

Tanking discretion

My tanks have been given full authority to set the pace of the raid. The speed, rate, and amount of trash pulls are at their discretions. That doesn’t mean I can’t halt them. If the raid has a lingering curse or debuff, I’ll ask them to hold the pull. This is especially true if healers are low on mana. But for the most part, they’re on autopilot.

What other methods can you think of to make your guild or raid more lean and efficient?

Image courtesy of: ngould

6 thoughts on “Guild Bureaucracy: 7 Ways to Cut the Crap”

  1. Loot Distribution. That’s a major time consumer. You need a way to efficiently hand out loot and get back to clearing the dungeon. I’d recommend that if possible, keep pulling provided the pullers aren’t involved in giving or getting the boss’s particular drops.

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  2. DPS, Heals, or TANKING is what I did on my guild’s forums back in the day. Something like that. I personally don’t like class talk garbage cluttering up my general forums and places like that. Shove them off into their own little corner. Besides there is nothing they can talk about that isn’t covered on the WoW main forums anyway

    Hudsons last blog post..EA plans to make cuts

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  3. I agree with Stern 100% that even in TBC when the guild I was in re-cleared T5 farm content, the loot distribution took entirely took long. As a guild/raid leader I expect my team to research the gear for the content we’ll be raiding and see which upgrades they’ll be after. That way when/if it drops they’ll be ready to roll. When asking for rolls, placing a 5-10 second time limit and enforcing it would most likely speed things up.

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  4. I’ve read and enjoyed a lot of your posts on WoWInsider, and recently just started jumping to your own blog as well. I just wanted to let you know that this post right here just ensured you a place on the top of my reader list. Your insights into all aspects of the game, especially healing, should not be missed by anyone who wants to improve their own performance. Keep them comin’!

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  5. Interesting. We started with only role specific channels and later introduced additional class channels to increase our efficiency, with moderate success. The combination of both role and class channels allows you to apply coordination where it matters without creating overload.

    The forum is a different matter though… we have 1 forum for all specs and one for all raid discussions. What’s the point of splitting it up? People can select the topics they read and we don’t produce 20 topics a day 🙂

    I will post that ’empowered raiders’ suggestion in our officer forum. Sounds like a good plan. It has been mentioned or encountered in the past but never discussed as a fixed approach.

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