posted 02-03-99 06:56 PM ET        

As for the Hive council structure, I was thinking of something a little less well defined, with an upper limit of around 8 members to the senior council (Shengi is the permanent 9th), and many more in the junior council. While the senior council has more or less defined responsibilities, the junior ranks are less managerial, instead being filled more on the basis of talent than authority (skilled courtisans, if you will). Being a member of the junior council of advisors shows you to be one of the elite in your field, whether this is science, martial arts, history, spying or whatever - your skills are amoung the best, and your services are on call to Shenji Yang whenever required. While this certainly don't preclude management of an area of responisbility, it broadens the field somewhat.

posted 02-03-99 09:50 PM ET            

Considering the size of the faction, I would
think that the number of council members
cannot exceed 40 in number, and all
of them must be specialists in many areas.
Yang is the absolute head of the Hive,
but the council will meet with Yang everytime to discuss details on each operation while the final decision is made by Yang.

I offer a modified version of my original plan: 8 permenent Senior Council members,
only replaced when one dies or under special circumstances. These 8 members are the best at what they do. Each of the 8 will have 2 junior members as Left and Right hand Helpers, junior members are often much younger than Senior members, and are the brightest of Hive. However, the junior member's performance will be evaluated, and they can be replaced if they're ineffectual at their positions

In my opinion the Hive should be a well organized and regid government.Well defined branchs of the govern bodies.

I propose that the 8 Branches include the following:
R&D: 2 departments, R&D1 and R&D2. Both are headed by Junior council members, each department compete for funds base on their accomplishments. Focus on direct application of techs to practical uses.

Economics: Specialize in trade as well as internal functions, two branch each headed by junior members.

Defense: Two branchs; Military and Probe(covert ops).

Faction relations: The diplomatic department of Hive.

Internal/People: Focus on controling the population. Maintains files on every Hive citizens. Directing work efforts etc. If
any other departments are short on man, they must come to this department to get extra hands.

Agriculture(For lack of better word): food, research on native life etc.

and two more....(could be secret departments)

So, Shining do you have more ideas? Counter points? Or maybe this is the exact opposite of what you thought. Drop me a line...

posted 02-03-99 10:14 PM ET            

I do think that the head council of the Hive would be made up of the most competent people available. I think most other functional areas would be more ad hoc, though, with the manager of each small project given a relatively large degree of autonomy, but having responsibility for the success or failure of the operation, and reporting directly to the council. E.g. a factory administrator would be expected to run the day to day operations of his factory, but would be required to explain shortfalls in production directly to the council. This allows information to percolate up to the decision makers very quickly, and insulates the entire society from a single manager's poor decision to try to handle a problem at his or her own level instead of going further up the chain. I think that there would be a big effort at monitoring everything (sort of a continuous audit) to make sure that everything was going according to "plan". This goes well with the Hive's emphasis on security, since continuous monitoring would be required for security purposes anyway. I think they'd try to institutionalize the monitoring, such that it was an everyday part of things, rather than something like the IRS showing up at your door and asking to see your receipts. It would be more like there's a monitoring agent at every meeting of any importance, to keep track of all the decisions that are made.

posted 02-03-99 11:08 PM ET            

Thanks for your input, they're always welcome.

My way of thinking did not include middle managers, the advisors are the only ones in control of each department, while the
people under them has a degree of freedom to go about their things.

so the government structure of Hive at this point(with limited population) in my opinion looks like this:

Chairman Yang------8 Senior advisors----16 or 24 junior advisors, 2or3 per department--------Everyone else.

posted 02-04-99 01:16 AM ET            

What I would advocate is that instead of having people reporting to the junior advisors, different work groups report to the council collectively, but the senior advisor takes a special interest in his or her area of expertise, while the junior members serve as sort of "roving problem solvers and trouble shooters" (sort of like Darth Vader's job ) within their departments, applying their expertise wherever they could help, instead of being directly involved with management.

I imagine that you also need front-line managers to actually direct the work of individuals (e.g. factory foremen, seargants in the army, etc.) which haven't been represented in your diagram.

I just think that the Hive, in keeping with it's "social experimentation" nature wouldn't fall back on old-fashioned management practices, like hierarchies. But, that may just be my biases showing through . (I notice in my job that the level of cooperation I get from people is inversely proportional to the number of levels of management you have to go through before we are both subordinates of the same person).

posted 02-05-99 08:49 PM ET            

Back to the case at hand: I don't think there is actually too much difference between our three suggestions, especially given that there are only around 1000 people in the Labyrinth at this stage (as Boro nicely pointed out, this makes having a junior council of 100 members a somewhat inflated notion).

I more or less go along with ZhanC's model, with one or two caveats based on opinion or trying to conform to characters already created.

Senior council:
Composed of eight members, each of whom each head of a Sector of Hive operations. Chairman Shenji Yang is the ninth member of the council, retaining a casting vote (currently he governs mainly through influence and fear than any iron fist power structure), as well, Shenji is head of the Internal Monitoring Sector - the Hive's intelligence networks. It is very difficult to remove a Senior council member, short of death or 'special circumstances' (a Hive euphemism for displeasing the I.M.S). There is little management substructure beneath each senior advisor (remember, each person is responsible for around only 250 or so people at this stage).

The full title for a senior council member is 'Advisor to the Chairman', though most are simply known as Senior Advisors.

Junior Council:
Composed of roughly 5% of the Hive's adult population, these are elite people whose skills, knowledge, or position of authority makes their views of use to the Senior council. Each reports directly to an individual Senior Advisor, but all may serve any member of the council unless expressly forbidden to by their Sector.

Being a junior advisor is often more a title of rank than a position of power, the Hive equivilent of a Squire. Individual Sectors appoint Junior Advisors when appropriate, and each potential candidate must be throughly vetted by the I.M.S. But becoming a Junior Advisor does allow political privileges - both the chance to speak out at assembly meetings and, if required, to vote during referendums.

As well, each Sector tends to appoint Junior Advisors based on its need - Manufacturing and Health/Agriculture usually appoint those in management positions (due to their large and complex operations), while R&D tends to favour the views of its elite scientists and engineers. Perhaps due to their nature, very few conventional military personal become Junior Advisors, their Sector instead taking orders directly from the top, often in response to the opinions of other Sectors and the assembly. And the I.M.S has no Junior advisors at all.

Structure: 'Senior Council of Advisors to the Chairman'

Research: Joseph Zlydev (5 junior members)
Health/Medicine: Mary Chase (2 junior members)
Exploration: Edmond Tehicimon (2 junior members)
Industry: ???? (5 junior members)
Military: ???? (2 Junior members)
Economy/Trade: ???? (3 Junior members)
Logistics Sector: ???? (4 junior members, inc. Howath Ubeya)
External Monitoring: ???? (4 Junior members, inc. Dorian Mariot & Hazel August)
Internal Monitoring: Shenji Yang (No junior members)

posted 02-05-99 09:24 PM ET            

I think it's a mistake to assume that heirarchies are necessary for everything, just like it's a mistake to assume that the only way to run a military force is through iron discipline and a chain of command. If I'm not mistaken it was common in both the ancient greek military and pirate ships for the officers to be elected from the ranks rather than to be appointed from on high (anyone with a better grasp of history can correct me). The same principle (i.e. non-orthodox management practices) can apply to the Hive. It's just an idea. I just think it's a shame to not include "social experiments" like different management styles within your version of the Hive government.

My model would simply suggest that for most task you have a large number of actual workers, a few "managers" who do the actual planning and whatnot for their small group (not more than 20 or so people) and these managers have a great deal of autonomy, but also a great deal of insight into what their contribution to the overall plan is. These managers would be directly accountable to the council, but in practice the council-member who was most familiar with their operations would take a special interest and make suggestions and offer the assistance of the special "trouble-shooters" to make sure nothing gets out of hand. It's sort of a distributed-responsibility / centralized-accountability system, where a central body (the council) sets overall direction, but relies on the individual contributing segments (the small teams) to carry out their parts of the overall goal. In practice, the small-team managers would probably also be very cooperative with the ohter small-team managers, since that would tend to be a productivity enhancer.

Oh well, neither of you seem to like my idea .

posted 02-05-99 10:04 PM ET            

How is this different to the current structure proposed? (I don't disagree with your model, in that I can't see the difference between the two ideas suggested) I suggested a small group of people in charge, all of whom are able to attend an 'assembly' at which they contribute to the overall vision. Junior members may serve any Sector when required, except when forbidden by their immediate Senior. Hence you could have explorers working with economy/trade to establish routes to the UoP, along with the External Monitoring Sector to establish a spy there.

My point about hierachies still stands: it's very difficult to organise any kind of activity without a boss. There are no examples of it happening. Every tribe has a chief, every mob has an agitator, every swarm has a queen. Iron discipline and a firm chain of command are essential to any military operation - if you get soliders disobeying orders because they don't like the sound of them, you have a rabble. And often those orders might have saved their lives, or the lives of many many more men.

posted 02-05-99 10:35 PM ET            

I disagree with you about "Iron discipline and a firm chain of command" being "essential to any military operation". I don't have any more concrete examples than I've already given (and I'm not 100% sure on those), but my common sense tells me it's not true. Take the hypothetical case of democratically elected officers. Why would this be a worse system than the "promotion from above" and "officers and enlisted men are on different career tracks" system?

I also despise the "just a police state" notion of the Hive (you can probably find some of my Hive threads in the Factions forum if you set the "since X days" think back a bit). I view them more as a collectivist organization who recognize that giving up "useless" civil rights (like the ability to protest against a government which is doing a good job anyway) is a small price to pay to remove trouble-makers, agitators, and enemy agents.

posted 02-05-99 11:02 PM ET            

I take your point about the junior council (not all of whom are "management types" by the way) but I think that your idea should be applied just a little further down the chain of command. Having a large, complex civilisation (as the Hive hopes to become, obviously) means that the ruling council can't take care of everything, no matter how good the information networks get. They are in charge of the 'broad picture', to use company jargon, to which the junior advisors will contribute their knowledge of science, tactics, politics, and what is presently going on in the various Sectors of the Hive.

BELOW that level, is where you get the indepence from management that I believe you are refering to. Once given a project, the artisans should be free to complete it in their own way, answerable to the management of that Sector (ultimately consisting of the Senior Advisor and their management staff, which may or may not include some Junior advisors on it).

I believe what you are referring to are the mechanics of each sector, and how they operate in conjunction with the other sectors. This is different from central government, which the two councils are responsible for.

posted 02-05-99 11:44 PM ET            

That's a good sign .