How To Know When Your Cabal Has A Crisis It Can't Ignore

Here's a business tip from the Harvard Business Review: LINK to original article

One of the great truths of the universe - as unyielding as the laws of thermodynamics - is this:

Crises happen.

It's human nature.  Generally, as a cabal manager* you can deal with these as they come up, but then, something happens, and you have a sense of Keanu-like "whoa" as you realize this problem is on a whole new level compared to the others.

Suddenly, this thing becomes a turning point for the whole group. Often these kind of crises may take months to develop, but then are sprung in one spectacular moment. It's when you realize that "the way we do things around here" is suddenly no longer workable, and there needs to be some sort of large-scale paradigm shift in who or what the cabal is all about. This is not necessarily a negative thing (though it certainly may be).

That's something we can't ignore!
(From Funcom's media library)

• Maybe it's a RP thing, where after a months of casual RP, you realize that NOW is the time to take the cabal in a somewhat different direction that makes a lot more sense or provides excellent RP opportunities.
• Or maybe it's an OOC cultural shift that you realize will make your cabal a kinder, nicer place to be, or more appealing to various demographics.
• Or maybe it's a personality thing, and part of your cabal decides to strike out on their own as an entirely new group.
• Maybe it's an organizational thing. When your cabal was smaller, organization was casual. Now that you're bigger, more structure is needed.

Regardless, the big unignorable moments involve a culture crisis within your group.  At this point, as a cabal manager you have a choice to either ignore it or embrace it.

Spoiler alert: Ignore at your own peril. 

Sometimes, these are just the kind of changes that are desperately needed by your community.

Sometimes the crises start making your player-base start questioning what your organization stands for, or what it's really trying to do.  If you ignore it, you're looking at (perhaps) stifling dissent, bickering, and paralysis.  If you embrace it, you're looking at (perhaps) deep change which may lead to a stronger group.

So how do you know when you're at that moment where you have a challenge that you cannot ignore, or treat with the same old methods.  The Harvard Business Review suggests that, given their analyses of business cases, these unignorable moments have four characteristics in common.

1. They are public.
2. They are irreversible.
3. They are systemic.
4. They challenge identity.

They are public.

Your definition of "public" may vary. This might mean it's widely visible to people inside your organization, or even visible to people outside of your organization. Perhaps it was something that snowballed on Twitter or on the public TSW or TSW-RP.com forums.  Maybe it was something that happened in one of the more populated areas in game.  Regardless, there is a large group of people interested in, perhaps invested in, the outcome of the crisis.

They are irreversible.

Once it's said in public, there are no takebacks. No amount of "retcon" of RP is going to fix the way people's feelings have changed because of the crisis.  People might forgive, but they aren't likely to forget.  Whatever happened, it's going to change the way people think about your group, or the way the people in your cabal think about that cabal.

They are systemic.

Unignorable moments are, at their root, based on "the way we do things around here."  Maybe it's the way someone feels recruits are being handled, or the way the leadership of the cabal works, or the balance of the cabal's focus on PvE versus RP events. Regardless, they are a root-level challenge to the way the cabal has been in the past.

They challenge identity.

The unignorable moment - because it is systemic - can bring up uncomfortable uncertainty about the organizational identity.  Are we a light RP cabal or have we turned into a heavy RP cabal?  Are we a RP cabal or have we turned into a more PvE/Social cabal?  Are our characters the bad guys, or are they really the good guys? There becomes a dissonance between what the group was and what it is becoming.

The flip side.

Change is terrifying, and the unignorable moment is the herald of change.  It's far, far, far better to realize that you are in a position where your cabal must change, and to manage it mindfully, rather than to just react to things as they occur.  The way the cabal management approaches the unignorable moment can define the future course of the group - for the better!



* Cabal manager is an inclusive term that indicates a cabal leader, a cabal officer, or a cabal veteran that is widely looked up to even without a formal leadership title.

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Outside comments:

"Crisis management is critical to cabal management. And it becomes even more important for the leadership to identify it and have a strategy for how to handle it rather than playing things "off the cuff". Emotional responses aren't going to help anyone."

Jonray - The Secret World Forums, 12-02-2014