Tinytalk Episode 004: Organizational Analysis

Javelin, a fascinating episode and I loved the log. That it's from 1999 really drives home the point that the mush community has a communal memory it needs to keep alive by reviving and passing down knowledge like this. Thanks!

Intro
Just a short one this time, because I've been busy teaching leadership and organizational behavior to doctors every day for the last two weeks. So I'm going to recycle some things I wrote for a MUSH workshop on organizational problem-solving that I ran back in 1999, but it's still applicable. Let's start with a case that I call "MUSH Ado About Nothing", dramatized with the help of my wife:

MUSH Ado About Nothing

“They’re screwing up the game. I wish you could see that. If you can’t do something about Hamlet, at least, you can kiss your RP staff goodbye.”
Billy sighed as he listened to Desdemona, one of his best RP wizards. MUSH Ado About Nothing was growing, and growing to be more and more trouble.
When Billy started MUSH Ado About Nothing, he didn’t expect it to become a large, popular MUSH. The idea of a MUSH centered around an imaginary meeting of Shakepearean and pseudo-Shakesperean characters, he thought, wouldn’t appeal to too many players. As it turned out, he was wrong. Only a year since its opening, MAAN regularly saw groups of 30 players online each night, and RP events attended by 50 or more. The initial cadre of 4 staff members had grown to 12. Billy was still God and Head Wizard, but he felt these days as if he was losing more and more control over the MUSH.
Billy founded the MUSH with three friends. Romeo was a top-notch hardcoder and enjoyed building as well. Juliet was interested in coordinating RP activities, and doing some softcode on the side. Mercutio coded globals and was an avid builder. Billy maintained the game account. The four set policy by majority vote; Billy had 2 votes in order to break ties.
The expansive growth of the game took its toll on the founders. Juliet retired her wizbit due to lack of time, and Billy recruited players Desdemona, Viola, Othello, Toby, and Puck to serve as RP staff for the game. They worked as an independent committee, coordinating and directing RP affairs. Billy also hired two players, Benedict and Beatrice, to serve as newbie helpers. Meanwhile, Mercutio, in need of more coding and building help, drew on some of his contacts and SuperMUSH, and brought in Hamlet, Rosencranz, and Ophelia. The four quickly began the complicated process of coding an Elizabethan economy, comprehensive rank/status system, a dueling system, and many other intricate coded systems. Many of these systems soon became the envy of other MUSHes for their elegance and verisimilitude.
It didn’t take long for the RP staff and the code team to come into conflict. From the standpoint of the code team, the RP staff didn’t seem to appreciate their hard work—they’d often ignore the coded systems that players were supposed to use, and suggest that players simply RP their duels. They also had retconned a few scenes that resulted in economy snafus that took Hamlet, the econ coder, over a week to untangle.
The RP staff had their own peeves. They felt that the coding team wielded undue influence on the direction of the MUSH, and, through Mercutio, often had Billy’s ear and the benefit of his attention. They, on the other hand, were left to work things out for themselves only to find that their suggestions were disparaged by the coding team and rarely adopted. Hamlet, in particular, made it clear that his coding priorities were set by Mercutio and himself, and if the RP staff wanted something coded, they’d better take it up with Mercutio. As a result, the RP staff had begun to get frustrated, and fewer spent the hours online that had previously been common.
The final straw came when two players, the Duke of Borneo and the Lord of Norwich, fought a duel as climax of an intricate tinyplot that had been carefully built up for two months by Desdemona and the other RP staff members. The plot called for Norwich to finally yield to the Duke, and pledge fealty, allowing him to marry the Duke’s daughter and resolve the conflict in a fashion typical of Shakespearan comedy. The dueling system, however, pronounced the plot a tragedy - the Duke slew Norwich. Only Hamlet and Puck were present, and RL took Puck’s attention off the screen for a critical 10 minutes—when she returned, the damage was done, and the players were either in shocked mourning IC, or outraged OOC—Norwich, in particular, who did not expect his character to die, left in an angry huff when Hamlet informed him that the decision of the dueling system was final. Puck tried to confront Hamlet, but Hamlet logged off. Puck, overwhelmed, soon followed, but word of the scene reached Desdemona the next day.
“Billy, we think this is a great MUSH, and code has its place, but it can’t take the place of RP—and code admin, like Hamlet, have no right to make RP decisions. We’ve thought about it, all five of us, and there have to be some changes. Either he goes, or we go,” Desdemona concluded. “What’s it going to be?”.
Billy’s head spun. He knew that if the coders left, he’d never be able to maintain the code, and HAmlet’s systems were among the best and most complex. But without the RP staff, there was no MUSH Ado About Nothing. No matter what he did, could the MUSH survive? Was it worth the hassle? To be or not to be, he though wryly, isn’t the question. It’s how to be.

That's the case. If you want to think about what you'd do before you keep listening, this is a good place to pause the podcast.

The framework I teach is based on the work of Lee Bolman and Terrence Deal’s book Reframing Organizations; the third edition came out in 2003.
The basic idea is that any organizational situation can be viewed through different lenses, or frames, which will emphasize different aspects. As proposed by Bolman and Deal, there are four frames that are useful to consider in any situation: structural, human resources, symbolic, and political.
The structural frame focuses on how the organization is structured - the hierarchy (or lack thereof), the coordination, the communication channels. I heard both groups initially consider some structural issues - for example, the way the admin are organized at MAAN. This frame usually assumes that problems are based in inefficient or inappropriate structure, and that structural change affords a potential solution.
Structurally, the organization chart has the admin working in silos, separated by function: roleplaying, coding, player help. The coders, in particular, are represented by one of the founding administrators, while the other active founder has taken on a more global oversight role. Communication could probably be improved – it sounds like there's a lot of indirect communication to Billy, rather than direct discussions.

The human resources frame focuses on the needs of the people in the organization, as people. It asks if those needs are being met, and, if not, how could they be better met. It draws our attention to issues of relationships, of expectations, of needs for belonging and validation, many of which are present in this case, and many of which were alluded to in your discussions.
These admin teams demonstrate serious human resource issues. Although there's effective teamwork within each group of admin, each group was differently hired. The coders, in particular, came from outside the MUSH and may have both less familiarity with the game theme and greater cliquishness within themselves. The two groups also have different needs – the coders seem to want to have their elegant code used and appreciated, while the roleplaying staff wants to have their vision of the world respected.

The symbolic frame deals with the organizational culture, myths, and symbols. In many ways, a vision statement serves as an important unifying symbol in many organizations. MUSHes in general have pretty rich org. culture and mythology. When using the symbolic lens, we consider how people bring meaning to the organization around them. In the medical school where I work, an obvious set of symbols has to do with the length (and other features) of the white coat that you wear—it distinguishes med students from residents from attending docs, and thus provides key structural cues as well as some important meaning—hierarchy is preserved here.
Symbolically, there's a fight over the MUSH game culture, the importance of RP vs. coded systems. Moreover, the admin haven't established an organizational culture among themselves that values working things out through compromise or collaboration.

Finally, the political frame focuses on the use of power, broadly defined as the ability to control and direct resources. Political problems often center around who determines how a scarce resource (including, for example, a God’s attention, or a useful bit of coding time) is allocated, and political solutions look for ways to make that allocation fit the goals of the organization.”
As a result, there's political struggle over control of the game. The coders and rp staff have different sources of power, and both groups seem more interested in flexing their muscles than working together. Although Billy is perceived as being the overall leader, his power comes from the good will of the players and admin.

How would you handle this problem? If you want to hear some strategies developed by the workshop participants, who included
Asherah Amberyl Apocalypse Marretta Balerion Vexon Trispis Urza

You can follow the link in the show notes and read the workshop transcript. If you want to suggest your own ideas, reply to the show notes on community.pennmush.org.

News and Notes

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