At present, I have no intentions of reappointing someone to Integration or Roleplay. I’m currently going to assume Culture duties personally, and am working on a new agenda for the remainder of the term. Expect it in a day or two.
Based on the (lack of) answers to the earlier questions, and the fact that Viet and Age of Utopia both seemed to have RL to take care of, a reshuffle of this magnitude may well have been the right move. Maybe (perhaps even likely) the issue was inactivity on the part of some Ministers and inability to communicate or lead effectively for others.
That doesn’t mean we followed a good process to get here. It’s doesn’t reflect great process that Henn’s response to one of my questions was basically just passing responsibility onto their Ministers without discussing their own efforts at outreach or engagement with those same Ministers. If the issues with the performances of these three Ministers were that glaring, then it begs the question of why these changes weren’t made previously. The PM should have enough confidence in their Cabinet, and a good enough relationship with their Cabinet, that it takes more than one Legislator asking a few pointed questions to turn over the entire domestic side of the Cabinet. Or, if the concerns that I was raising about the Cabinet were just that true, the PM could’ve easily addressed the issues themselves previously, either by reaching out to their Ministers or (if needed, as just happened) Ministers resigning or being relieved of their duties. It’s also concerning that the PM didn’t start by answering the extremely straightforward questions that Welly asked in their initial post announcing the changes. That doesn’t leave great confidence that the PM has a plan for how to move their agenda forward from here.
Now, that said, I don’t think this term is irrecoverable – and, honestly, based on what is public so far it would seem the PM made the right call. But, to finish the term strong, I think the PM needs to go back to basics a bit. My biggest questions going forward that I want to hear an answer to are:
- In the first half of the term, it seemed like there was some failed communication within the Cabinet. What was the source of that failed communication? And, more importantly, how will the PM improve it going forward?
- What is the PM’s core agenda for the second half of the term? Who in the Cabinet is responsible for which parts of it and how is it going to happen? Legend outlined a few ongoing projects before they were relieved of their duties – will those projects be continued?
- How is the PM going to improve communication with the public? This is the first we’re hearing out of the Cabinet in a systematic way all term, and that’s something I sincerely hope changes in the second half of the term.
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This all seems rather sudden, Legend and North were removed for apparently not meeting expectations when we were literally days away from revealing the event. From what I have heard, there were no warnings given to either legend or north to up their efforts and and yet they are suddenly removed. Doesn’t exactly seem fair to me when HS got a second chance after the fiasco they pulled in one of their FA terms (no offence to HS, I also agreed with their second chance). It honestly makes me wonder if Henn really came to this decision on their own or did someone else pressure them to do so?
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Nobody else pressured me to make this decision. I’m dispelling this notion immediately, before responding to HS’s questions (which are coming).
HS’s second chance came after a thorough dragging of their name through the mud in the court of public opinion, aka the peanut gallery, and TSP with it, as well as time outside of Cabinet. It’s not a fair equivalence to make.
North had not taken the lead on executing an event of his own, there wasn’t much of anything to judge him on. He was also appointed at the request of Legend, who was relieved alongside him. Legend and I had a conversation on the 9th in MoC Discussions regarding the lack of accomplishments in the term so far. It ended inconclusively, a failure on my part to communicate that I was getting very frustrated with how fast MoC was going seemingly nowhere.
95% of that was myself. A failure to communicate the issues I was having with the Ministers’ work, or lack thereof, a failure to share a particular vision for the term beyond a conglomerate of various, disparate things tied together, a failure to ensure adherence to whatever vision was created. I dropped the ball hard in proper communication after the inaugural address went out.
A brief note that the 5% is from the Ministers either self-recognizing that their activity has decreased past the point of being able to effectively serve or in not communicating to me that they felt directionless, but I cannot assign much value to these as their fault, since it was still my direction to give in the first place and my job to keep an active Cabinet active.
Re-centering myself for the last half of the term, mentally and physically, will be vastly easier now that the college term has concluded and I’m able to not stress out so much on whether I’m passing my courses. Keeping a smaller team of folks to work with is the name of the game for improving communication. With so many people and so much happening, it’s easy to lose the forest for the trees. I have been in good communication with the remaining Ministers, despite the lack of accomplishment in our Defense/FA agendas, and will actively seek the accomplishment of at least one major goal for those areas, both of which are now actively in progress.
I’ll try to update the Coalition on relevant actions taken in the appropriate Committee topics, even if it’s just a conversation on issues with a foreign partner. More sensitive foreign affairs/defense matters would be reserved for the Assembly. I would ask for the Assembly as a whole to ask more questions regarding the affairs of the executive as well, and with more specificity, in case the Cabinet’s answers are unsatisfying. I am also still aiming to have a State of the Coalition ready for the Delegate to read by the end of the month. It would be nice to have that tradition remain, if nothing else does. Work was going to be accomplished on that today, originally.
I’ll bullet list this:
- Successful festival with our HPFOF partners.
- New embassy partner, out of our active consulates.
- Rank rename/retheme brought to a conclusion.
- Some more smaller culture events with our allies. I have one to announce on Discord in a bit, incidentally.
I didn’t run on a platform of big plans and ideas, I don’t intend on introducing any halfway through the term.
I’m responsible for the culture bits. Slab has been working on more outreach to potential embassy partners, and I’ll be looking back and enforcing the new embassy policy this week. Drew has taken up the mantle of rank retheming and been leading the charge with a naval theme, seeking input from the wider force. All of these are already in progress, we’re just going to take them to their end, whether it’s announcing that little progress was made on new partners this term or the lack of appetite for a rank retheme. I’m hopeful on both right now, though.
Robby is going to execute a wiki-article writing competition for roleplay, and I’ll take another look at Legend’s other projects tomorrow. My intent is to not let them go to waste if they’re ready or very close to it, but projects that are a sticky note at most will be canned.
I apologize to the Coalition for failing in my core duties thus far in the term, and I ask for at least some measure of forgiveness, to allow us to finish the term on a stronger note than it started. As always, we are at your service.
I mean, it’s not like I hid my schedule under a rock or something. It was set, and we were sticking to it and checking up on it (December 10th was when we began showing each other our work so we could begin finalizing everything)
Not only did you have the time to tell me that we’d have to move the launch forward, you also had the means to know the launch date incredibly easily. That’s why I take issue with the “nothing done” idea. We were literally right there so close to the finish line, and then I get axed for not doing anything?
Additionally, on the media idea, I no longer have access to the Cabinet Office, but I had made the necessary pings for the Cabinet, since I had already planned out the Newspaper and it was only a matter of writing it, which is easily doable in the time frame I believed I had.
These are not necessarily attached to my points, but I believe they add good context:
I want to say that I had outlined in somewhere else on the discord, but since I can’t find that, it’s irrelevant for now, although it could have been Cabinet Discussion? I’m not sure, I can’t check anymore since obviously.
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That isn’t why I relieved you of your position. Your Ministries (to include On-Site Events) have largely been focused on planning for future events. The few events that did get executed were not reported as successes, raging or otherwise, and I had a growing sensation that your vision for Culture differed from mine. That was confirmed today when you were extremely secretive about your events and the planning process that went into them. It’s not a rebuke of your view of Culture, to be clear, it’s a reflection of redirecting this Cabinet’s energies towards those items that more accurately reflect the vision I’ve laid out.
If you had an outline of that anywhere, it wasn’t a place where I saw it. The only mention of newspaper in cabinet areas was your ping on December 13th asking for inputs from Ministers were were willing to write something up.
A project as big and ambitious as Legend was developing really takes time, and you knew, and followed closely, that. If people really prefer quantity over quality, or something short-term over something long-term, I can’t do anything but tell them they’re wrong. A good idea was being built, but unfortunately he didn’t have the chance to present it when there was so little left.
“going seemingly nowhere” are you kidding?
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There is a genuine benefit to having much smaller, much less ambitious events going on with a greater measure of frequency, especially when those are with our allies and partners in other regions. It’s an easy, tangible thing to plan out and accomplish, it’s good fun for those that can make it, and it’s a useful tool to build up our foreign relations at not much cost to our time and effort.
Oh, right, so that becomes a lot more advantageous than wanting to build something big that would involve a lot more events? I don’t think so.
Legend’s dismissal was unfair and appears to have been done for no justifiable reason. To also say that he “going seemingly nowhere” is hugely disrespectful of his work and perhaps dishonest. The project was going to be presented but, apparently, you didn’t even seek to know before making this decision which, coincidentally, came right after the questions above. What a coincidence!
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Indeed it does, because then there’s a proven track record you can refer to when someone comes through doubting your chops and your ability to pull off a major festival or project. Doubly so if that major project will include “a lot more events”, as otherwise time and energy will be spent on a highly risky endeavor.
A history with projects that many will probably forget in a while. Legend’s project would not have an impact just in one term, as many people seem to want and demand, why this demonstrates “result” and “efficiency”. As long as there are temporary events instead of things that truly integrate the community as a whole, the usual problems (such as the lack of active people) will always continue to happen. Of course this wouldn’t magically solve everything, but it would certainly help. Keep thinking about the present instead of the future and short-term things instead of long-term, the TSP enemies will appreciate it.
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Citation needed. Nobody outside of MoC or the Delegate’s Advisory Committee knew it existed, they could not have an opinion on what its impact should have been.
There is no panacea for inactivity or fewer integrated folks. If there were, and we found it, we’ve have been doing it for a long time. Doing regular events that don’t require much overhead and have few barriers of entry are what can keep folks invested here, much more than singularly pointing to a date in a few weeks or months where ‘something big is cooking’.
When asked, Legend said and you kept quiet about it.
Apparently he had already said about this in October, but Pronun, who is not in the MoC or the DAC, knew about it!
Regular events that are often forgotten. How many “good projects” did we have? Well, I can’t see them now.
That’s not all he said, and he was even willing to share a date privately.
And if you really thought it was so important to publicize the date, Henn, why didn’t you talk to Legend? You are the Prime Minister, you have to talk to your Ministers and not just order them to do things.
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That’s not exactly what you told me. I believe, and I use this rhetorically, for it is a fact that you said “too little, too late” at the end of your reasoning to me. That’s nit “different vision”, that’s “not enough”
I would also like to point out, as has been stated, that things take time to plan. You all talk about the failure of the RMB debates. Yes, they were a failure. I chalk that up to poor planning. They had, and still have, vast potential, but I believe there were put on the wrong platform ultimately. I firmly believe that if I was just pumping out events like some people seem to have wanted, then they would of been of poor quality and I would have been simmilarly confronted for not meeting the standards for a Minister of Culture. I’d rather be fired knowing it was due to a lack of faith, even while it’s explicitly clear to the PM what I’m doing.
And let’s tackle this “secretive” nonsense. Do you all hate surprises? Does it make you want to tear your hair out every time someone hands you a wrapped present, because you don’t immediately know what’s inside? We thought it would be a nice surprise for the entire community, and I wouldn’t ruin that just because a few people couldn’t wait a few days.
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Please give them the respect of properly spelling their name.
Indeed, I didn’t order the Ministers to do much of anything. I was previously content with letting them handle their business and just checking in at random times, but a fundamental belief that where the Cabinet was and where I wanted it to be had been drifting apart for weeks.
A different vision can include a belief in more regular, smaller events. The few events that were ran were definitely too little, too late, since we had no bonafide successs to really point to in the four and a half months you were a Minister.
It was. I explicitly said it was a lack of confidence in your ability to deliver. Granted, my wording is slightly borrowed from my RL work a touch, but it wasn’t a decision I came to lightly.
I appreciate a present more from someone who has given me good presents before, especially if this one is wrapped when the others weren’t.
And instead of talking and warning him about your possible decision, you simply disrespected him and suddenly removed him from his position. Is this the right thing to do? If you really thought about it and it wasn’t just about giving in to pressure, why not talk?
Do you want to talk about respect? Funny.
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@ProfessorHenn let me just say this, as I have said before. I still have the utmost respect for you as a person, but there’s a lot of faith lost in you as a PM. You failed to communicate with your Ministers. You fired three of us, without having any plans to fill them, ultimately deciding to leave two of those spots and fill the the third yourself. Then the OWL Director resigns. In the span of 2 days, you’ve lost four members of the Cabinet. Additionally, while I hold the utmost respect for my former colleagues, you admit that they haven’t done much.
You are directly responsible for picking this Cabinet, including me. Either you horribly failed to communicate with your Ministers, or you picked your Cabinet with complete disregard, since as far as I’m aware three of them left because they are busy irl. Any of my faults are my responsibility, but the fact that the first time I heard I was doing bad is when you fired me is just horrificly bad communication.
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Speaking as a citizen with no prior knowledge of whatever it is your project entailed or when it was supposed to be announced, it does bother me when a minister keeps hyping up a project by making it sound like the next big thing when they won’t even say what it is or when exactly it will be released. That kind of practice seems to be more for the minister’s benefit than for citizens’ ability to know what their government is doing and being able to hold it to account.
If we, as citizens, only know that some unidentified project is always being planned, but that it’s fine because it’s a complex one, we don’t have anything to go from as a way to hold you to account on your progress or lack thereof.
What was your project anyway?
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I made one event secret, I don’t know what the big deal about that was. I feel like this was blown out of proportion and some idea that I’m secretive about all my events was made
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If you would like to know, I’m more than happy to send you a private message about it.
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