[Trolltaxi]

If you want a long living outfit, think about sharing the OL-position with a council of 3 or even 5.

Leading an outfit may be a huge task and sometimes you simply don't feel like messing with the daily "paperwork". Or RL issues keep you away. Maybe you would get too bossy in time and you would alienate your members.

You can pretty much prevent it with a small council on the top of your outfit. The tasks may be divided, one sorts your forums, another one goes after the recruitment, the third is a great leader and good at inter-outfit intteractions and so on.

Having a council means that the high brass is more represented at any time of the day, there is always someone online.

If you don't have a one-person lead it means it is not a dynasty and not only your best buddy has the chance to make his/her way to the top. It may be very motivating for some of the members. They will do their best to impress the outfit, first with good teamplay or just by generally being friendly and fun for everyone, later you can rely him on small task (like leaving the main fight for a galaxy for your next move), he will be willing to lead or he may just stay in the second line and help the squadleaders, platoon leaders with tactical advice. At the later stages he may turn out to be a good leader, fun to follow, he may share his sights on your forums, work on tactics... or he will announce and lead fun events, be it an ATV race or a Liberator night where hundreds of bombers will provide shade for the soldiers on the ground. Anyways, by his work the outfit will be better organized, will have more fun, he will gain reputation throughout the empire and in the eyes of your enemy. And when the time comes, it will be a natural choice to offer him a seat in the council.

This is the carrer of the ideal, motivated and talented outfit member. But it is important to stress out, that he may know at the very moment of his joining, that he may be one of the leaders of this group.

About events. Set up an own forum, and have a sub-forum for that. Post your idea with an exact date and location, if you need special setup, make sure that the spots are filled early.

And be ready that sometimes an event would go waste... you may plan a huge armour column and dedicate the night for armour play, but your empire is cornered on all continents and you struggle to save your last base... Or the enemy is having an Anti-ground reaver event, and the third empire has his LIBnight... So what! Bend your event to an AA!

Leading an outfit needs dedication. Make sure you always have some!