Improving Strategic Outcomes for the 14th Black Crusade with Applied Management Methodologies

In the grim darkness of the far future, there exists only synergy

by Consultor Primis Kurtorian Schillerius
4th Conclave, Applied Meta-Efficiency Departmentum

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Proper organizational dynamics remain a challenge well into the 40th Millennium. Despite significant advances in a wide variety of technological disciplines—from genetic engineering and psychic surgery to behavioral conditioning, cybernetic augmentation, and interdimensional logistics—improper application of management methodologies and organizational culture can spell disaster for even the most mature and well-established tactical fulfillment organizations.

Such was the challenge facing Abaddon the Despoiler and his Black Crusades. Despite more than 10 millennia of expertise in ideologically-aware resource reallocation and over 4 trillion beings liquidated, indisposed, or otherwise served by one of the organization’s four unique service line offerings, the Black Crusade organization had not made consistent or measurable progress towards improving their core KPIs or meaningfully achieving strategic objectives in over five millennia. They needed a partner who could help them analyze, assess, and potentially revamp their outdated and heavily matrixed management structure, organizational philosophy, performance metrics, incentives, and logistics system, enabling them to delivered greater satisfaction to more people more efficiently, while maintaining the core values that have helped them remain the galaxy’s preferred alternative lifestyle, theological, and tactical brand.

Enter Mackenzie & Co. Over the course of an open-ended 2000 year engagement, Mackenzie deployed a core team of 400 practice leads, 8,000 consultants, and over 700,000 analysts to conduct a series of in-depth interviews and assessments of the Black Crusade organization to identify actionable areas for improvement.

The Client

Founded 12,000 years ago through the acquisition and spin-off of strategic resources from the moribund Imperium of Man, Abaddon the Despoiler’s Black Crusades are the Galaxy’s leading provider of alternative administrative, tactical, theological, and interdimensional logistics solutions (as well as applied psychic technology) to a highly specialized enthusiast clientele. They employ a human and xenos workforce of over one trillion technical, support, and operational staff and maintained locations on over 1 million known worlds, as well as more than 7000 franchisees—and growing.

The Challenge

Despite their devoted customer base, early success, and rapid growth, the Black Crusades faced a series of complicated and interlocking organizational hurdles that will be familiar to any ideologically-driven organization seeking long-term success in a highly competitive and diversified market.

Although nominally a single organization, upon review by Mackenzie analysts the Black Crusade organization was found to actually consist of over 4,872 separate P&Ls, each with separate leadership structures, values, and corporate culture. This sprawling hierarchy could be largely grouped into four separate and competing categories, based upon their allegiance to one of the Black Crusade’s four key organizational values: Tzeentch (Knowledge Management), Slaanesh (Customer Satisfaction), Nurgle (Social & Biological Media), and Khorne (Skulls).

Rivalries between divisions were common and fraught. During the period of observation, Mackenzie consultants recorded no less than 7,879 individual instances of both intra- and interdepartmental violence, each of which presented the organization with considerable and ultimately avoidable setbacks, not to mention cost overruns.

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Consider the following exemplar scenario: 

Business Unit A, part of the Knowledge Management division, was tasked with expanding into 300 newly identified target markets and given several full war bands, as well as various other support materials. 

Upon inspection by our team, however, over 60% of the provided war bands appeared to be empty suits of armor animated by some form of elaborate magic; vehicles, including void ships, were found to be lacking in basic maintenance and overrun with several interesting and heretofore undiscovered types of goo and ooze, along with a bewildering array of small unidentified quasi spectral creatures. One of the larger ships was also found to host a small but persistent society of primates, evidently descended from the former crew, whose various rituals, while enthusiastic, were not found to contribute meaningfully to departmental objectives.

In addition, unbeknownst to Business Unit A, Business Units B, C, D, and E (also part of Knowledge Management) were each tasked with the same objective, while also being instructed to eliminate any other Knowledge Management professionals present on the worlds. Business Unit F (Skulls) was likewise tasked with liquidating these same properties, possibly due to pre-existing enmity between the divisions.

Business Unit F was ultimately successful, resulting in the loss of 10,206 Knowledge Management specialists (as well as 17 of our own consultants) and the squandering of a considerable opportunity for cross-department business synergy—a major setback for the larger Black Crusade organization.

Similar conflicts were observed throughout the course of the engagement and presented a major organizational hurdle, despite their contribution to certain KPIs (e.g., Skulls).

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In addition to the challenges present within the Black Crusader organization, Mackenzie & Co. itself had to overcome a variety of especially difficult hurdles throughout the course of the engagement. These challenges included frequent loss of human resources to minor and major accidents and/or warfare, illness (both physical and mental), planetary rebellions that interrupted key deliverables, encounters with rival Drukhari consulting forces, billable hour inversions due to nonlinear time, the defection of the entire Mackenzie accounting department to Tzeentch, loss of skulls and/or organs due to misunderstanding with Khornate middle management, cost overruns due to extended lunch orgies, and the rapid accumulation (growth?) of various oozes and viscous goo in several conference rooms.

Partway through the engagement, a Gellar Field malfunction likewise caused the deaths of 7,000 analysts and 15 consulting leads who became lost for a period of approximately 200 years in “the warp”, an area of apparent instability whose existence was not known to our team at the beginning of the engagement (and therefore was not included in our original estimates and quote). Fortunately, their notes were later recovered and proved very helpful once they had been thoroughly wiped off. We at Mackenzie & Co. would like to express our deepest condolences to their families and descendants, and sincerely thank them for their contributions to the project’s ultimate success.

The Solution

After a period of analysis and deliberation (approx. 83 years — see Fig. B in attached file), Mackenzie & Co. presented and helped implement a variety of far-reaching organizational changes throughout the Black Crusade organization.

Due to the unique culture of each of the Black Crusade’s business units, a separate strategy was developed for each:

The Tzeentch / Knowledge Management P&L proved the most straightforward to address. Although several initial proposals for project management systems were considered, senior leadership was eventually convinced to adopt a methodology uniquely in line with their organizational values: Lean Agile. They have subsequently thrived under this new system, building out a separate PMO and hiring or requisitioning no less than 36,000 additional project managers in the two months following the adoption of our recommendations.

The Slaanesh / Customer Satisfaction contingent was persuaded to allocate at least 10 minutes of time per week to meetings with other departments for the purposes of knowledge sharing and fostering a collaborative atmosphere. Although this recommendation was originally rejected, attitudes changed considerably when it was agreed that these meetings could be conducted in the nude. By all accounts, this new practice has been extremely fruitful, if messy.

The Nurgle / Social & Biological Media division suffered from extremely high attrition, albeit offset by unusually quick workforce growth and onboarding, as well as an especially robust (if idiosyncratic) health plan. A liberal PTO policy was adopted throughout the division, with an emphasis on rest, relaxation, and therapeutic visits to highly populous worlds. This new policy has not only significantly improved workforce satisfaction, but allowed them to accelerate new customer acquisition and viral content generation.

The Khorne / Skulls division presented a unique challenge. Our observations had identified that overperformance on their admittedly important skull-based KPIs was presenting a logistical burden, requiring an expensive and difficult to maintain fleet of cargo craft to gather and transport department deliverables (e.g., skulls). Senior leadership reacted extremely negatively to the notion of intentional performance walk backs, citing an almost unlimited need for additional skulls, bones, and blood for a wide variety of practical and organizational purposes, ranging from office decoration to personal hygiene and even tactical gear.

The Mackenzie team eventually identified a unique efficiency: child skulls. Although frequently overlooked as a building material, transitioning to this new and emerging resource would allow the maintenance of the division’s KPI overperformance while significantly reducing transport costs due to their lower mass and reducing the organization’s carbon footprint due to the much faster and more resource efficient production process, when compared to adult skulls of similar quality. An external design firm was retained to present senior leadership with several novel throne designs to conform to the unique form factor and tensile strength of child skulls. The ergonomics of the new “Throne Jr.” have proven so popular within the organization that leadership is presently exploring its release as a standalone commercial product.

Development is expected to commence once a suitable source of additional children has been identified by our consultants. (The use of toddler skulls has also been explored, but rejected at this time due to poor quality control.)

Conclusion 

It has often been said that you cannot teach an old dog new tricks. The same, as it turns out, cannot be said of extradimensional daemonic entities. Since the adoption of our recommendations, workforce satisfaction is high and KPIs are up across the board. The Black Crusade organization is currently undergoing a period of unprecedented expansion into new markets, with a concomitant increase in new customers and franchisees.

Through careful application of modern management theories and organizational science, Mackenzie & Co. was able to deliver unprecedented results to a key provider of essential services and rites to the galaxy, with only a comparatively marginal loss of life and materiel. At the end of the day, that’s what it’s all about.

For more information on how Mackenzie & Co. can help your organization, government, warband, legion, or cabal, contact our team by astropath today.

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