[Draft2] Guild Role Recommendations + Coordination

[frogmonkee]

Title: Role-Based Guild Coordination Reorganization
Authors: frogmonkee#6855
Squad: frogmonkee#6855 (Champion), bpetes#9961
Date Created: August 6th, 2021
Date Posted: August 6th, 2021

[Working Doc] Role-Based Guild Coordination Reorganization

Summary

This proposal clears up some confusion in the previous iteration and specifies a process for the election of 4 optional roles to each Guild:

• Guild Organizer
• Talent Coordinator
• Secretary
• Governance Coordinator

Upon election of these roles, we kick-off meeting will be scheduled to clarify the scope and purpose of each role, after which guilds will be left to operate independently.

IMPORTANT: Please note that the proposal is suggestive, not prescriptive. At the end of the day, each guild will operate independently, meaning Guilds can choose to participate however they wish to. In other words, these four roles were inspired by similar needs across all guilds, but can be implemented in different ways. The goal of this proposal is twofold:

1. Provide a possible framework for guilds that have not considered role-based operations
2. Decide whether the DAO wants to attempt meta-level coordination.

BACKGROUND

With the launch of Season 1 last month, the DAO has run into a few operational roadblocks that are consistent throughout guilds. These roadblocks largely include coordination between different guilds and codifying existing responsibilities within guilds.

A model for decreasing friction was discussed in this forum post: Framework for Guild Coordination

Upon soft consensus on the roles presented in the linked forum post, this proposal moves towards implementation. Note that project coordinators were deliberately left out of scope, as they will tie into a possible Project Governance reorganization that is currently in the works.

MISSION & VALUES ALIGNMENT

DAOs are non-hierarchical, consensus-driven organizations. To scale BanklessDAO, we must have people dedicated to certain responsibilities. Doing so may seem like adding power structures, but this can be done in a non-hierarchical way.

In order to facilitate better coordination within the DAO, this proposal packages sets of responsibilities into four important positions that serve at the behest of the guild, not to direct its functioning.

SPECIFICATION

The four roles were thoroughly explored in the previous forum post, but the cliffnotes are:

• Guild Organizer: At the center of all guild administrative tasks. Responsible for meetings, CC updates, following up on action items, and the like
• Talent Coordinator: People management within the Guild. Responsible for welcoming new members, scouting for new talent, and finding members with available bandwidth.
• Secretary: Ops role within the Guild. Responsible for taking notes on meetings, tracking multisig inflow and outflows, maintaining Notion, and tracking reimbursements
• Governance Coordinator: Helps guide Guild members through the governance process. Responsibilities include assisting and editing proposals, on top of governance changes, and increase engagement in Guild governance activities.

These roles are NOT mandated, but just a possible framework for how these roles may exist within guilds. Guilds do NOT have to participate, or can modify these roles to fit their needs.

It is important to note that a single person can occupy multiple roles and a role can have multiple people.

Elections

For guilds that are looking for direction, we recommend elections be held within the next two weeks: One week for deliberation and another week for voting - if this can be done earlier, even better! Each guild holds their own elections.

Elections can be held as Discord polls, restricted to those with the appropriate Guild tags, just like this example here.

Important Parameters include:

• Allow Anyone To Add Poll Options
• Single Vote Per User (let members elect multiple members)
• Role Restriction

This voting schema is a suggestion and can be modified based on how the Guild believes it should move forward.

Furthermore, guilds have the discretion to decide if a position will have multiple members (hence negating the single vote per user function). For example, Dev Guild may have multiple Talent Coordinators, but at their own discretion.

For guilds that will participate, these elections would be completed before the community call on August 20th in preparation of the kick-off call.

Kick Off

Upon election, we wish to have a one-time kick-off call to scope out the responsibilities of the role. Guild Organizers, Talent Coordinators, Governance Coordinators, and Secretaries will all meet with their peer group to refine the scope of their roles and clarify any other items. This will happen at the beginning of each season. Similarly, a debrief meeting will happen at the end of each season.

A lettuce meet link will be sent out on August 20th to schedule for the following week, open to all, but focused on individual role responsibilities.

This meeting is not mandatory, but will provide some meta-level structure on how each role could possible operate and their intended responsibilities.

Re-election

At the end of each season, re-elections can be triggered for one of three reasons:

• Competing bid by another DAO members, either to replace or add a member to the role
• Proposal to remove DAO member from their role
• DAO member stepping down from role

If any of these three scenarios are met, elections can be held as per the one-week election cycle outlined above. If these three conditions are not triggered, the existing DAO member will retain their role into the next seasons.

FINANCIAL IMPLICATIONS

This proposal does NOT set compensation. However, it does request that all elected members track their hours worked over a month period after kick-off. This data can then be used to determine compensation going forward and retroactively compensated. This will happen at the guild level.

A sample calculator can be seen here using an hourly model. This does NOT have to be the model if a guild wishes to compensate differently.

Guild Coordination Costs

SUCCESS METRICS OR KPIS

None, as this proposal is suggestive, not prescriptive.

NEXT STEPS

• Deliberate on this proposal
• Hold elections for each guild. Not mandated, but recommended.
• Host four separate kick-off calls on the week of August 23rd

• Host kick-off calls on the week of August 23rd
• Let guilds manage role responsibilities on their own

[Kouros]

The framework is interesting and it adds some structure to the Guilds. Defined roles and responsibilities in my opinion are essential if we want this organisation to succeed.

It is a great starting point, but I can see roles having extra functions in different guilds if they wish so and have that extra work.

For example, in the Treasury Guild I have added financial reporting to the guild organiser at this point. This can be a separated role and we’ll probably separate it in the future as it is not specifically a Guild Organiser function, but it’s essential for the DAO.

[cart_collector]

This is a brilliant proposal.

Why? Because up until now the DAO’s guilds (and by extension - the whole DAO) is acting like a loose group of individuals grouped by interests and skills.

These roles will solidify the guilds’ and make each one of them act as a single entity.

Our current approach is:

There is job X, who can and wants to do it?

And someone volunteers for the job.

What will happen next is:

There is a job X, how can we collectively, as a team, work on it. There is a problem Y, let’s pool together our skills and experiences and brainpower and solve it.

This implies building on top of each other’s ideas, swapping files between each other, frequent brainstorming sessions. But also opens up other hard questions like how much everyone gets paid. Also, a thick skin is required for the (in the case of the Art Director for the Design Guild) tell people that their work is not up to standard.

I’ve already seen the need for such collective action both in the Design Guild and the Marketing Guild. I just had a great call with the Design Guild where we all agreed that we need to be more like a studio than a group of designers competing for work with each other.

Once again, @frogmonkee was one step ahead and saw it before us. Great job!

[frogmonkee]

Yes! They definitely will and should have more roles. This is just a base recommendation for four roles that ALL guilds will benefit from, univerally.

[Eagle]

This is a very helpful guideline for all the Guilds. I do not think that a fixed structure is absolutely needed given the fluid essence of DAOs, but the description of the roles gives an important indication about what is needed in order to organize a Guild.

In my opinion, the expenses in BANK (indicated in the “Costs” template) would be too high. The focus of remuneration should not be on the organization of the work, but on the “output” generated. A this stage, 300 BANKs per hour (for organizational tasks) seems fine to me.

[tommyolofsson]

If you make that difference (1k/h for projects and 300/h for guilds) I assume it will be a lot harder for guilds to find people willing to put in 10h/week for 30% of what they could get by doing project work. If we’re setting a DAO standard for payment per hour, I think it should apply to positions as well.

[Bpetes]

100 In favour. this draft with its revisions is super tight @frogmonkee; nice work!

[ernest_of_gaia]

Just a quick note on the use of the word Coordinator in the Talent and Governance Roles. A Coordinator, coordinates and manages things that are predefined in order to get things done. A Focalizer focuses and nourishes effort within an ever changing field of scope, in order to foster reciprical relationships. it is the difference between power over and empowering a group. Wonderful work from ya’ll!!

[frogmonkee]

This framing is important. Thank you for dropping your thoughts

[tommyolofsson]

Nice one! However I think we should also consider the global nature of a DAO, would a Guild Focalizer be a clear term for non-English natives?

[frogmonkee]

I’m not going to follow through with this post. It seems like guilds are taking these roles and adopting them organically. I think this post has provided some good foundation and can be left to guilds to operate.

[Grendel]

I confess that I was a bit blown away by the decision. The idea of ​​a common framework was positively received - in my opinion - by all the guilds. Your contribution in this was remarkable and it would be unfair for all your work to be lost.
If the choice - which I agree with and which was also clarified by you at the origin - is not to impose a framework but to create a template for it, then 100% of the 19 votes cast are in favor of this and we can start working at guilds level.

[frogmonkee]

Yes, let me clarify: I’m not planning on hosting any coordination kick off calls. I do think we should use this as a template for other to follow.