Index Council - 28 Feb term end (poll)

Governance Index Council
1

Summary

With the term for the Index Council due to end on the 28 of Feb - this post seeks community feedback on the next steps to ensure a peaceful transition of power. No storming of congress here please!

This post also covers how we best navigate @jdcook and @mel.eth’s recent departure from the Council.

So what happens to the Council after the 28th?

The Index Council was always billed as an experiment, and every member of the Council has learnt a great deal about what it means to be a steward and leader of this great DAO.

After the 28th of February we are keen to take these learnings from our Council members and community and run a series of deep drive retrospective workshops exploring:

  • What worked, what did the Council achieve?
  • What didn’t work well? What mistakes did we make?
  • What were the personal challenges and frustrations did our Council members and community experience?
  • What would we change in future if the Index Council is to continue?

We will also focus these discussions around…

  • More clearly delineating Council responsibilities
  • Exploring how the Council can better support “delegated decision making” and empower “win teams” who can work towards resolving major issues and decisions points
  • Reassessing the number of individuals who need to be on the council and the election mechanism
  • Reassessing the Council’s term length

Ultimately the aim of the workshops is to develop a new proposed framework for how the Index Council would operate in Season 1 and beyond. The community would then vote on this.

Index Council Current priorities

Index Councils current priorities are:

  • Priority hiring
  • Nest funding
  • Set <> Index relations

Of these, we anticipate only activity around “Set <> Index relations” will be unresolved past the 28th of February.

However, currently, with @jdcook moving away from his role on the Council, we find our conversations with Set are lacking the technical and product expertise needed to ensure these discussions are most productive.

Two options

We present two possible options we could take with the Council, both of which we feel would minimize disruption and enable us to largely continue with “business as usual”

Option 1 | The Council is dead, long live the win team

  • Council disbands on the 28th of Feb.
  • Week commencing 7th of Feb, the Council will appoint a “Set<>IC Win Team” to join existing Council members in their discussions with Set. This will include Ed (engineering) and Miles (Product).
  • Past the 28th of Feb, there will be no further Council activity until the community chooses to elect a new Council in Season 1 - or disband with the concept of a Council entirely.
  • Emergency or urgent situations that arise will be routed through our normal governance process.

Option 2 | Continuity is king

  • Council continue in their position after 28th of Feb. Their remit will only cover current priorities which are yet unresolved - primarily Set <> Index relations.
  • The Council will address any emergencies or decisions that lack a clear owner that arises.
  • The Council will appoint two additional representatives from Product & Engineering to provide technical expertise in the Set <> IC discussions (Ed and Miles).
  • The current Council members will stay in position until either a new council is formed, or the community decides to move away from the Council model.

We feel both of these two options will enable continuity as we enter Season 1 - and will ensure minimal disruption to Index Coop activity. If you feel there would be any alternative options we should consider, please share these below.

  • The Council is dead, long live the win team
  • Continuity is king

0 voters

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I just want to say a huge thanks to the council members who have worked tirelessly over the last 3 months - they have not been easy, tough decisions have had to be made and without this council, I feel we would not be in the position we currently are in to positively drive forward into season 1!

I would however like to see a proposal put forward by the Index Council similar to the nest proposals around its vision for season 1. I think this will allow us to really focus on what needs to be delivered. This will flow nicely into a proposal outlining the specific authority that the council has in Season 1 to satisfy those deliverables. Defined decision-making authority is not clear at the moment.

I’d like to see the current elected council members continue, an entire reshuffle in my opinion sets us back to day 1, a council needs more than 3 months in order to impact real change. I would however like to see an additional two members added as advisors which will be best appointed once the objectives of season 1 are clarified.

I look forward to seeing what the Index Council has in store for season 1. :rocket:

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Echoing Elliott’s comments, many thanks to the Council for their hard work.

I suspect many people view the Council as the closest the Coop has to a Board of Directors. In that light I would expect the Council to be responsible for:

  • Strategic leadership - Formulate and implement the plan for the Coop to achieve financial self-sufficiency
  • Talent - Recruit, empower, incentivize and develop the Nest leaders who will in turn do the same for their teams
  • Financial oversight - Ensure the Coop is adequately resourced and that resources are used appropriately
  • Governance - Establish frameworks for decision-making
  • Representation - Represent to the Coop to the broader ecosystem
  • Compliance and ethics - Ensure compliance and ethical standards

I don’t think the Council should be responsible for ‘emergencies or decisions that lack a clear owner’ since this is directly inconsistent with empowering Coop members. If someone is best-positioned to solve the problem (ie, closest to it, has the largest stake, or has the most appropriate skills) then – guess what – that person owns the problem. Saying the Council will solve these problems creates a perverse incentive for people to ignore problems knowing they’ll eventually get escalated to the Council. (I appreciate that in practice many of the hardest problems will come to the council but you shouldn’t show your hand that early.) We want to recruit and develop the best people in the industry and empower them to solve the hard problems. Otherwise, what are they here for?

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Just wanted to echo @ElliottWatts 's thoughts here: generally, I’m in favor of empowered leaders and respect everyone who sits on the Council, but specifically unsure of what Council’s success looks like and where they can be most effective. A S1 proposal would be a great vehicle to hammer that out!

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It’s mentioned it will be discussed after Feb 28, but having some insight into the achievements of the Council so far, might help with the vote.

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Echoing all the comments above, thanks to the Index Council for all the hard work so far.

In line with @ElliottWatts and @catjam comments would love to see the council take a similar approach to the Nest proposals. The Council has done a great job in providing the focus and main objectives for each Nest and the role they play in making Index Coop successful. However, the role of the council in all of this is not clear. The council providing their main objectives and success metrics will give the community more transparency on the remit of the group, as well as being able to keep the council accountable by assessing whether the group have met the targets they set out.

Overall, I’m in favor of having a group of leaders at the Coop which can help tackle the bigger problems and speed up decision making.

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I have voted AGAINST continuing the council in its current form. Some raw thoughts (just the against mainly here, there was utility but on balance not as effective as I would have liked):

  • Lack of clear remits can cause fast burnout (guilty myself, TAM infinity)
  • Lack of communication standards and expected outputs caused dissonance with the DAO at times
  • Lack of candidate-vetting ahead can cause unexpected organizational-shifts for some
  • High-context is a practice, not a state; representing the DAO takes one effectively out of it for periods of time
  • Meeting attendance should be made public (something like an EOM report)
  • We have many functional experts and no good way to test or account for breadth
  • No remuneration outside of the DSM is provided (now, none prior) and Season 0 was over 5-hours/day of just ICC-related meetings and tasks for this Owl (provide standards, stewards, or reduce scope; maybe no dual-roles at this level?)
  • The level of effort around creating assets, preparing for meetings, etc. ranged by contributor in the council (some bring functional expertise, some bring breadth, some both; maybe some guidance here as to what a good council member looks like, and stated willingness (should HAVE to self nominate not just accept); something like a bio/statement by contributors would be helpful)
  • Clarity around the expectation of privacy by ANY delegated entity of IC should be crystal-clear, as prior that only existed at the node-level really (toil in daylight, it’s how we learn)
  • Clear standards around when a council should step-in, be notified, or provide feedback (I felt ICC was made to be a blocker at times it wasn’t necessary; we’re still a permissionless org and initiative is valued)
  • Everything felt dire; nothing really was: only centralize when necessary and delegate to win-teams immediately (Nest Leads are best positioned to do this imo)

I don’t doubt there will several times in the coming decades when IC will need to go through metamorphic (as opposed to organic) change, and a facilitation team would be useful; with the exception of perhaps speed, I don’t believe the ICC was particularly effective at facilitating the nesting process that started within the Community Nest (People, TOC, POC).

Having a public-face for IC was, idk maybe useful . . . as I retro it only really seemed to help those that wanted to do things with IC that aren’t easily facilitated through our proposal process or require some advance planning; something like a “Request for Special Consideration” form and the ability of a delegation team to set up meetings based on requests could be useful, but to be radically honest I believe that the slow nature of holistic change is a feature in DAO with goals that measure in decades. Local process improvement should be continuous and org strategy should be a democratic process (education by a few and voting by community, not deciding by a few and educating community ). Slow is smooth, smooth is fast.

I have some thoughts on what some good DAO-specific consensus mechanisms might look like (as opposed to full INDEX votes now that the DAO has moved more toward abstraction than representative of the INDEX community), but I’ll limit this response until the current council session ends. I believe that should a council like this be the way, scoping a council with everyone on a level-field is preferable to scoping a council while one is in session - it’s tough to shape a (mostly) full container.

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Hi @Pepperoni_Joe

Thank you for taking the time to pull this post together. There are many learnings from Season 1 and looking back, I think the Council is a must for Index Coop. The leadership structure is pivotal to ongoing success of the community.

DAOs need structure and direction. We have amazing contributors and when we are all working towards common goals we will achieve greatness. I firmly believe the north stars must be set and then we must all rally behind them. There are some very different views amongst us as to what the DAO model is.

IMHO, this DAO like a business must turn at least a normally profit to be economically viable. At times, diverging philosophical views lead to great discussion. I myself, being a finance person, see the DAO as a business model whereby our tokenomics drives value to those who display desired behaviours.

In time, through a Council, we will reshape, streamline and unify the DAO. It is early days yet, but we need a cross functional group to set our strategy and direction. We can’t rely on this forum and workshops as the main way to determine all our major decisions. I don’t think that approach is feasible or scaleable.

I think we need technical knowledge present with the Set Labs discussion. @ncitron and @edwardk are key people who need to be apart of those discussions, independent of who is on the council. I tend to favour a Council + SME model, just to reduce the number of interfaces we have with Set Labs. The main thing is the technical knowledge and the council with overall Coop wide strategy front of mind needs to be present. Maybe the win team is a combination of these people but not all the council.

There are a number of strategic initiatives coming up. Tokenomics and partnerships with a few communities are the most immediate. We have received really good feedback, that having the council makes it easily to work with Index Coop. We have seen many different parts of the DAO keen to seek council input/blessing on big decisions. The success of protocol owned liquidity to date has been well supported by the council at key decision points.

I am keen to see the council continue. Also, I would like to acknowledge that there are things we can do better. I do think there needs to be a clear remit of delegation of authority here. Feedback to date shows not everyone is aligned on this, so clarifying this will help.

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Voted for continuity.

3 months was not enough time to clearly define IC roles and measure their success. We took off 1 month for holiday, rushed, and put a lot of (unrealistic) expectations on the IC.

I would love to see us work together and have community iteration on expectations and success metrics for IC.

Hoot hoot!

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The new structure and approach is charted by the Index Council which we are aware through Leadership Forum, implementing it for growth and sucess of Index Coop should be done.

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Many thanks to the Wise Owls for their work and their ability to make tough decisions that are critical to the long-term success of IC. I agree with Joseph’s sentiment that this is the closest thing to a Board of Directors.

If we’re voting on whether or not to keep the Council, shouldn’t we also be voting for new Council members? The two current options are extreme, even by how you wrote the options. “The Council is dead” is a bit extreme. Could we keep the Index Council and rotate a few of the members?

I’d also argue the current priorities don’t require the council for more than another month.

  • Priority hiring is largely over since everyone had to accept their offer by January 31st
  • Nest funding is being wrapped up as all proposals are being submitted this week
  • Set <> Index relations is ongoing but I think the Nest/Pod leads are well positioned to manage this relationship
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Hey folks,

Really appreciate all of the feedback and thoughts on the Index Council :pray:

I just want to confirm…

This is not a vote to determine whether we want to continue or disband the concept of a Council entirely

This question will be answered after we have had the time to work through:

and once we have…

This post and poll is instead to temperature check whether the community feels that the Index Council should stay in position after the 28th of Feb whilst we have a deeper discussion on :point_up:

Encouraging the Council to prepare a proposal is an interesting idea!

  • However, I’m personally not keen on the Index Council defining their scope behind closed doors and then coming forward with a proposal - especially as its members have different visions for how they see the Index Council evolving.

  • Instead, I would prefer we have a more public discussion and use workshops to co-create a new Council remit and to seek community input to better define the scope and responsibility of any future iteration of the Council.

I take 100% responsibility for drafting the misleading (though punny) poll titles! The difference between the two options presented is actually rather small, either:

  • Have the council stay in position past the 28th of Feb whilst further discussion on their remit is held, OR
  • Not have the council stay in position past the 28th of Feb whilst further discussion on their remit is held

Regardless of which of the two options the community chooses - our intention remains to:

  1. take community feedback and input, and use this to
  2. define the mandate and responsibilities of any refreshed council, before finally
  3. having the community vote on whether to refresh the council under this newly established mandate

The responses on this post have already made an excellent start with #1 and I truly appreciate all of the candid perspectives which have already been shared thus far.

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Love the co-creation push, @Pepperoni_Joe ! As I’m not on the Council (and have no itentions to be, given my day job) – would be happy to help with a workshop or something to help figure this out.

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I voted to disband the council on Feb 28th, however I believe the council concept should be refined and put in place long-term.

A few thoughts surrounding my vote:

  • My perfect outcome for this scenario is that the council is retooled based on lessons learned, voted on, and enacted starting March 1 with no gap in coverage. I believe the council is valuable and should continue long-term with clear goals, guardrails, and transparency.
  • By allowing the current council to continue past Feb 28th, we are removing the single most important driving incentive to have the above hard conversations, gain consensus, and put in place a long-term solution for the council.
  • The council has made some significant progress on hard problems within the DAO, however the transparency has been almost non-existant. I respect that some conversations are only valuable in closed settings, however this is rare and should be the exception, not the standard. I would like us to have clear guidance around this topic prior to continuing with the council in any form.
  • A less glaring, but possibly greater existential threat is the fact that we (the DAO contributors) did not get an explicit mandate from the Index Token holders delegating any powers to the Council. I believe that this construct is valuable and should be codified and voted on to officially delegate some operational actions and decision-making to better our organization. But - as it currently stands - we are operating on the earned trust and goodwill of the voters and that is a dubious position at best. If we as the DAO (active contributors) take the voters trust too far and are perceived to be operating outside of the governance process, that lost of trust could be either irreversible or painstakingly difficult to recover.
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Thank you council members for your commitment to this responsibility. It seems to me that the ICC has delivered - priority hiring, nest funding and pathways for IC <> Set relationship. I am +1 to most of the comments already presented.

However, I voted against continuity solely on the basis that I voted FOR the council experiment ending 28 Feb and imo shifting goal post now undermines the validity/legitimacy of this experiment.

I am FOR

  • Community consultation on the development of future Council mandate as proposed by @Joe and supported I suspect by the broader community
  • Development of a ICC proposal setting clear objectives in advance of installing the next iteration of the Council
  • Public meetings, unless prevented by privacy concerns
  • More transparency (record-keeping) on the decisions being undertaken and how council members voted
  • WIN teams, ensuring the right people are in the room on the tough decisions in much the same way as Edward and Miles are being brought in for the IC <> Set conversation I’d like to see this flexibility applied to the majority of Council decisions
  • Rotation of council members and a self-nomination process whereby all nominees are required to present a statement as to why they should be elected.

Given your world-class community facilitation skills, @Pepperoni_Joe is this possible or likely. What timeframe do you suggest is needed for these conversations /workshops and the development of an ICC proposal?

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I think I understand the desire to push lessons learned to after Feb 28, but I bet we could setup a series of interviews with the current council now and start drafting the after action review for an 80 for 20 cut in the next few weeks. With this information, combined with community feedback, we draft a strawman proposal on the next iteration sooner rather than later. This approach would reduce the gap time between decision points (option 1) or reduce the extension period (option 2). I would be happy to assist collecting / collating ICC feedback into a consumable after action review.

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Hey everyone!

I agree with the sentiment of @StepvhenH, @lee0007, and others here. I am a strong advocate of keeping to the Feb 28th deadline. That’s the right precedent. I am not aware of anyone on Index Council that believes otherwise. I appreciate the temperature check poll on the community’s willingness to extend for continuity sake if we can’t get everything properly in place by the 28th, but the better approach is to collectively commit to simply figure the next iteration out before the term ends. Use the deadline as a forcing mechanism to act.

I have several thoughts on a possible Index Council II based on serving on the first council and look forward to workshops in short order to discuss this all and move quickly towards a formal election (if that’s the direction we take).

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I’m abstaining from the poll for the following reasons:

To me these two “options” boil down to:

  1. Council effectively continues albeit under a different name and with unelected additions (as deserved as they are)
  2. Council continues

Whilst IMO the council has generally been very successful I have never been that comfortable with the centralisation of decision making due to the risk it just morphs into something that exists in perpetuity.

More importantly, though I feel that we are collectively failing to address the fundamental reasons for why we needed a council in the first place. The fact the community does not own any material hard gov power is well known. This leaves us with no tools to quickly and efficiently gather and aggregate objective, measurable community sentiment leaving us with just a social consensus layer of calls, jamboards and forum posts etc that whilst useful to an extent can bog down and become slow or even circular due to their inherent subjectivity and difficulty to evaluate en mass.

IMO we need a mix of both quantitative and qualitative feedback mechanisms that feed into a group of representatives that then co-ordinate on behalf of the community when and where appropriate. Not a group of crowdsourced executives.

Other DAO’s are already experimenting with NFT and alt gov tokens using the infrastructure that was purpose-built for exactly this problem (ie. non-transferable tokens <> snapshot etc). Vitalik himself even referenced this as a solution in his blog regarding coordination issues.
The choice here is pretty simple, research, adapt & adopt these tools and remain decentralised and autonomous or become increasingly centralised and autocratic as the org scales.

I would love to contribute to or even lead such an initiative however my commitments to product and growth currently take priority. I would be extremely grateful if more internally focused functions could make this a priority.

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I’d love to see quantitative and qualitative community feedback mechanisms tested too. I’m not sure this is mutually exclusive to having a council.

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I would also like to see future iterations of a council in whatever form that may be, have contingency built-in from the start. ie a 7+2 model to cover absence, retirement, avoid burning people out etc etc.

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