"New Joiner Call" and the onboarding process

Community Talent
1

Hi all,

After some conversations with community members, and reflecting on my own experience joining the Coop, I wanted to start a discussion on how to enrich the experience of new joiners and retain top talent.

Current onboarding approach

Our current approach is that new joiners are funnelled into the weekly call from Twitter, Discord or the Forum.

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Pain points

  • Limited time for new joiners to introduce themselves and share their skills or experience with the community.
  • Repetition of meeting rules and Index Coop strategy (i.e. +1) on every weekly call, despite most attendees already being aware of them.
  • Lots of ad hoc conversations with various people and the new joiners requesting they be added to the different meetings.
  • Lots of ad hoc requests for access to slides decks.
  • Really valuable call generally, but it is quite intimidating to interact with such a large group right off the bat.

Proposed new onboarding approach

Use of a weekly “new joiners” call to help streamline the onboarding process, improve team efficiency and create a really personable atmosphere.

There are three main aspects to this:

  1. Weekly New joiners call
  2. Buddy Scheme
  3. Admin (added to drive, meetings etc)

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1. Weekly new joiners call

1.1 Who attends

  1. 1 x member of leadership team (i.e. Greg, BlueSky, Lemonade)
  2. Community rep (who will also do the PMO of adding to meetings, drives etc)
  3. The new joiners

1.2 Overview of call

The call will provide the opportunity for new joiners to introduce who they are, what they want from Index Coop, why they are involved etc.

It will also provide the Index Coop opportunity to share our vision and discuss our standard ways of working.

1.3 Call structure

Area Description
Index Coop Introduction Brief summary of what the Coop is, key stakeholders, vision, etc.
How did you find out about the Index Coop? New joiners share information about how they found out about the Coop. Useful to know this information, and also to know if any particular person drew them into the community.
Tell us a little bit more about you… Opportunity for new joiners to go into a little bit more detail about who they are, what they want, why they are involved etc.
Connecting & next steps Given the new joiners experience, they could be advised to join a specific weekly call and/or reach out to key community members.
Ways of working Discuss ways of working, i.e. content tracker, shared drive, forum, meeting etiquette etc. This would ensure everyone joins the team understanding our current process and structure. Also means certain things (i.e. how to +1) won’t need to be repeated at every weekly session.
Next steps New joiners provide email addresses so they can be added to shared drives working calls etc. PMO to complete this activity the meeting.

1.3 Other question

  • Community google calendar, do we have one, can it be subscribed to? This would be really useful to give new joiners visibility of everything that is happening.
To what extent would you agree with the introduction of a Weekly New Joiner calls…
  • Strongly Agree
  • Agree
  • Neutral
  • Disagree
  • Strongly Disagree

0 voters

2. Buddy Scheme

My most valuable experience, and the aspect that makes me feel most connected with the community have been the 1:1 interactions I have had. They have also been critical in helping me better understand the intricacies of the Coop.

  • A Buddy Scheme would provide the opportunity for new joiners to be connected with an existing member of the community.
  • Existing community members can sign up to be “buddies” and connect with the new joiners.
  • They would be roughly scheduled two weeks after joining so the buddy can check in on them and how they have found the Coop.
  • After this, the buddy relationship can be driven by those involved (definitely no formal obligation to meet weekly!)
To what extent would you agree with the introduction of a buddy scheme…
  • Strongly Agree
  • Agree
  • Neutral
  • Disagree
  • Strongly Disagree

0 voters

Would you be interested in being a buddy?
  • Yes
  • Maybe - would need more info
  • No

0 voters

3. Admin - drives, meetings ways of working

It’s boring, but proper management of drives and meetings can really help with efficiency and a smooth process. The proposal in this area is simple.

  • Community rep / PMO has the right to add new joiners to all main weekly meeting invites and drives (see comment on the drive below).
  • At the end of the New Joiner call, new joiners provide their email address and are added to the corresponding invites and drives.

3.1 Drives

At the moment content is stored in an ad hoc manner on various different shared drives. This means it can easily be lost, misplaced, and access rights must be continually requested.

I propose a dedicated drive for all comms, marketing and promotional content which is separate from the same Index Coop drive.

As this is not sensitive information, we can be liberal in who we provide access to. It would also sidestep the risk involved with adding them directly to the main index coop drive.

I’ll not go into any more depth on this - as document management is a whole other topic! Regardless of the final approach for document management, a New Joiner call would allow people integrated with whatever the Coops preferred approach is, and do so at the earliest possible stage.

To what extent would you agree with the introduction these changes to how we organise and funnel people into working groups…
  • Strongly Agree
  • Agree
  • Neutral
  • Disagree
  • Strongly Disagree

0 voters

Close

I feel with some simple changes we could improve the onboarding experience, retain top talent and incentive earlier contribution.

I am keen to set up a call with the community to discuss these ideas in more depth.

I would like to attend a follow up call to explore the onboarding process…
  • Yes!
  • Nope

0 voters

7 Likes
2

Thank for this awesome proposal @Pepperoni_Joe!

We have been tossing around ideas for on-boarding for a few weeks now and this really brings everything together. I strongly support everything about this proposal. On-boarding talent is a major strategic goal for the Coop. We have a limitless need for talent.

When I joined the Coop I was incredibly lucky to have @puniaviision and @reganbozman help get me spun up and oriented. Without their help and guidance - I likely would not be here as a contributor. I’m sure everyone else in the community has a similar story.

Index Coop does a very good job on-boarding new community members. Our vital and energetic community is a testament to that. But we can do better.

How many community members have been lost in the shuffle? Or haven’t found constructive ways to contribute? Working in a DAO is complex and requires a high level of initiative and intelligence - we will always have a high bounce rate. A program like this is not meant to drastically grow our numbers, but is meant to ensure that high leverage and high autonomy contributors are quickly on-boarded and able to drive wins right off the bat.

Suggested Next Step -

Some of these steps can be implemented right away and some need to be discussed more. Some of these ideas can be implemented right away.

**A weekly new joiners call is a valuable use of our time and we should start scheduling them immediately. **
I suggest Monday at 12 PM PST or Tuesday at 10 AM PST. If you are free during that time, you would be a great candidate to run it. I strongly agree that this meeting should be limited to the above listed parties - I can see this meeting quickly getting overwhelmed by people which may distract from conversation.

Long-term thoughts

I have seen good mentor programs and bad mentor programs. The bad ones always feel forced and are a low value add. The good ones are usually not programs at all - but instead organizational philosophies that prioritize leadership by example, accountability, and ownership. We are all responsible for building the community we want to live in. We each need to take ownership of our responsibility to guide, mentor, and support community members as they enter, and progress through our community.

5 Likes
3

Hey @Pepperoni_Joe Great post! and thank you for taking the initiative with this.

These are my considerations:

  • We should have a target of the number of core-contributors we would like to on-board within a specific timeframe
  • We should categorize the type of people we would like to on-board i.e full-time contributors or part-time contributors
  • Lastly, I believe this process is very suitable for a community manager we are yet to appoint
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4

My pleasure Mringz, and I agree, a target number of core contributors could form part of the KPIs for the community manager role.

I would also consider throwing my name into the hat for this role - depending on the scope and expectations.

Also agree we have a need for both full time and part time contributors. However, I see their route into the Coop as being the same; open, personable and efficient. What then needs to happen to turn cement them as full time vs part time contributors is probably out of the scope of this post - especially given any full time contributor would likely have to demonstrate their value on a part time basis first.

And thanks for the engagement for those who have voted. I’ll give this until Sunday, and then pop something in with the group who have flagged their interest in being part of the follow up call.

1 Like
5

Hi all,

Confirming I have scheduled an Index Coop call to discuss onboarding Wednesday 21 April @ 21:00-21:30 (GMT).

Link to session:

Everyone who flagged their interest at the weekly call, I have added directly to the event.

@cedrick, @0xModene @oneski22 , @Derrek , @mel.eth , @Matthew_Graham , @DOC and @Thomas_Hepner you can join the meeting either using the link provided above, or share you email with me via discord and I will add you to the session.

Looking forward to it!

4 Likes
6

Very cool to see focus on onboarding new community members :raised_hands: dropping a few thoughts/links that may or may not be useful as you all work on this.

Artifacts from days of yore:

And a few ideas I’ve bounced around on this topic:

  • Use a form to capture top-of-funnel interest (Current version)
  • Follow up by popping them ^ in an email drip campaign (i.e. 4 emails over 4 weeks as a “Index Coop Intro” using a tool like MixMax)
  • Pulling a list of new-joiners from Discord
  • Pulling a list of new-joiners from Discourse
  • DM’ing 1st time INDEX earners to congratulate & encourage contribution again
6 Likes
7

I’m late on this, apologies for that. But the below tweet reminded me.

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Personally, this resonates with me. It certainly was a while after I started contributing that I jumped on the first call. There are several issues with calls. Time zones, standing commitments, some people feel uncomfortable, etc. So I’m not sure the “new joiner call” is a complete answer.

@anon10525910 and myself talked about gamifying joining Index more than 3 months ago. I want to resurface the concept a bit. The idea was to create something of a “new joiner quest” with rewards. Some steps could be:

  1. Come into Discord, introduce yourself in #introductions + fill out the form - Reward 1 INDEX.

  2. Based on your interests, background & time zone, have three 1-on-1s with any of the gold, silver or bronze owls - Reward 2 INDEX.

  3. Join 3 of the Index Coop calls (weekly, Org & growth) over the period of 2 weeks (could have a new joiner call as well bi-weekly for this, but as a step 3 not step one of onboarding) - Reward 3 INDEX.

  4. Write up our weekly View from the Nest newsletter which basically sums up what happened on the forum, proposals, discussions, etc over the week - Reward 3 INDEX.

The gradual ramp up in the level of involvement and complexity of tasks should smooth out the experience of joining the Coop. This process would take about 3-4 weeks for most people although I do imagine those who are especially keen skipping it altogether or doing it in like 2.5 weeks. Rewards can be adjusted as well if we wanted to target 5 INDEX total, instead of 10 INDEX.

If someone stuck around for a month to complete the quest, they will end up with several 1-on-1 contacts, have attended several of our calls and had to be active on the forum and take notes on the calls to write the newsletter. The likelihood that they will continue on as a contributor at that point is pretty high.

One problem with this is that the newsletter is weekly. Which is problematic if we are trying to onboard 5 people each week. But I’m sure we can come up with a replacement task of equal complexity & time requirement, if need be.

5 Likes
8

As a new joiner finding their way around, I like this idea and the suggestions a lot :slight_smile:

9

This is brilliant! We don’t need a massive amount of new work to constantly update and push down to new-joiners - we just need a few routine tasks that help build context and get people up to speed.

Other activities that come to mind that can be pretty easily scaled -

  1. Meeting notes - these are always very useful to have and really help people gain context. They can also be worked on by multiple people at once during a call.

  2. Twitter impressions - @LemonadeAlpha impression mining campaign is one of the most innovative and valuable things we are doing right now. If new every new-joiner in our community garners 10k or 20k twitter impressions as part of their onbaording that is a huge huge win for our visibility.

  3. Answering questions and engaging on Discord - I’m not sure how we measure or track this but I see this as a key area for new comers to contribute to. This helps build context and helps ensure that we have an active and engaged Discord community.

I see the new joiner call as the starting point for these quests - like @verto0912 said we don’t need every new-joiner to be fully spun up from day one, it takes people time to learn and adjust to a very different kind of work. A quest like structure helps ease that learning curve, gets people involved and paid in INDEX, and lays the groundworks for future major contributions from new community members.

10

Hi all,

For simplicity I am going to split this post into two parts .

  1. Plan ahead of the FIRST New Joiners Call on April 26.
  2. Summary of longer term priorities for the onboarding process.

Part 1 - New Joiners Call (on April 27)
1. Summary
A key reflection from the new joiners brainstorming session was that any induction call has to accommodate a full spectrum of people who might be interested in the Index Coop.

*This could range from someone virtually brand new to crypto, but with the energy and enthusiasm to really contribute through to an experienced bitcoin whale researching ways to diversify in DeFi.

As such, the New Joiner Call is part lesson, pitch and “meet the team”.

This structure will increase awareness of Index Coop and allow us to better engage and retain top talent. It is also designed to reduce the reliance on new members having multiple 1:1 with the Index Coop leadership team to help get them up to speed.

2. Google Form
Now all prospective new joiners completed this Google form to register their interest in the Index Coop and request to be invited to the New Joiners Call.

A link to the Gitbook is also embedded within the form to direct people towards a “single source of truth” for information on Index Coop.

3. Agenda for FIRST new joiners call
Please note, the first new joiner session will be somewhat of a trial and we will continue to refine the approach. Better to start early and iterate, then start two weeks late.

image

The first 30 minutes will focus on explaining what DeFi is, what a DOA is and how Index Cooperative and its products fits within this ecosystem.

@BigSky7, @Mringz and @verto0912 have kindly offered to speak to this section. Gang, lets do this like a panel interview, where I will direct questions to each of you. Your answers will allow us to move through the key talking points detailed above whilst I manage our time.

For example “Thanks Verto for giving us that crash course in Defi, so BigSky, what is a DAO?”

The final 15 minutes will be focused on discussing practically how to get involved. Myself and @MrMadila will take this part.

Part 2 - Long term priorities
Some of the suggestion from this community have really got my mind racing around where we can take the onboarding process. These are some ideas of my radar which I’m looking to develop over the coming weeks:

1. Bronze Owl quest
Thanks @anon10525910, @BigSky7 and @verto0912 for this suggestion. Attending a New Joiner call may not be feasible for everyone and there seems a real potential in gamifying the New Joiner Experience and providing concrete, simple steps for how new joiners can start contributing.

The Bronze Owl Quest outlines a number of steps someone can go through to achieve bronze owl status and be rewarded with Index token. For logistical reasons, I would recommend providing rewards are earned only once a set number of steps are completed (not on per task).

For example, complete 3 of the following to be rewarded 10 Index.

  • Introduce yourself on Discord
  • Join three of the Index Coop core calls
  • Write up our weekly view from the nest newsletter
  • Tweet three different articles about Index Coop

The new joiners could then evidence that they had completed the three tasks, and receive their Index reward. A member of leadership (Gold Owl) could then personally thank them for their contribution.

2. Shared Calendar
Something myself and @MrMadila are looking at trialing imminently. As we are collecting email address via the new joiners form, we have the option to add all new joiners to a shared google calendar which could be managed by each WG lead. New joiners would them have the option to easily join calls relevant to them, without having to request access. More info can be found here.

3. Email drip
Further developing @anon10525910’s idea around dripping email content to new joiners. I need to do more research on the different content we have available.

4. Discord automation
People miss pinned links, and it is inefficient to continually reshare the new joiners form. @MrMadila made a great suggestion that we could explore ways to automate the Discord chat to funnel people toward to form (and subsequent new joiners call). I know nothing about how to do this, so will need to investigate options further.

5. Gitbook refresh
The most detailed information we have on Index Coop is in the Gitbook - but parts are out of date and there are issues with writing consistent. As we are putting this content in front of all new joiners, a thorough refresh seems beneficial.

Hopefully that braindump is somewhat useful. I would appreciate the communities thoughts on whether we are proceeding in the right direction with the onboarding process.

  • Yes sounds good - crack on!
  • I’m not convinced about the approach…
  • Can we substitute Pepperoni Joe?

0 voters

2 Likes
11

My only concern is the bronze owl steps, specially the twitter sharing stuff. As someone that does not really like to use social media, being forced to use them would be a major turn off.

My suggestion would be an introduction at the end of a weekly call with the cam on. This should deter any “reward farmers”.

The rest is top notch. Keep up the amazing work.

12

sharing two notes super quickly…

Shared Calendar – you can easily share a Google calendar for free. That is what is happening here right now

Bronze Owl quest – not sure i suggested this…but seems interesting!

13

So tempted to vote substitute @Pepperoni_Joe just for banter. Amazing stuff mate! Nothing but respect for the time you are putting into making our community strong :pray:

1 Like