Proposal for the creation of the People, Organization and Community (POC) WG - **UPDATED**

I voted yes. @Pepperoni_Joe has added a lot of value to the Index Coop since he began contributing. Really keen to see how much more value can be created for the Coop with this working group.

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I’m also in support of this. Thanks @Pepperoni_Joe. Your leadership has been phenomenal and you keep looking out to enrich everyone and you keep making sure we all grow as index coop is growing. Thanks :100:

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Jumping rrrrrright in :raised_hands:

Looking at Working Groups v1.1 a few initial questions come to mind. I’m really drilling in for specificity here.

On What are the core problem(s) you want to solve today?
It’d be great to get more specific here, i.e.

  • Is disconnect with our community really a problem today? How is that showing up? Likewise for “failure to leverage.”
  • What specific organizational inefficiencies do you notice?
  • How are we ineffective with our identification/utilization/retention of top people?

On How will you address it

  • If you had to boil it down all the initiatives to top 5 in terms of impact, what would those 5 be?

On What impact will this project have

  • I appreciate the idea that a variety KPIs may rise if this WG is successful. However, it will be tough to link, “Identification of people needs” with “increase in unit supply” for example.
  • So, what are some specific outcomes you can focus on driving? i.e. # of new engineering contributors retained

I am voting “AGAINST”** for the time being given these initial outstanding questions.


Important side note -- Private Polls

As a general rule of thumb, i suggest all working group proposals make polls like this private in order to encourage both FORs and AGAINSTs to make themselves known.

I believe that private polls lead to a more accurate reflection of community sentiment.

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Thanks for this follow up Greg :pray:

A few immediate revision to this proposal based on feedback provided here and 1:1.

  • Bronze Owl Quest has been descoped. Completion of the Bronze Owl Quest will now not be tied to any financial compensation. Working Groups will now determine contributor rewards for all contributors (including New Joiners) who tag activity to their area.
  • Ad hoc reward has been reduced by $3,050.

This means I propose a revised budget request of $23,407 per month.

I would also like to draw out a few specific points before diving into the specifics.

Why is a POC WG needed vs just Joe doing this activity?

The primary priority for the POC WG is to develop a robust talent funnel for Product and Engineering and to implement organizational processes which allow these teams to operate effectively. This is represented by the “People” and “Organization” section of the proposal and will be the primary focus for me as a WG lead.

However, to free up my capacity to focus on these priorities, certain Community and general Org activities I currently do will be delegated to the POC team. These include running the New Joiner call, discord moderation and AMAs.

I have accounted for this delegation within the POC budget under “personnel costs”. If the budget is to be further reduced, these activities will need to stop to ensure my focus is not diverted from the key strategic priorities. However, I feel strongly that the small contributor reward payment required to continue running the AMAs, update the GitBook and organize the New Joiners call (etc) represent good value for money for the Coop.

Contribution vs Community

Community members are individuals who hold Index tokens and/or are active on social channels in support of the Index Coop. Contributors are individuals who are delivering specific work for the Index Coop. All contributors are community members, but not all community members are contributors.

Within this proposal “Community” is relevant only to community members, whilst “Organization” and “People” activity is targeted as being an enabler for contributors and Working Groups.

Now to address the specific queries…

  • We recently ran a session for the community looking for feedback on their time at the Coop. One comment that stuck with me: “I have been involved with Bankless for two weeks and feel more connected to them than I do to Index Coop after 2 months”. He suggested this was because of a lack of community events and opportunities to engage with the Index Coop member - something we have been addressing through weekly “Conversations with the Coop” and other planned opportunities to connect socially in Q3.

  • As Community Manager for the last 3 month I have had conversations with members at all levels of the Coop. In many of instances there are pockets of disconnect, discontent and frustration. People not feeling valued, not feeling able to share their opinions, people not feeling engaged or connected with fellow Coop members. The Owl Pulse survey will provide an anonymous opportunity “shine the light” on these “pain points” and allow the Index Coop and POC WG to address these challenges head on. This will promote an ownership mentality and enrich the overall experience of our contributors .

We have a number of vacancies in key strategic areas such as engineering, product and growth. This has arisen partly because of a failure to appropriately leverage the people in the organization or retain in-demand talent in a competitive market.

We are in a situation where we are having to pause all activity outside of our key strategic priorities (engineering & product) fundamentally because we didn’t plan for, identify and utilize our people resources in key areas areas over the last three months.

  • Lack of clearly dated milestones, deliverables and deadlines for Index Coop as a whole and for specific WGs. Getting this right is essential to enable clear communication and a high impact culture.

  • No clarity on major blockers, issues, problems or open questions that need resolving. Limited mechanism in place to ensure progress is continually driven to resolve these key challenges. Addressing this will be a major focus of the “Organization” aspect of this proposal.

  • Siloed ways of working, with limited cross functional collaboration between different WGs. Partly arising from ad-hoc use of Program Management and planning technology (i.e. we have about 15 unconnected notion workspaces)

  • A number of processes require a high degree of manual effort, often from engineering. This month I have worked with Greg to redefine the treasury rewards process to provide more focused rewards/incentives and reduce required engineering support. Further process improvements will, where possible, look to promote greater accountability for results and drive an “ownership mentality” - as well as reduce pressure on engineering.

There is a high degree of interconnectedness of much of what has been proposed. However, to focus it down to a “top 5”…

  1. Identification of “People Needs” at the Coop and support filling vacancies to ensure we have the right people in the right jobs. Specifically around the recruitment needs of engineering and product. I have already started attending the Dev calls (I usually attend product too) and am starting to ramp up activity to much more actively support the development of talent funnel/capability framework within dev/engineering. [People]

  2. Index Coop process design/tool improvement with a specific focus on reduced siloed ways of working and alleviating wasted effort and inefficiency for the product and engineering team (i.e. contributor payment process streamlining) [Org]

  3. Anonymous Owl Pulse survey to identify pain points and opportunities for things we can do differently as a DAO. This will be critical in ensuring we are an attractive place to work for engineers and devs (and everyone else!). The Owl Pulse survey provides a means to air challenges anonymously and is essential in creating a culture where intellectual honesty is embraced. It could be run quarterly, with the qualitative outputs themes acted up, and the quantitative results compared to those of the previous quarters to identify trends and changes in how our contributors are experiencing Index Coop as a place to work [People]

  4. Redesign “Owl Levels” and the associated benefit packages. Again critical to ensuring we are an attractive place to work in a competitive talent market. Moreover, it will allow the embedding of much more focused rewards and incentives. The importance of this has been talked about for some time - but the POC will drive the discussion of this forward towards a resolution [People]

  5. Development of planning and ways of working improvements to increase visibility of key milestones and priorities within the Coop and promote greater accountability for results and an “ownership mentality”. [Org]

Identifying KPIs for an “enabler” function is always difficult. Below have provided some suggestions for both KPIs (lagging indicators of success) and deliverables (leading indicators of success) for the POC.

KPIs

  1. % vacancies filled within 3 months [People]

Ideal resource profile for each WG identified at outset of POC, with unfilled positions referenced as “vacancies”. For example; Growth - Social Media Manager; Dev - 3 x part time engineers. This KPI indicates what % of these vacancies are still unfilled within 3 months.

  1. KPI - # Engineers contributors retained / # Product contributors retained [People]

Important given specific focus on recruiting contributors into engineering and product.

  1. Owl Pulse Survey Results [People / Community / Org]

Part of the challenge with POC is that there is no data on the experience, challenges and recommendations of our community and people. This is why the Owl Pulse Survey is so important as it allows us to have a finger on the pulse of the DAO.

It also allows for the validation of the People, Org and Community WGs success in ensuring Index Coop is able to attract, retrain and best leverage talent in key areas. This would be achieved using the following metrics:

  • Net Promoter Score: A Net Promoter Score (NPS) is an excellent way of measuring to what degree someone would recommend a service or business to another person. Using the NPS, we can measure to what extent people recommend working for Index Coop / buying our products. This acts as a broad proxy for how attractive our DAO is to join.

  • Employee engagement index: Contributor engagement can also be measured more directly through an attitude, engagement or motivation surveys. My Master theses based on develop quantifiable measure for motivation - so I will be well placed to develop a robust question set in this regard. This is important as high contributor engagement predicts higher productivity, impact and other positive business outcomes.

  • Benefits satisfaction: Satisfaction with employee benefits and pay can be measured through an employee engagement survey. This is important for ensuring good retention in key areas and validating our reward incentives are fair.

  • Organization Question along the lines of "the Index Coop is organizational structure, processes, tools and technology enable me to do my job effectively. Though quite broad, this question could allow a quantifiable measure of how well the “Organization” aspect of this proposal is perceived to be doing.

  1. % index wallets voting [Community]
    An active community voting in proposals is key to a health community. % of index wallets voting will be a KPI the POC will look to improve.

Deliverables

  • Revised classification and benefits framework for Copper :arrow_right: Bronze :arrow_right: Silver :arrow_right: Gold Owls. Approved through IIP. [People]
  • Robust onboarding process for all WGs and Functional areas. This includes supporting the development of a capability framework and training journey for new engineers. [People]
  • 6 x Conversations with the Coop with key leaders in DeFi (found of Aave, Synthetix etc) [Community]

Do these KPIs and deliverables for POC seem suitable? Is there anything we should add?

I have now resubmitted my poll anonymously with the hope this clarification, and reduced budget can enable the proposal to progress to IIP.

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@Pepperoni_Joe , Great idea for Word-Class problem-solving.

This would help align groups by Locating points of shared interest, Brainstorming new ideas, and sorting them by value to our shared purpose. Allocating time, money, and key people to the valuable ideas so that the shared purpose groups know what they are really doing to support the purpose.

Great work Joe, I appreciate and acknowledge this as a valuable contribution.

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quick note: Investor Webinars seem pretty squarely under the purview of growth and BD and something I’m keen on keeping there

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Hey @LemonadeAlpha,

Agreed - investor webinars are entirely BD/Growth. I mentioned the opportunity of sharing licenses in the proposal only as I’d been speaking to @Metfanmike and @fallow8 about running a webinar - and had done some due diligence on the best tool to use for that purpose.

More broadly, I know we’d previously agreed “Conversations with the Coop” would be Community team lead. I’m more than happy if you would rather that move under the remit/budget of Growth. @Crypto_Texan is such a machine it doesn’t matter where our AMA activity formally sits - as I’m confident he will continue to introduce our community to an A-list DeFi lineup.

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I am in overall favour of the working group and this post defines a strong setup for supporting the Coop in its work towards its KPIs and North Star. Just wanted to add:

As recently raised by @Matthew_Graham , the need for recruitment in parts of the Coop is being felt keenly. I know this post references retaining the best global talent but can we share how far the POC will be involved in recruitment and how it will coordinate with teams - and, perhaps, Set? I worry only because I see a need for careful coordination.

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@Pepperoni_Joe what do you think about adding “IIP Editorial Duties” to your plate?

More on the responsibilities here: IIP Editors - Index Coop Community Handbook

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@anon10525910 - happy to starting picking up IIP Editorial Duties!

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Lovely, i’ll start working with you to get this handed off

I’m in favour of this. @Pepperoni_Joe has been there when I first joined the COOP about a month ago. And helped me oriented with the culture, the system and introduce me with the wonderful people within Index Coop. For that thank you Joe. :pray:t2:

To see him leading this WG, would definitely push IC forward. Also with his people management skill and coaching; bringing passionate people like myself (amid still finding my footing; getting there. :sweat_smile:) into the fold… as we approach 1 year of the IC DAO; we’ll level up as a community!!!

Kudos and looking forward to see COOP grow to new heights with the POCWG in place.

Hoot hoot!! :owl:

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Out of curiosity, how does this fit with the way we are doing Treasury Rewards as of June?

@anon10525910 it should work seamlessly with how we are now doing Treasury rewards.

Under this proposal, most of my time will be spent doing POC related activity. However, occasionally I will do some activity which supports other WGs, say the BD team with investor webinars. Instead of seeking reward for this activity in addition to my POC stipend, I think it is right for it just be included as part of my fixed monthly compensation.

I would like the Coop to move away from a reward system which risks incentivizing WGLs to reduce their focus on delivering for their own WG, in order to pick up additional compensation from other WGs (double dipping).

Therefore, the proposed $8.7k [430 Index] reflects the reward for my contributions across the Index Coop. No wasted time spent figuring out if X,Y,Z is POC or BD or Growth. Instead I will spend my time supporting the Coop and its WGs in the most effective way possible.

I would also like to note that I will be opting for the new fixed Index based WGL stiped proposed by @DarkForestCapital and @anon10525910. I have updated my proposal to reflect a flat 430 Index per month for the rest of the quarter, as per the June 20 day moving average ($20.25).

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Hey Joe, I can see what you’re getting at but there is some inconsistency with this approach compared to other wg leads.

The working groups were set up with the following in mind:

We haven’t seen anything that resembles double dipping if you look at wg leaders rewards since working groups were introduced, other leads have instead focused on delivering their priorities and scoping the stipend to suit. Including an amount for potential future work doesn’t seem like the right approach. The upside of which is that high impact stuff (like Matt’s leadership of the AAVE proposal) will be rewarded appropriately. Leads are held accountable by what they set out in their proposals, so if someone tried to game the system, it’s unlikely the community would vote them in to lead the next iteration.

Hi @DarkForestCapital - after our discussion earlier I can see this is as fair pushback and I will amend my WG proposal to remove mention of the stipend “including activity spanning Growth, BD etc”.

To summarize our shared reasoning on this:

  • Enables the standardization of leadership stipend across WGs
  • Discourages future WG proposals from seeking reward for undefined work not scoped out within their proposal
  • Enables WGLs to be rewarded for high impact contributors outside of their WG specific remit
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Hi Joe, everything looks in favour of creating the POCWG. Just to wrap up ready for FC grant #4 can you confirm you are happy with the numbers below:

Which would be 1290 INDEX + $41934 (precise!) in INDEX at the time of request, to be held in the FC wallet for the purpose of monthly reward distribution. A further $2187 in INDEX at the time of request will be sent to a POCWG wallet to fund subscriptions.

Spot on!

For simplicity, happy to also have the $2187 held in the FC wallet - where I can claim back through the “expenses” process.

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@Pepperoni_Joe can you confirm the wallet address to which requested funds should be sent?

Confirming don’t have a POC wallet as I chose to settle all payments for expenses and contributors through the FC wallet.

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