Thanks for this follow up Greg 
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 âPeopleâ and âOrganizationâ 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 âpersonnel costsâ. 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 âCommunityâ is relevant only to community members, whilst âOrganizationâ and âPeopleâ activity is targeted as being an enabler for contributors and Working Groups.
Now to address the specific queriesâŚ
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We recently ran a session for the community looking for feedback on their time at the Coop. One comment that stuck with me: âI have been involved with Bankless for two weeks and feel more connected to them than I do to Index Coop after 2 monthsâ. 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 âConversations with the Coopâ and other planned opportunities to connect socially in Q3.
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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 âshine the lightâ on these âpain pointsâ 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 didnât plan for, identify and utilize our people resources in key areas areas over the last three months.
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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.
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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 âOrganizationâ aspect of this proposal.
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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)
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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 âownership mentalityâ - 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 âtop 5ââŚ
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Identification of âPeople Needsâ 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]
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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]
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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]
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Redesign âOwl Levelsâ 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]
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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 âownership mentalityâ. [Org]
Identifying KPIs for an âenablerâ 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
- % vacancies filled within 3 months [People]
Ideal resource profile for each WG identified at outset of POC, with unfilled positions referenced as âvacanciesâ. 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.
- KPI - # Engineers contributors retained / # Product contributors retained [People]
Important given specific focus on recruiting contributors into engineering and product.
- 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:
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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.
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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.
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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.
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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 âOrganizationâ aspect of this proposal is perceived to be doing.
- % 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
Bronze Silver 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.
) into the fold⌠as we approach 1 year of the IC DAO; weâll level up as a community!!!