Why DAOs Should Prize Resonance Over Consensus
While I have lauded consensus as one of the three composable building blocks of decision success, a recent podcast shifted my thinking on the topic. One of my favorite podcast hosts, Daniel Thorson, conducted an interview with teacher and artist David Sauvage on a recent episode of his Emerge: Making Sense of What’s Next podcast. David was discussing decision making within political structures such as Occupy Wall Street, and it inspired the following thought.In an Impact DAO, resonance with t...
Why DAOs Should Prize Resonance Over Consensus
While I have lauded consensus as one of the three composable building blocks of decision success, a recent podcast shifted my thinking on the topic. One of my favorite podcast hosts, Daniel Thorson, conducted an interview with teacher and artist David Sauvage on a recent episode of his Emerge: Making Sense of What’s Next podcast. David was discussing decision making within political structures such as Occupy Wall Street, and it inspired the following thought.In an Impact DAO, resonance with t...
Using RAPID models and Pareto thinking to improve DAO decision making
How should DAOs handle decisions such as the levels of voter participation and length of time to conduct a vote? There is a general recognition that a single sliding scale for all decisions won't work. We can all think of circumstances where we should do something quickly that is useful, but isn't that important to most voters, and vice versa. Thus, there is no real question that we need more than one approach to do this well. For important decisions, we need to use a consistent mod...
Using RAPID models and Pareto thinking to improve DAO decision making
How should DAOs handle decisions such as the levels of voter participation and length of time to conduct a vote? There is a general recognition that a single sliding scale for all decisions won't work. We can all think of circumstances where we should do something quickly that is useful, but isn't that important to most voters, and vice versa. Thus, there is no real question that we need more than one approach to do this well. For important decisions, we need to use a consistent mod...
Breaking the Curse of the Cobbler's Children
DAOs that aim to provide tools or services to help other DAOs be more effective must be mindful of a trap they can easily fall into. It is a condition known as "The Cobbler's Children Have No Shoes". In the context of tradorgs, this often manifests itself as the organization doing a poor job of doing for itself what it does for others. For example, a friend of mine works in training for a nuclear power plant. One thing he is responsible for is maintaining the documentation for safety pro...
Breaking the Curse of the Cobbler's Children
DAOs that aim to provide tools or services to help other DAOs be more effective must be mindful of a trap they can easily fall into. It is a condition known as "The Cobbler's Children Have No Shoes". In the context of tradorgs, this often manifests itself as the organization doing a poor job of doing for itself what it does for others. For example, a friend of mine works in training for a nuclear power plant. One thing he is responsible for is maintaining the documentation for safety pro...
The Role Process Thinking Should Play in a DAO
Processes are feared by many, loved by some, and misunderstood by most. It’s a useful concept, but we can easily make it more trouble than its worth. Here’s how. Since the term "process" is frequently abused, I need to start by being clear what exactly I mean by the term. No sense getting overly cute, as the dictionary definition of "a series of actions or steps taken in order to achieve a particular end" works just fine for our purposes. Technically, anything at all can be defined as a proce...
The Role Process Thinking Should Play in a DAO
Processes are feared by many, loved by some, and misunderstood by most. It’s a useful concept, but we can easily make it more trouble than its worth. Here’s how. Since the term "process" is frequently abused, I need to start by being clear what exactly I mean by the term. No sense getting overly cute, as the dictionary definition of "a series of actions or steps taken in order to achieve a particular end" works just fine for our purposes. Technically, anything at all can be defined as a proce...
Time is a Non-Fungible Token
One critical aspect of DAO design is how we create a culture that doesn't dawdle, yet also doesn't burn out its people. What I mean by the title of this post is that is tradorgs have a nasty habit of treating the time of their people like an infinite resource. I've spent days in budget meetings where people were loath to spend a Euro over the budget, but would obliviously sign up for twice the work the staff could handle because it was “cheap”. The result: pain! Tradorgs also o...
Time is a Non-Fungible Token
One critical aspect of DAO design is how we create a culture that doesn't dawdle, yet also doesn't burn out its people. What I mean by the title of this post is that is tradorgs have a nasty habit of treating the time of their people like an infinite resource. I've spent days in budget meetings where people were loath to spend a Euro over the budget, but would obliviously sign up for twice the work the staff could handle because it was “cheap”. The result: pain! Tradorgs also o...
