VIP-3: On- and Offboarding in Working Groups

Proposal
1

On- and Offboarding Working Group Leads

Working groups are usually headed by individuals who have consistently provided high-quality work to their working group over an extended period. These group leads possess both domain expertise on the topic of their working group and experience in leading and managing others.

Onboarding

A new working group lead is onboarded through the following process:

  1. Any lead can nominate anyone as a new lead.
  2. Core members can challenge the nomination(s) within the next 7 days.
  3. If the nomination isn’t challenged, members of all working groups vote on the nominee(s) on Discourse.
  4. If the Discourse proposal is successful, all token holders vote on Snapshot.
  5. If the nominated lead receives a majority vote on Snapshot, they are officially offered the position.

Offboarding

An existing lead is offboarded as follows:

  1. A lead nominates another lead for offboarding OR whenever 3 or more token holders submit a proposal to offboard a lead
  2. All DAO members vote on whether the leads should remain in place on Discourse.
  3. If a majority of members vote to remove a lead, the proposal moves to Snapshot.
  4. If the Snapshot vote passes, the lead is offboarded.

OR

  1. The lead chooses to offboard themselves and gives notice at least four weeks in advance.
  2. The Working Group lead or core members appoint an interim lead prior to the end of their notice period.
  3. After the end of the notice period, the lead is offboarded.

ValleyDAO places high importance on mission alignment, domain expertise, and leadership qualities when selecting a new working group lead. It is also essential that the prospective lead has the support of their working group and maintains good relationships with other leads. The first two months of a lead’s term are considered a trial period, during which their performance will be evaluated by relevant DAO members.

In addition, a lead must not be absent for more than 14 days without providing a reasonable explanation. Furthermore, if a lead is offboarded, they are expected to remain available as a point of contact for at least two months, except in cases where personal circumstances prevent them from doing so.

To ensure ongoing accountability, ValleyDAO incorporates a mandatory one-year review by core members. If necessary, reviews can be conducted earlier to address any pressing concerns or issues.

On- and Offboarding Working Group Members

Onboarding

Onboarding involves an expression of interest either through a direct message to the working group lead or filling out the contributor application form.

Mandatory next steps:

  1. 1-on-1 call with the working group lead: The purpose is to get to know the individual, their experience level, motivations and to generally gauge whether that individual would be a good fit for the group or not. These calls are not recorded and the line of questioning is not scripted. It’s up to the lead to make an initial assessment in a way they deem appropriate and fair.
  2. First weekly meeting: This allows the rest of the team to get to know the person and for the newcomer to see how the group operates so that they can decide for themselves if they would like to proceed with onboarding.
  3. First assignment: Onboarding of a new member is not official until they have completed their first assignment. Until then they’re considered to be on a ‘trial period’ whereby their engagement and attitudes are monitored. Whether official confirmation is based on completion or satisfactory progress is at the discretion of the working group lead. For example, if a first assignment is a task that may take several weeks then the working group lead can make their decision before completion – dependent on regular progress updates and general satisfaction with their progression.
  4. Formal acceptance: New members will be formally confirmed via email and/or direct message from the working group lead. No other working group members can give a final decision. Once accepted, the new member will be provided with access to the relevant data rooms and documentation.

Maintenance

Maintenance of the working groups is important to ensure a low-noise, productive and reliable task force. As such:

  • Working group members are expected to attend as many weekly meetings as possible.
  • If a member is unable to attend meetings or is planning to take an extended break then they should let the work group lead know so their status can be updated in our airtable.
  • Members are allowed to take as many breaks as they like, for as long as they inform the team.
  • If the working group lead is unable to make contact with a member for an extended period of time (usually 1 month) then they will be offboarded from the working group by default.
    • Importantly, this does not affect any right to participate or engage with the rest of the DAO, nor does it impact the individual’s right to make a new application to be reinstated to the working group. However, given that onboarding is at the discretion of the working group lead, this may affect our ability to trust the individual and as such, the lead reserves the right to deny a new application for this reason alone. Our ultimate goal is to accelerate ValleyDAO’s mission. If a member of our working group requires excessive follow-ups, it hampers ValleyDAO’s ability to effectively fulfill its purpose.

Offboarding

Offboarding of members from a working group can happen at any time under three different scenarios:

  1. The working group lead is unable to contact the member for an extended period and they are therefore offboarded by default.
  2. The member decides they no longer want to be a part of the working group and informs the working group lead that they’d like to be offboarded.
  3. The member behaves in a way that breaches our code of conduct and as such, the working group lead reserves the right to offboard the member with immediate effect.
  • Agree
  • Needs revision (comment is mandatory)
  • Disagree (comment is encouraged)

0 voters

2 Likes
2

Will there be some kind of legislation period for the leads?
This could avoid people sitting in their position too long if no internal (self-off boarding) or external (new suggestion) is triggering it.
Leads would need to communicate their goals and values again after some time (also interesting for more recent community members).

2 Likes
3

Good points.

Initially, we included a mandatory 6 month period for all leads after which they will have to be re-elected. We removed it from the text because it felt a bit too short. What do you feel is the right length?

1 Like
4

I think we should decide on a period to our best knowledge and then revise it and learn from it.
Are there any experiences from other DAOs, especially VitaDAO?

5

Yes, that’ll probably work. This 6 month figure came from VitaDAO, but 1 year might be more realistic

6

Bare in Mind Nicole that the 6 month is mandatory review. They can still be offboarded before then if people are dissatisfied

1 Like
7

I also think at least one year is more appropriate

2 Likes
8

Bear* :bear: in mind, monsieur

1 Like
9

Great framework to start with! I have a few comments that I hope will drive further discussion.

  1. Suggest changing the requirement for a first weekly meeting to come before a nomination to onboard. A member should fully understand the WG goals and be present (hopefully enough to be known by others) before applying to be a lead.

  2. It is not clear who performs the 1-on-1 calls.

Adding more proactive requirements for application could avoid a lot of friction/uncertainty during the 7 day period and subsequent voting. Examples could be having posted personal qualifications in discord as a temp check, highlighting specific things the member would add by assuming a lead role, or getting an informal nomination with some context in discord before a formal nomination.

1 Like
10

I included that in the proposal, thanks for suggesting

11

Thank you flowscience, these are some solid points.

  1. @Morgan_Richards how useful would something like that be?

  2. The 1-1 calls are usually led by the group lead(s)

1 Like
12

Hey man, appreciate the input! Perhaps the misunderstanding is on my side but for point (1) are you suggesting that we have working group members be present at meetings even before formally applying as a contributor or working group lead? If it’s contributor it could be useful but personally I do like to give people a thumbs up and the freedom to contribute as much or as little as they want. It’s a self-reinforcing mechanism given that we’re allocating GROW relative to contributions. Don’t work - don’t earn basically.

If you’re referring to the election of WG leads then it’s not an issue. If we don’t know who they are it’ll never pass a vote anyway so adding extra hoops doesn’t change much.

For (2) I’m not sure if the text was modified so forgive me if this sounds ignorant but it does clearly state in the text that I’m reading

1 Like
13

Why I support this proposal:

  1. It outlines the expectations for both working group members and core members, whilst maintaining reasonable ‘plasticity’ for non-obvious situations.
  2. Gives structure to the working groups and the processes for on/offboarding.
  3. It creates well-defined processes for offboarding to ultimately protect the interests of the community, rather than the individual.
2 Likes
14

Aloha to the community!

1 Like
15

This proposal has been passed Snapshot

1 Like
16

Hey, sorry I didn’t circle back in time to reply before this went to snapshot.

It sounds like I had misread something. My previous comments were things that seemed to jump out based on my first read.

Glad to see this went through with solid support!