Intro
On Friday, December 2nd, 2022, DXvoice presented “Inefficiencies and DXdao Services”, which aimed to tackle the following:
- Take accountability for poor structural decisions and misunderstood delegation of ownership from the DXvoice Squad.
- Address misguided expectations, and large communication gaps from both DXvoice and product.
- Communicating that DXvoice has not felt the agency to make proactive decision-making, instead operating on a “running basis”.
- EG: DXdao entrusting design to make design related decisions, yet not having the ability in practice to make decisions to the best of their ability. Veto!
- Strongly indicate that if the DXvoice squad can’t have agency in product decisions, it shouldn’t exist in its current capacity (READ: Justify).
- Arguments and actions to rectify are firmly against said abolishment.
There appears to be a misinterpretation of the communications outlined above; DXvoice wanted to put this thread together to ensure the intended messaging exists somewhere written and accessible, particularly to anyone assessing DXvoice, and by part, “Voice” Squad budgeting. It’s worth noting that this presentation was created specifically to address DXvoice, and should be interpreted as solely coming from the perspective of DXvoice.
Some lower-level sections have been removed in an effort to avoid a massive wall of information. You can view the presentation in its entirety here.
Operational Difficulty
DXvoice, through periods of internal challenges such as lack of talent, struggled to ascertain its exact role within the DAO. The preceding expectation and delegation of ownership were not accurately communicated by DXvoice or product, resulting in several growing gaps in the coordination and transmission of information. (Product expecting 100% proactive engagement without communicating, DXvoice expecting adverse engagement due to lack of communication by both parties, cycle continues).
None of this is to say that I believe DXvoice has done poor work, on the contrary, relative to team size, I feel DXvoice has bolstered a fantastic baseline of necessary talent to facilitate the growth of initiatives and products for a DAO (and has outputted fantastic work in that regard). The main issue has always pointed back to the misdelegation of resources and attention; by not establishing a formal external operating structure, limited resources were often “taken” on the basis of active communication and, perceived, DXdao priority (READ: Squeaky wheel gets the grease). More often than not, these initiatives did not match DXdao prioritization and resulted in “waste”, or, more specifically, “misuse” of time and talent.
For more information on what this looks like, take a browse through the live presentation, where I show some key elements of the “unshipped exhibit” and some highlights of upcoming initiatives.
What needs to change?
The main communication issues appear to have lied within the order of presentation for the necessary changes DXvoice wants to see structurally.
First, DXvoice implicated that a “services” bucket should be instated, to encapsulate relevant non-technical roles under a single accountability hierarchy. DXvoice would be able to better ensure it is receiving necessary business-related information from DXbiz, and collaborate tighter on the successful execution and communication of product priorities. (DXvoice and DXbiz often operated independently).
The most important element, in my eyes, is establishing a structure within this bucket to respect global DXdao priority. By removing the element of “Hey, we need this done, and it needs to be done next week”, DXvoice can instead execute upon marketing and branding plans that respect what the DAO has indicated as a high priority. This allows us to get involved and have a genuine influence on product from an early stage without conflicts of communication.
Although this diagram doesn’t accurately reflect the relationship between “Voice” and the priorities of DXdao, it mainly intends to indicate that products would not come to us, but rather DXvoice, and by part “Voice” guild, would be proactively involved directly within the products.
This slide may not have been properly communicated within the presentation.
DXvoice is indicating that it needs the ability to influence product, or it shouldn’t exist within its current capacity. We want to remove the last-minute elements associated with our previous unclear communication of commitment and responsibility, and ensure we are directly involved with product decisions from the very beginning. Most importantly, we want to ensure we actually have the authority to execute upon what we believe is in the best interest of the DAO and products.
In cases where the facilitation of goals is not possible due to time restraints relative to global priority, we would determine whether the “Voice” bucket needs to shake up its participants, hire new talent directly to the guild, or onboard related fields directly to the most mature products.
Conclusion
To wrap this post up, our goal was to communicate that we recognize our personal areas of failure, and are looking to work alongside DXdao to make important and missing structural adjustments, such as how squads interact with one another.
I’ve spent much time discussing the “Voice” bucket this week. In hindsight, the post did not accurately represent the above information. I will be adjusting the language to accommodate this on the DXvoice side, as well as urging the DXbiz side to evaluate these findings and how they could be utilized in their own vision.
You can follow along with the existing budget post here.
Thanks!