Context: Governance State of Affairs

Structure overview

After the WHW workshop, the governance committee will organize running workshops that will help establish the foundation for our long-term strategies. Prior to this short-term organizational labor and role delegation must be set in place into a temporary governance system of responsibilities. Its main purpose will be to effectively delineate which tasks and roles are (temporarily) assigned to which cohort members, and streamline decision processes for when time-critical choices have to be made.

Explanation

Proposed structure for next week based on Viable System Model theory (you can read more on it here). In this theory, the collective is divided into 5 roles: implementation, coordination, control, intelligence & policy. At the outset of each project, the project group assigns people that play these roles and some people may play several roles. Having visibility into who has what role also allows us to identify who may be taking on too many tasks, thus allow you to relieve others of tasks. This can also help align task assignment with people’s skillsets and those they wish to develop (you can use our skills table to support this).

Implementation roles

These people make sure that projects get done by working on specific tasks: setting up miro board, doing research and analysis, creating design outputs, working together with other implementors, etc. Within working units, those directly working tasks related to the unit’s outputs have an “implementation” role.

Coordination roles

Keep documentation updated and people informed. They make sure everything is connected. Including between project groups.

Control group

Make sure deadlines and goals are met.

Intelligence

Collect information about the cohort, create and maintain the high-level vision of cohort and make sure cohort is connected to real-world.

Policy

Make sure everyone is involved in the right groups, fulfill their interests, maintain good group dynamics and define strategy - future steps and so on.

<aside> 💡 Besides playing these roles within the projects, people with the same roles are responsible for talking to the same roles in other groups to maintain general connectivity within the organization.

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