Original translation: Block unicorn

Original translation: Block unicorn

We spend most of our time in teams and organizations.Anyone who has ever led has spent dozens or even hundreds of hours wondering: How can I make it better? What enables us to do great work together and adapt quickly when challenges arise? How do I keep the community happy and engaged?

Historically, most advice about organizations stems from looking at "good" teams and contrasting them with "bad" teams. Naturally, this approach leads to generalizations about what successful teams look like, but not necessarily an understanding of why they are the way they are, or what it takes to go from "bad" to "good."

first level title

Interactions Make or Break The DAO

The old adage that the five people we spend the most time combined is widely circulated these days, but even in Web3 - we still live in the cult of the star performer.

A few years ago, three Harvard professors realized—despite the hype—that little research had been done on star performers over time. In their quest to change that, they tracked ambitious CEOs, researchers and software developers, as well as leading professionals in investment banking, PR, management consulting and the law. They found that the top performers in all these groups were more like comets than stars. Had great success until they left one company for another and quickly failed.

For all the goodness of these talented individuals, the teams and communities that surround them seem to be critical to their success.

Another Harvard professor, JR Hackman, concluded that team design and structure account for 60% of team performance. Consistent findings across fields as diverse as intelligence agencies, classical orchestras, and technology companies.

Ultimately, the success of an organization is determined not by the strength of its individuals as individuals, but by the way those individuals communicate and collaborate. DAO founders often forget this lesson, causing more than one community to split and contributors to leave.

In a DAO, more than anywhere else, the leader's role is simply to create an organization that enables the most valuable interactions between the community.

Most Valuable Interaction

The question I've been wrestling with for the past decade is which interactions create the most value for the organization? The quest for answers led me to delve into systems theory, self-management, creativity, and behavioral science. It has taken me from the Michelin starred restaurant craze to decentralized digital co-ops, FTSE 100 companies and numerous DAOs. I boil it down to:

Six key interactions make or break an organization, especially a decentralized one.

Master the six key interactions of a DAO

So you need a DAO that delivers great work, makes the most of its resources, attracts a lot of talent, and drives its entire ecosystem forward. A DAO that faces crisis instead of falling apart. A DAO that is constantly evolving itself.

You may be close to your ideal, or far from it; that's okay. The important thing is to set the conditions for learning and improving, and gain momentum along the way. These Six Key Interactions (SKIs) are what are needed to get the flywheel turning, pushing your workforce towards the (regenerating) flywheel.

The SKI revolves around six problem areas that your DAO (and each team within it) seeks to solve:

1. Identity:Who are we and what needs do we serve?

2. Future:Given how our environment has evolved, how will we evolve to meet these needs?

3. Changes:How do we shift from here to the future?

4. Coordination:How do we coordinate our work?

5. Operation:What are we doing every day to deliver our value to our stakeholders?

6. Support:identity

identity

Identity Interaction explores the following questions:

• Who do we exist to serve?

• Why do we come together?

• Who is our core?

It is also the domain of culture, ethics, values ​​and beliefs, the cornerstone of cooperation. Identity interactions use rituals, stories, and slogans (such as a value list or a team's origin story) to bring teams together, strengthen relationships, and create a shared identity. Exploring, refining, and embodying this shared identity enables teams to move beyond transactional relationships and foster a sense of community, belonging, and deep commitment.

But perhaps most importantly, it is this unwavering sense of identity that enables teams to change, trusting that what matters most will always be at the heart of what they do. Identity Interaction provides security and continuity in rapidly changing environments.

future

future

Future Interaction seeks to answer the following questions:

• How has our environment evolved?

• What is our vision for the future?

• What new possibilities should we explore?

These interactions are where you find new opportunities for disruption, innovation and experimentation. It's about looking for weak signals to understand what's going on in the DAO environment, noticing trends, and using those trends to understand how DAOs need to position themselves to thrive and continue to thrive.

By definition, future engagement is an exercise in engaging with uncertainty. They require ambition, creativity and speculation. But because our human tendencies make us prone to confirmation bias and many other errors of judgment, effective future interactions involve a balance between interesting ideas and rigorous experimentation—whether dreamers or pragmatists.

Most importantly, these interactions instill a vibrant sense of possibility in DAOs. They combine individual efforts with a common goal. They make the impossible possible.

Change

Change Interactions address the following issues:

• How do we bridge the gap between the present and the future?

• Which of the many paths do we choose?

• How can we change ourselves as a team?

• And -- more traditionally -- what's our strategy?

These interactions are all about prioritization and transformation - a ripe environment for learning and growth...and discomfort. Change is fundamentally about letting go and embracing the new, or—more poetically—about death and rebirth. After all, constant renewal is the essence of life.

A healthy interaction of change occurs when we can balance structure and flexibility, allowing enough discomfort to grow, but not enough to break us down. In more practical terms, changes include:

1. A high-level strategy for focusing the DAO on some specific initiatives, and any follow-through to achieve said initiatives.

2. Urgent change, where decisions on the edge lead to multiple small shifts that build up into larger shifts over time.

coordination

coordination

Coordination interactions address the following issues:

• How do we communicate within and between teams?

• How and where do we store knowledge and information?

• What standards and procedures should we follow?

• How do we mitigate and resolve conflict?

Coordinated interactions are the lubricant of organization, and just as traffic lights help prevent conflicts between cars, these interactions can prevent conflicts between people and teams, especially when everyone is moving fast.

This work is divided into three parts:

1. Design coordination: Define how you and your other contributors will coordinate your work, such as choosing your project management tool or discussing common standards for using DAO communication channels.

2. Coordinate: Consider updating data sheets, planning sprints, holding daily standups or weekly project meetings, or telling your team about delays.

operate

operate

Ops Interactions addresses the following issues:

• What needs to be done every day to create value for our community?

• How can we effectively do what we do?

• How do we consistently deliver high-quality products?

These interactions cover all the small tasks and processes that make up a DAO's day-to-day operations -- the things you need to do to deliver the product or service you're responsible for.

Ops is about getting work done, like responding to customer inquiries, making sales, coding software, engaging contributors, and all the core tasks of each department. It's also about discussing work, for example, discussing with your colleagues how you might respond to the above questions, providing feedback on their work, or seeking advice from senior contributors. These interactions include production, continuous improvement, mentoring and quality control.

support

support

Supportive interactions create space for questions such as:

• What do you need to fully contribute to the team?

• How does the team support your physical, emotional and intellectual health?

While the first five interactions look at the DAO as a whole, support is about listening to and serving everyone's needs. Support is the area of ​​wellbeing, mentoring and career development.

These interactions invite you to see your employees as human beings and to recognize the impact work has on their (mental) health and wellbeing. Support is vital because it enables people to be their best and makes them feel valued, followed and appreciated. These, in turn, contribute to the security necessary for innovation, deep collaboration, and true accountability.

Essentially, supporting interactions enable your community to contribute the best they can in all other interactions.

skiing as a journey

Although I have explained them one by one, the six major interactions complement each other. We need to support them both, which also means that obstacles in one interaction can cause problems in other interactions. But don't let that demotivate you. Maintaining all six interactions is a daunting task, and no organization is perfect. Therefore, the role of SKI is not to strive for perfection, but to focus your and your community's attention on what matters most: to create the conditions for regeneration, to learn and improve every day, to better contribute to your own and your community's well-being. contribute.

So whenever you find yourself wondering how to move forward with your DAO, ask yourself: what is the best way to have these six key interactions in our unique situation?