On The Other Side ep 27 - DAO Mini-Series: Structuring Proposals
Primer: What makes a good proposal? Chase Chapman speaks with Aaron Dignan and Rodney Evans from the Brave New Work Podcast, sharing insights on the types of proposals they have seen across DAOs, how proposals could be better worded to introduce clarity, and the people involved in passing proposals.
Current State Of Proposal Making Across DAOs
A lot of proposals focus heavily on the details about how systems would work
Often, the individuals heading up a proposal are the ones who are executing it
Budget is included in the proposals
What’s Needed In A Proposal
Proposal has to be clear, provide the context, and what is actually being proposed
Often, people end up arguing about the assumptions that were made. This may not matter in terms of consenting to the proposal
Hence, it is important to whittle down proposals to the actual policy agreement/role/experiment that the community is deciding about
“Get really clear on what the ask is, and separate that out and make that as obvious and as simple as possible. That's a mistake that I see people in all kinds of organizations make, because we end up having the wrong conversation about the attendant details, not the actual thing itself.”
- Rodney Evans
Proposals should be swift, light, and elegant. Clear paragraph-long proposals should be able to pass. They should not look like an amendment to the Constitution
Aaron has an agreement template that he uses when he spins up a new proposal. It contains the following sections:
Section for tension that is to be resolved
Section for data or facts contributing to the case for the agreement
Section for assumptions
Section for benefits
Section for risks
Section for alternatives
Who Decides Whether A Proposal Should Pass?
There’s an ideal way and what is actually done in practice
The ideal way is that the organization has a nested structure. The original core contributors created this space and would distribute some authority to the working groups
When that happens, people start to get a sense of not only which groups might be involved, but also where do they meet in the system
In the absence of clarity, one could also find the individuals/groups and bring them together. Proposals could still be passed in a consent-based way in this manner
Hence, the goal is to move towards working groups, passing proposals to empower these working groups with the authority to execute decisions until a subsequent proposal takes it away
A good rubric to use as to who should be making the decisions:
The ones doing the work
The ones paying for the work
The ones significantly impacted by the work
People could vote for some representatives in a particular decision space
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