Article author: daniel_ospina
Article translation: Block unicorn
We spend most of our time in teams and organizations. Anyone who has ever led has spent tens or even hundreds of hours wondering: How can I make it better? When challenges come, what allows us to do great work together and adapt quickly? How do I keep my community happy and engaged?
Historically, most advice about organizations has stemmed from looking at "good" teams and comparing them to "bad" teams. Naturally, this approach leads to a generalization about the appearance of a successful team, but doesn't necessarily understand why they are the way they are, or what it takes to go from "bad" to "good."
Thankfully, Web3 gives us a great opportunity to think on fundamental principles, so today we're pushing it beyond buzzwords like accountability or psychological safety. Instead, I'll give you a framework that you can use with any DAO to see where you should focus your attention.
Interactively accomplishes or destroys the DAO
This old adage is the sum of the five people we spend the most time, and it's widely circulated these days, but even in Web3 — we still live in the cult of star performers.
A few years ago, three Harvard professors realized — despite the hype — that over time there had been little research on star performers. Committed to changing that, they track ambitious CEOs, researchers and software developers, as well as leading professionals in investment banking, PR, management consulting and legal. They found that the best performers in all of these groups were more like comets than stars. It was a huge success until they left one company for another and failed quickly.
For all the strengths of these talented people, the team and community around them seems to be critical to their success.
Another Harvard professor, JR Hackman, concluded that team design and structure account for 60 percent of team performance. Consistent findings in different fields such as intelligence agencies, classical orchestras, and technology companies.
Ultimately, an organization's success is not determined by its individual strength as an individual, but by the way those people communicate and collaborate. DAO founders often forget this lesson, leading to more than one community split and contributors leaving.
In dao, in contrast to anywhere else, the role of a leader is simply to create an organization that enables the most valuable interactions between communities.
The most valuable interactions
The question I've been grappling with over the past decade is what 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 took me from the Michelin-starred restaurant boom to decentralized digital co-ops, FTSE 100 companies, and numerous DAOs. I boil it down to:
Six key interactions have accomplished or undermined an organization, especially a decentralized organization.
Master the six key interactions of the 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. A DAO facing a crisis rather than falling apart. A DAO that is constantly evolving on its own.
You may be close to your ideal or you may be far away from it; it doesn't matter. It is important to set the conditions for learning and improving and to gain motivation in the process. These six key interactions (SKI) are required to make the flywheel turn, pushing your employees towards (regenerating) the flywheel.
SKI seeks to solve six problem areas around your DAO (and every team within it):
1. Identity: Who are we and what needs do we need to serve?
2. Future: Given how our environment evolves, how will we evolve to meet these needs?
3. Change: How can we transform from here to the future?
4. Coordination: How do we coordinate our work?
5. Operations: What do we do every day to deliver our value to our stakeholders?
6. Support: How do we empower everyone to do their best in a sustainable way?
identity
Identity interaction explores the following issues:
- Who do we exist to serve?
- Why do we come together?
- Who is at our core?
It is also an area of culture, morality, values and beliefs and is the cornerstone of cooperation. Identity interactions use rituals, stories, and slogans, such as a list of values or a team's origin story, to bring teams together, strengthen relationships, and create shared identities. Exploring, refining, and embodying this shared identity enables teams to transcend 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, believing that the most important things will always be at the heart of their work. Identity interactions provide security and continuity in a rapidly changing environment.
By the way, we developed a framework called "Mentoring Questions" to improve the mission and purpose statement that defines the DAO identity.
future
Future Interactive 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 look for new opportunities for disruption, innovation, and experimentation. It's about looking for weak signals to understand what's happening in the DAO environment, paying attention to trends, and using those trends to understand how the DAO needs to position itself to thrive and continue to thrive.
By definition, future interaction is an exercise in interacting with uncertainty. They need ambition, creativity and speculation. But because our human tendencies make us prone to confirmation biases and many other errors of judgment, effective future interactions include a balance between interesting ideas and rigorous experimentation — whether dreamers or pragmatists.
Most importantly, these interactions instilled a vibrant sense of possibility into the DAO. They combine individual efforts with shared goals. They make the impossible possible.
change
Change Interactions addresses the following issues:
- How do we bridge the gap between the present and the future?
- Which of the multiple paths do we choose?
- As a team, how do we change ourselves?
- And – more traditionally – what is our strategy?
These interactions are all about prioritization and transformation – a mature learning and growing environment... as well as discomfort. Change is fundamentally about letting go and embracing new things, or – more poetically – about death and rebirth. After all, constant renewal is the essence of life.
When we are able to balance structure and flexibility, healthy changing interactions occur that allow enough discomfort to grow without breaking us down. In more practical terms, changes include:
1. Focus the DAO's high-level strategy on specific initiatives, as well as any follow-up work to achieve those initiatives.
2. Urgent changes, marginal decisions lead to multiple small shifts, which gradually form larger shifts over time.
Maintaining healthy change interaction capabilities means empowering contributors to make big and small decisions at the "edge" (locally, in their team or sub-DAO). Nurturing both allows the DAO to adapt quickly and effectively in the face of external changes, as teams can move autonomously rather than wait for approval from the entire community. Both give contributors a sense of agency, increase their satisfaction and motivation, and enable them to use a detailed understanding of their own situation, skills, and preferences to improve outcomes for customers and other stakeholders.
harmonize
Coordinate interactions to 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 can we mitigate and resolve conflicts?
Coordinated interactions are the lubricant of an organization, and just as traffic lights help prevent conflicts between cars, these interactions can also prevent conflicts between people and teams, especially when everyone is moving fast.
The 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 tools or discussing common criteria for using DAO communication channels.
2. Coordinate: Consider updating data sheets, planning sprints, holding daily stand-up meetings or weekly project meetings, or telling your team about delays.
3. Solve the problem: When hits a fan, get it back on track — for example, mediate interpersonal conflict or clarify characters when gaps and overlaps are problematic. Of course, measures should also be taken to prevent this from happening, such as allowing facilitators and coaches to build healthy relationships.
operation
Ops Interactions handles the following issues:
- What needs to be done every day to create value for our communities?
- How can we do what we do effectively?
- How do we consistently deliver high-quality products?
These interactions cover all the small tasks and processes that make up DAO's day-to-day operations—what you need to do to deliver the product or service for which you're responsible.
Ops is about getting things done, like responding to customer queries, making sales, coding software, attracting contributors, and all the core tasks of each department. It's also about discussing work, for example, discussing with your colleagues how to respond to the above questions, providing feedback on their work, or seeking advice from senior contributors. These interactions include production, continuous improvement, guidance and quality control.
Ops Interactions is typically grouped by functional expertise – your traditional finance, marketing, or HR department. But you can also find operations grouped around product features or geographic regions, or even split into sub-DAOs that sell services to each other within an organization.
backing
Support interaction creates space for:
- What do you need to make a full contribution to your team?
- How can the team support your physical, emotional, and intellectual health?
While the first five interactions treat the DAO as a whole, support is about listening and serving everyone's needs. Support is an area of well-being, mentoring and career development.
These interactions invite you to treat your employees as people and recognize the impact of work on their (psychological) health and well-being. Support is crucial because it enables people to do their best and makes them feel valued, watched, and appreciated. These, in turn, help create the sense of security necessary for innovation, deep collaboration, and true accountability.
Essentially, support interactions enable your community to make the best contribution among all other interactions.
Skiing as a journey
Although I have explained them all, the six interactions complement each other. We need to support them both, which also means that barriers in one interaction can lead to problems in other interactions. But don't let that discourage you. Maintaining all six interactions is a daunting task, and no organization is perfect. Therefore, the role of SKI is not to pursue perfection, but to focus your and your community's attention on what matters most: creating the conditions for regeneration, learning and improving every day, and better contributing to the well-being of yourself and your community.
So, whenever you find yourself wondering how to advance your DAO, ask yourself: In our unique situation, what's the best way to have these six key interactions?