One person having two dao governors positions

Community
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I recently raised a comment on harmony africa dao to bar people who are governors in other DAOs from paricipating in the upcoming governor’s election. One of the responses I got was no one in harmony is barred from becoming a governor In more than one DAO. It was an interesting response and I wanted to delve into the details on how someone with two governor positions in different Daos can deliver effectively.

Imagine you are a normal person (I know its hard to that at times) , you have 168hrs every week . Lets also assume you are a very hardworking chap and only sleeps for 7 hrs each day multiplied by 7 days thats 49 hrs a week. All normal people have jobs , the normal work week is a 40 hr work week ( I know there is a book called 4-hour work week) . Apart from working most of us have to go to school lets assume it takes 20 hrs of our time. Transport takes lets approximate 1 hr which adds upto 7hrs. I have never seen a governor aged less than 23 in harmony lets assume , all governors have family obligations which takes 10hrs , we have not talked about eating , socializing , research , bathing e.t.c .

My questions is this ? Can someone who is a governor in two Dao’ s actually deliver on the mandates of the Dao? Should we not limit the governoship position to one person can only be a governor in one Dao(Funded) at a time? What are your thoughts on this ​

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I think it’s hard to answer this question, in the way it’s worded, because lots of assumptions are being presented here.

  • Not everyone works 40 hours per week - some people work part-time, some people don’t work a traditional job at all.
  • Many governors I know no longer commute to their place of work.
  • Many governors I know don’t have family obligations.
  • Many governors I’ve met are not in school.

That all said, and this is my personal opinion, I think it’s more than reasonable for someone to join more than one DAO so long as they’re able to manage their time responsibly while working effectively.

HTH

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(Note: they can be members of other Dao’s but not governors.)

Hello, I apologize for all the assumptions I made. I have been learning to communicate properly, and it seems like it takes time to get it right. I want to clarify what I meant, though, and I’d like to do it in two parts.

1 Part One (contracts contracts to ensure all Dao governors are delivering according to Dao mandates).

  1. part two ( incentive allingments to actually make sure all Dao governors are delivering acccording to their Dao mandates).

Part One

Successful negotiations are as close to proper communication as I thought I could get. I went ahead to Coursera and enrolled in Successful (Negotiation: Essential Strategies and Skills Course by George Siedel). The key insight I got from this was that there are two ways of doing business.

a) The American way: contracts are enforced based on incentive allignment; that is, if either party breaches the contract, the consequences are worse than if they follow it.

b) Chineses way – chinese most rely on trust to do business and relly on goodwill of both parties to ensure the business or contracts will be beneficial to both parties.

Your opinion

Anyone should be able to join as many Dao as they want, provided they have the time to commit to the Dao.

My opinion

Daos are organizations, and governors are like founders who play a critical role in ensuring the organization becomes successful. Imagine you are a VC ( every Dao member is a VC in their Dao). A founder comes and tells you he has three startups and would like you to invest your time and resources (e.g., by attending Dao events; they cost money). If you are a VC who hates conflicts, you will tell them “don’t call me, I’ll call you and run.” If you are the other type, you will volunteer to pay for their therapy after a few years ( haha they are going to fail terribly).

The second point is how do the governors actually prove that they have time to commit to the mandates of the Dao they are running, how about they are not a governor of another Dao?

My Conclusion

Governors are important people in Daos, just like founders in startups. If we do not give resources to founders who have two starups or atleast (who have not built self-sustaining startups previously- we do not have a self-sustaining Dao in Harmony yet),Then we shouldn’t allow governors to run several organizations at the same time.

Part Two

The best book I got about the topic was by Thomas Sowell, Conflict of Visions. I can summarize the book in two main points where the author talks about two main visions that exist worldwide;

a) constrained vision – it entails what Adam Smith wrote about in his book The Wealth Of Nations , it basically states that humans are inherently selfish and the best way to incentivize them is through aligning their selfish interests with the interest of the community.He claimed that the reason capitalism was so successful and created wealth for nations was because it aligned people’s selfish interests with the community’s interests. For example, imagine you are a programmer and you believe you are the best programmer, who produces the best code in your society, so you charge more for people who want your services (selfish interest). Now, assuming this is true, people who buy your code get better value for their money and, in turn, produce better products (society benefits).

b) unconstrained vision – it entails the idea that humans are inherently good and its the society that makes them act in bad ways, that there are people who can act despite of their selfish self interest for the good of the society( in this example Daos) .

Your Opinion

If someone claims to have the time to participate, then they can be a governor in any Dao.

My opinion

Dao governors get paid $75/hr. That’s $750 a week. It’s a lot of money (it might not be for richer folks) and we need to ensure that they are actually delivering the mandates of the Dao every week.

My Conclusion

One of the ways we need to setup proper incentives for Daos in a way that is good for the harmony community is by reducing the number of times a person can be governor in any funded Dao. They can be govs in other Daos that are not funded by the community.

It would also be great if other people contributed @Sam

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Just my 2-cents, maybe just a limit of two DAOs for one person?

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I think you need to first understand what a DAO is & how it functions.

First of all, a DAO governor can only be compensated for maximum of 10hrs of work a week. Anyone can offer 2hrs daily or 5hrs for 2 days so long as it doe’s exceed 10hrs weekly which are mostly virtual by the way.

Also, alot of people aren’t still in school or doing 9-5 which can still afford them the time anyways. Sime people have good time management as well.

At the end of the day, its about knowing oneslf, strengths, capabilities, drive & work ethics. What works for A may actually seem impossible to B.

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Hey @Antony_Kimani and thanks for starting a good conversation. Couple of things I’d like to reply with:

  1. Those are not my opinions, or at least they don’t reflect my full opinion. People applying to run as governor shouldn’t just claim to have time, but would ideally demonstrate they have the skills to deliver on the mandates and work as a team with like-minded people.
  2. I don’t disagree with your concerns. Having governors on too many DAOs can result in inefficiencies and a burden on other DAO members who eventually pick up the slack.

DAOs are new, unexplored territory and we’re all learning how to best navigate these waters together. Harmony is in the process of on-boarding new DAO tooling to help us overcome these hurdles, and the team spearheading this will have more to share over the next few weeks. Some of these tools could help us prevent the issues you’re concerned about.

Hope that helps!

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I want to jump in here and, first, say thank you for your comments. This is an issue that has come up again and again and again and the misconception is pretty profound. Let me see if I can shed some light on it.

First - it is VITALLY important that It is not expected nor required that a Governor put in 10 hours of work a week into the DAO

A DAO governorship is NOT A JOB. The only, actual responsibility that a DAO governor has is that they are one of the signatories on the multisig wallet for the DAO.

That means - when the DAO community holds a vote to expend assets from their treasury, it is the responsibility of the governor to sign the transaction on the disbursement.

That leads me to my second point – it should be very VERY easy to be a governor in 5, 10, 15 different DAOs. There is nothing inherent in the governorship that would prevent anyone from doing so.

My third point is probably the single most important. So, please excuse me while I use bold and caps for this.

ANY MEMBER OF THE DAO IS ENTITLED TO COMPENSATION FOR THE WORK THEY DID ON BEHALF OF THE DAO

Governors that bankrupt their DAOs in pursuit of their own paycheck do their DAOs and their community a disservice.

The DAO community has a shared and joint responsibility to manage their treasury appropriately.

Hopefully, that helps clear up some of the misunderstanding regarding DAO governors.

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i think that would be better, it would be nice to cap to one unless the candidate has led a Dao to self -sufficiency

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haha imagine if bitcoin was designed that way, we would never have web3 , i am doing a longer thread on this matter to outline the situation