NoDW #15: DAOversity Report
In this Newsletter of Decentralized Work edition:
Call for Research Participants
DAOversity Report
Elsewhere in Web3
Call for Research Participants
A team at talentDAO is studying motivational factors in the DAO ecosystem, and we are looking for research participants. If you are interested in sharing about your DAO experience to help this research, please complete this survey. As a token of our appreciation, participants will receive this POAP.
DAOversity Report
by: Francisco Díaz
With collaboration from: ItamarGo, Banklesschick, JB, Melior and Pedro Parrachia
BanklessDAO partnered with talentDAO to run a survey on Diversity, Equity, and Inclusion (DEI) practices and culture in BanklessDAO. We collected data from 48 BanklessDAO members, aiming to understand how included/excluded people feel inside the DAO and how to improve their experiences.
This survey is an initiative from the DAOversity work team of BanklessDAO, which aims make the web3 space more inclusive and accessible.
In this article we’ll detail how we approached this problem, describe the results of each question, and discuss the results at the end of it. The sense making of this data is condensed in the “Discussion” section, while the “Results” section has a raw tone to expose the data as it was coded and summarized.
Here is an overview graphic. Additional graphics are here. You can read the full DAOversity report here.
Research Design
We built a six-question survey that was open for BanklessDAO members to respond during November 2021:
What's an example of a time when you felt very included in a DAO that you actively participate in? What factors about yourself or the situation contributed to you feeling included?
What's an example of a time when you felt very excluded in a DAO that you actively participate in? What factors about yourself or the situation contributed to you feeling excluded?
Do you feel like you can be more of yourself in a DAO compared to a traditional organization? Why or why not?
Have you identified areas where you feel DAO's should improve in order to be more inclusive to yourself or others? (optional)
If you are comfortable doing so, please share the underrepresented groups you identify with (optional)
On a scale of 1 to 5, how inclusive do you feel the DAO and Web3 community is?
To analyze the information, we used inductive content analysis coding, which is a rigorous exploratory methodology that allows themes to emerge directly from the data. We had four subject matter experts on qualitative methodologies and DEI independently reviewing the responses, identifying topic themes, and categorizing participant responses based on these topic themes. Then two analysts reviewed all the initial codes and agreed on a final list of themes to be used to analyze the 48 responses.
This is an exploratory study, so we established a small threshold for themes. Coded topics needed to have at least five responses (10.4% of the sample) to become a theme. In the results section we provide each theme with the number of responses they got.
To complement the analysis, we used codes from existing literature on DEI, specifically from Jackson & Joshi (2011), and Roberson (2017). This means that all responses were analyzed three times: to explore themes, to code with the selected themes, and to code with themes taken from the literature review.
This three pronged approach yielded great results as some original themes were not consistent enough to be a code by themselves but then appeared among other themes that, together, were present in over 10% of the responses using the codes from literature review. To give an example, people outside US time zones and neurodiverse members have important things to say, but they couldn’t get more than 10% of the responses as a separate topic, but they could be included into codes from literature review like “Task-oriented diversity” or “Formal communication”, which allowed us to not miss that important information.
Results and Discussion
In the context of work organizations, Ely and Thomas (2001) found three arguments in favor of encouraging cultural diversity: 1) as a moral end to correct historic discrimination, 2) as a way to gain access to the markets of a cultural or national group, and 3) as a resource for learning. Even though all three are important, after examining various cases to identify when diversity enhances work groups functioning, the authors found that the third approach was the best. So, it’s not only a moral baseline that organizations should adopt, but also an opportunity to learn, adopt different perspectives and work together more effectively.
It is interesting to note that some authors affirm that there’s limited evidence that diverse workgroups lead to more innovation or better performance (Richard, Barnett, Dwyer, & Chadwick, 2004). Yet, in organizations that are flatter and less bureaucratic, like DAOs, diversity has been found to be disruptive (Harris & Beyerlein, 2003). This comes true if it’s combined with appropriate leadership that can guide a diverse work team. From the analysis done by Jackson & Joshi (2011) they found that transformational leadership style may be especially effective for diverse work teams, which means having leaders acting as role models that provide motivational inspiration and intellectual stimulation, allowing members to align under the same goals and values by building a sense of optimism and efficacy. If leaders of the DAO can focus on guiding the team under the same principles and being proactive on achieving those goals, then a diverse team could be easily aligned with the work that team needs to be done and to use their differences as a tool instead of being an obstacle for coordinating effort.
We should caution the reader, though, that most literature we found is based on workplace context, which could differ from some of the dynamics that DAOs have, especially those which focus on vibes and community instead of product or services. Also, most of the research found in the literature was conducted in North American organizations, which is a caution against exporting the results to other organizations that are not based in the US.
That being said, we encourage to take two perspective changes: 1) celebrating and proactively managing diversity instead of treating it as an issue or something to be addressed. 2) Avoid aggregating groups under classifications like minorities, marginalized, or disabled. The results from the survey show that doing so makes us lose information about all the diverse perspectives that members have around inclusion and exclusion, which constrains our understanding of meaning, consequences, and unique experiences of the intersections of various identities (Roberson, Ryan & Ragins, 2017).
We can also see from the results that “diversity” is much broader than visible attributes like gender, age, or race. Underlying diversity is also important and includes things like ideology, neurodiversity, professional background, personality, time zones, and many others. It is important to understand that individuals belong to multiple identities, but also that not all differences are equal. In this survey in particular, gender was mentioned more frequently and had more detailed information on the open questions as members informed on how they feel underrepresented or being less visible compared to their male coworkers within the DAO.
To put all this into the context of BanklessDAO, let’s check a summary of the codes used and the results from each question:
Summary from each question (TL;DR)
What makes members feel included? 40% of participants mentioned that they feel included inside a work team or guild, which indicates that people get easily included inside a smaller group more so than the general DAO, which could be too broad. The same percentage of respondents mentioned that Formal Communication is key for them to feel included. Formal communication includes stablished channels like community calls, weekly guild syncs, announcement channels or text channels from specific groups instead of DMs or sub-threads that only some members can read. Another 46% of respondents feel like the Organizational culture of the DAO plays a major role in feeling included: peer support and recognition, feeling listened, attentive moderation, and inclusive leadership are some aspects of the “DAO culture”.
What makes members feel excluded? Answers are more disperse here, but we can mention lack of peer engagement (no response to DMs or questions), US dominance of the space (hard for non-English speakers to engage and specially for those far away from US time zones who can’t join meetings), and general discriminatory practices against women, crypto newbies, or older people. There’re also complaints against financial elitism where people feel priced out of a community or that governance is whale friendly. This also includes people who complain that some groups prioritize making quick money instead of building good products or services.
Do members feel more like themselves in a DAO compared to a trad org? 60% say yes, 20% are ambivalent, 10% say no, and the other 10% didn’t give an answer. 70% of the respondents point out to Organizational culture as a major factor in feeling more like themselves in a DAO. This refers to certain aspects of the DAO like flat structure, work autonomy and flexibility, and being judged on merit and not identity.
How can the DAO improve to be more inclusive? This question has the most dispersion of answers: making an explicit statement to get rid of toxic members or discriminatory practices, working towards gender inclusion, improve onboarding practices, inviting perspectives from marginalized communities and language use. Navigation of the space is also an area for improvement since many people feel like staying up to date with the DAO is a challenge, especially for those with IRL responsibilities, non-English speakers, and those far away from US time zones.
What underrepresented groups are participating in this survey? Newbies, old and young people, women, non-white people, and people who feel underrepresented by their sexual orientation.
In a scale from 1 to 5 on how inclusive people feel the DAO and web3 community to be, the average among respondents was 3.8 with a median of 4. 15 members (31% of the sample) gave a 3 in the scale, which is “somewhat included”. It is evident that more work is needed since 1/3 of the respondents feel like they’re not entirely integrated or represented inside the DAO.
Sense-Making
A good starting point to make sense of these results is to compare questions 3 and 6. 60% of members feel like they can be more like themselves inside the DAO compared to a traditional organization, which coincides with the 64% of members who positioned themselves in 4 or 5 in the scale of how included they feel in the DAO. The problem relies on the other 36% of members who feel “somewhat included” or directly excluded from the DAO. We hope that the discussion of the data can be an actionable guide to improve those numbers. The rest of the questions provide insight on how we can make DAO members feel more included.
To begin, one of the stronger indicators we found in literature and in question 1 is that feelings of inclusivity are more strongly associated with specific work groups or teams than the general organization. This means that more attention should be put on how members find their niche and build relationships inside those groups, instead of trying to foster socialization with the whole organization. This is especially true for larger organizations like BanklessDAO, as many respondents said that they feel overwhelmed by the number of channels and discussions. Directing members to specific teams could guide them on their “DAO journey” and lower the FOMO of trying to stay up to date with the whole DAO. Another study done on DAO leadership supports this approach, as leaders can provide context and enable members with tools to easily adapt to the workgroups of the DAO instead of letting new members find their niche by themselves (Wocken & Díaz, 2023).
Communication plays a critical role for inclusivity, especially formal communication, which we defined as the stablished or official means of communication for the organization. Members should feel that they’re listened and that they participate on discussions with more experienced members on equal conditions. Community calls, weekly syncs and announcement channels are examples of how the DAO -and teams in particular- can make members feel aligned by sharing context and equipping new joiners with all the information necessary to add value. Of course, informal communication is also important as it makes members feel like they are creating relationships with real human beings. Answering DMs, addressing questions on text channels and making room for more intimate conversations are important to improve informal communication. Not addressing the communication problem is one of the many fronts where members feel excluded from the DAO. They feel like peers are not engaging with them and therefore feeling like they don’t have a voice, or they are not important to the organization.
The fact that many DAOs are US-centric creates two friction points: language and time zones. Non-English speakers may feel not on the same level of communication. A culture of multilingualism would make DAOs inclusive to members of any part of the world. This leads to the second friction point, which is time zones. Even if people outside the US can speak English fluently, they may be based on countries far away from US time zones, making it difficult to join meetings or calls. Being able to be flexible and consider different time zones for the work that the DAO does is important to make sure that all nationalities can be included and not just those near the US. One solution to this issue could be creating polls to decide meeting times in a more equative fashion or creating parallel events on different time zones, like onboarding sessions for Western time zones and another one for Eastern time zones.
Organizational culture of BanklessDAO
Feeling included thanks to the DAO culture in terms of organizational practices and values is the biggest theme from this survey, with 70% of participants mentioning something related to the organizational culture when asked if they could feel more like themselves in a DAO compared to a traditional organization. Having a flat structure, bringing all your skills and interests, creating your own job description, sharing the space with like-minded people, having work flexibility and ownership, and many other examples were given when describing the organizational culture. It is great to know that people appreciate the way the DAO is structured and how it brings more freedom and transparency to its members, but we need to be cautious about this, especially when we find comments like this one:
“In the DAO, I can contribute when I feel like it. I control how much I contribute, when I contribute, and where I contribute. I can hop in a project for a few weeks and move on to another if I fancy. There’re no write ups, no suspensions, no terminations. My income isn’t capped. The thing I hated most about my previous jobs is that I was a salaried member of management. No matter how many hours I worked, my paycheck was the same every payday. Here in the DAO, I can earn more by doing more! I have more freedom than I’ve ever had.”
Developing a flexible space where people have freedom to contribute and explore their interests is good and members clearly show that they appreciate how norms from traditional workspaces are being defied. But that doesn’t mean that DAOs should be radically open spaces with no accountability. Making members feel included implies that leaders are setting expectations and letting new members know that there are rules and codes of conduct, so they don’t get frustrated by unclear work agreements like compensations or being fired by the DAO, a delicate theme among decentralized organizations.
Hidden identity
One last interesting finding from the survey is the ability to manage your identity inside a DAO. You can choose what information to show your peers and what to keep private. The DAO doesn’t need to know your gender, nationality, age, or race. You don’t even have to give a real name as many web3 people use pseudonyms. This has positive outcome, as many people showed in their responses. Alongside privacy benefits, we can see people feeling valued by their contributions and thinking instead of being judged on who they are and where they come from. The digital first environment of DAOs also make some people feel comfortable since they don’t have to interact in person with people they don’t know or with who they don’t feel comfortable with. Even if they have to speak on meetings, the use of video is optional, and the DAO culture favors more relaxed and informal conversations. This aspect of “identity management” in DAOs can be beneficial, but we also perceive it as a risk from the DEI perspective. By using pseudonyms and hiding aspects of your identity, you don’t have to give unnecessary information, but this makes it difficult to judge how inclusive DAOs are.
It is interesting to note that in the responses where people mention that they feel included, many said that it was because they could bring their full self to the organization: all your skill set, your interests, your personality, and passions. If people must conceal something from their beings to feel more included, then we cannot say that members are allowed to bring their full self. DAOs should keep the option available for people to manage their identities and be tolerant if members don’t want to give a real name or identity, but the organizations must encourage respect and inclusiveness so that people who openly show their gender, nationality, sex, orientation or race can feel as welcomed and included as those who opt to use pseudonyms and keep other aspects of their identity in private.
Conclusion
The presented results are part of an exploratory research to understand DEI practices in the DAO space by asking members how included or excluded they feel within the organization and what could be done to improve this experience. The BanklessDAO members show that, in average, they feel included, and the DAO culture fosters that. We have also seen that 1/3 of members feel like they’re not entirely included inside the organization, which points out to the many aspects that the DAO still needs to work on if it wants to create a better space. This is a big challenge to address if we consider BanklessDAO as a whole, but we can start working towards a better organization by focusing on guilds and other work teams, as members said that those places impact most how included they feel. Exploring the data from this survey opens many other questions and possibilities for further research. It would be interesting to replicate this study with other DAOs and see if communication, smaller work groups, and organizational culture are as important as it is in BanklessDAO to make members feel included. Having more data from other decentralized organizations would allow us to see if we are replicating the same practices from traditional organizations, or if we are actually building a new space for people to bring their full being and explore their talents and interests with like-minded people.
References
Ely, R., & Thomas, D. (2001). Cultural diversity at work: the effects of diversity perspectives on work group processes and outcomes. Administrative Science Quarterly, 46, 229−273.
Harris, C. L., & Beyerlein, M. M. (2003). Team-based organization. In M. A. West, D. Tjosvold, & K. G. Smith (Eds.), Handbook of organizational teamwork and cooperative working (pp. 187–209). Chichester, England: Wiley.
Jackson, S. E., & Joshi, A. (2011). Work team diversity. In S. Zedeck (Ed.), APA handbook of industrial and organizational psychology, Vol. 1. Building and developing the organization (pp. 651–686). American Psychological Association.
Richard, O. C., Barnett, T., Dwyer, S., & Chadwick, K. (2004). Cultural diversity in management, firm performance, and the moderating role of entrepreneurial orientation. Academy of Management Journal, 47, 255–266.
Roberson, Q., Ryan, A. M., & Ragins, B. R. (2017). The evolution and future of diversity at work. Journal of Applied Psychology, 102(3), 483–499.
Shore, L. M, et al. (2009). Diversity in organizations: Where are we now and where are we going? In Human Resource Management Review 19 (2009) 117–133.
Wocken, L., Díaz, F. (2023, February 26) Leadership in DAOs. Mirror. https://mirror.xyz/lisawocken.eth/b_rwKEQ0DibZakx6WQiOGo1TtPXOQdAJG1lUaM8kEmQ
Elsewhere in Web3
This section includes summaries of articles that members of the talentDAO community found interesting and wanted to share.
Crypto Basics Series: DAOs Are Playgrounds for Growth and Development
In the world of DAOs, creating an engaged and active community is a crucial challenge. DAOs need clear missions to avoid becoming unfocused and centralized. To tackle this, DAOs often use guilds, resembling professional talent hubs, to onboard and engage members in projects. These guilds offer not only skill development but also personal growth opportunities. Similar to multiplayer online role-playing games (MMORPGs), working in a DAO involves defining roles, embarking on quests, leveling up skills, fostering teamwork, and adapting to change. Positive-sum and regenerative games within DAOs promote collaboration, skill-building, and shared benefits. Cohort-based and project-driven learning courses emerge as ideal tools for cultivating soft skills, collaboration, and continuous development within the dynamic and evolving landscape of DAOs, fostering a regenerative community that amplifies human potential and collectively addresses complex challenges in the new economy. (full text)
DAO Pain Points and Paths Forward
Navigating the realm of DAOs holds both promise and challenge. A recent BanklessDAO Twitter Spaces conversation delved into key pain points and potential paths forward, featuring insights from various DAO representatives. Legal and regulatory uncertainty persists, but creating legal entities and actively participating in legislative processes could pave the way. Centralized infrastructure vulnerabilities and Sybil attacks raise concerns, with decentralized alternatives like the Internet Computer providing potential solutions. Overcomplication and a need for user-friendly tools call for simplified DAO initiation. Sustainability models, effective retention, product-market fit, and robust decision-making are vital. Emphasizing full-time commitment, distinguishing voting from decision-making, and addressing smart contract limitations are necessary. While onboarding and voter engagement challenges persist, the DAO ecosystem remains resilient, with participants focused on collaboration and innovation. (full text)
Meta Gamma Delta DAO
Meta Gamma Delta (MGD), a pioneering group supporting women in Web3, sadly announces its closure after three impactful years and over $100k in grants. MGD's focus is now on allocating the remaining $20k+ to grants. Female founders in Web3 are invited to apply before August 21, 2023. MGD's unique journey started as a playful sorority parody and evolved into a Decentralized Autonomous Organization (DAO) with a focus on grants. It differentiated itself from typical "women-in-crypto" groups by fostering real change. Through their journey, MGD showcased the power of collaboration, adaptability, and creative solutions. Despite the closure, the legacy of MGD's support for women-led projects will resonate in the Web3 ecosystem, highlighting the positive impact of its pioneering spirit. (full text)
Many people feel they work in pointless, meaningless jobs, research confirms
This one is not about Web3 but motivates the talentDAO mission. A new study has verified the theory that many people feel their jobs are pointless, supporting the idea that some jobs are "bullshit" – socially useless and devoid of meaning. Research conducted by Simon Walo from Zurich University found that individuals in finance, sales, and managerial roles are more likely to perceive their jobs as unhelpful to society. While prior research attributed such feelings to routine and poor management, Walo's study reveals that the nature of certain jobs still contributes significantly to this perception even when accounting for routine and management factors. The study offers quantitative evidence backing the "bullshit jobs" theory, first proposed by anthropologist David Graeber. (full text)
From Social DAOs to Social Protocols
In the realm of DAOs , a fresh strategy suggests building value-generating protocols before fostering community engagement. This might sound irrelevant for non-protocol DAOs, but it's a perspective worth exploring. Even social-focused DAOs can undergo a transformation into what's dubbed a "Social Protocol." Social DAOs, which pool collective vibes and engage in activities like education and events, can evolve into protocol-like systems, creating repeatable and optimized community experiences. By outlining clear handbooks, defining game cycles and phases, and componentizing processes, DAOs can unlock innovation, streamline operations, and protect against potential pitfalls. This evolution embraces the future of decentralized coordination and community-driven growth. (full text)