For a long time, I believed a DAO should have a super flat hierarchy. This came from a fairy tail believe that crypto should was this magic place where everyone can work together in harmony without any shape or form of corporate org charts.
Everyone who says DAO's are the solution for everything, hasn't worked a single day in a DAO. While I agree that DAO's are superior to many existing forms of organization, it's hypocritical to think that traditional organisational structures are through and through bad.
Let's not forget that these structures are responsible for the largest value/wealth creation in the history of our civilization.
That's not to say they have their flaws. Racism, Sexism, Ageism and every other -ism under the son plague any type of organisational entity.
DAO's solve this by allowing people to prove themselves before they are judged. This is in my opinion a key requirement in any DAO structure.
Unless you are a known figure within the industry, show why the DAO should trust and pay you by giving your all on a certain task
If you perform well, this should be rewarded by more responsibility and/or compensation. If you are not a good fit or your work is below expectation, you at least have had a shot and undoubtedly will have learned many things.
In this system, how do you prevent DAO's taking advantage of this 'free' work?
Rather than in the traditional world, word spreads fast on all channels. Crypto is a hyper social industry with an extreme focus on transparency. Bad behaviour will come out sooner rather than later
But what happens when all these people gather together and need to work on a shared vision? Well you get the same problems that you'd see on shows like Survivor. Put random people together with the same goal and some shared resources, and they'll find a way to generate conflicts.
Out of experience, I know compensation often is one of the largest issues within a DAO. Spend too much, and you are wasteful, spend too little, and you are not ambitious enough or underpay people for the work they put in.
I've come to the realization that whenever a DAO starts having conflicts over compensation, the issue never really is compensation.
Often, the root cause is the lack of hierarchy. Hear me out:
If the there is an issue of over or underpaying, there is a discrepancy between the expectation of the contributor and the DAO itself. The lack of a clear leader can in this case mean that neither the contributor and the DAO itself can be heard in case any grievances.
When the budget is too high or too low, again, there is no accountability if there is no clear leadership. In a DAO, leadership should be able to assess what budget is needed to achieve the goals the DAO has set forth.
If the budget is not sufficient or there is overflow (like that ever happens), the leadership has the right mandate to go back to the DAO to ask for more/less budget. In a DAO with no clear structure, this process will take a lot of back and forth causing decision paralysis.
The same goes for ousting bad actors. In a purely flat organisational structure, you will see 'power bubbles' form around influential DAO-members who might not always have the best interest of the DAO in mind. This can be extremely dangerous for the transparency of the DAO.
This all was just in my head this morning and wanted to write it down. There is much more to this topic to explore, and I far from covered everything related to DAO's and their structures. Might do this more often.
Turtle out.