Divisions Philosophy

[wackhacker]

@MatthewStanciu¹ said in #core:

i know we've moved on but this is in my clipboard: here's my original vision of divisions, which i pitched to jack and hazel at tsaocaa in september:

the problem and proposal:

• the problem: i am the direct report for 17 people. i can't and don't want to manage 17 people and as a result a lot of projects have fallen behind / do not have clear goals
• let's group some active projects into groups that can be managed by one of their project owners. we'll call them "divisions"
• the goal: reduce management load on me while ensuring every project owner has both context on long-term goals and clear personal goals for the week
• goal: this will also make all hands better because instead of trying and failing to set goals, everyone comes with their goals already set & it becomes a time to share their work with the rest of the team

implementation:

• every division lead must also be a project owner. never have a division lead whose job is to be a division lead
• division lead sets a weekly, consistent time to check in with the project owners in their division about: 1) what they're working on; 2) what their long-term goals are; 3) what they're doing in the next week; 4) how their work fits into the broader picture of purdue hackers
• president sets a weekly time to check in with each division lead about: 1) what each of their project owners are doing; 2) what the goals of each project owner is, and what they're struggling with. president works with DL in these meetings to set a vision for the org and how each project fits into it, which DLs help communicate to their project owners
• after each DL meeting, notes are shared in dark-forest and sent to president so that they are looped in on what everyone is doing
• now we have successfully increased communication across the team, more people are sharing ideas and setting vision other than me, and everyone has context and clear, actionable goals set for their work, which they bring to all hands & also feel more fulfilled and excited. profit!

the "president sets a weekly time" bit is what we never implemented & why divisions are half-baked right now. without the step where DLs work together to set vision etc, they lack the context needed to know what to check in on. and we fail to increase communication.

Footnotes

1. @rayhanadev please edit this issue to include any additional context or details you think are
   necessary, and/or assign it to someone else if you would not want to do it. ↩