Hi everyone
Tldr - too long, didn’t read
The Council will be driving two topics in 2020. There are more than these topics to tackle though. We are looking for volunteers who want to drive other topics and work together with other Reps towards solutions for problems. If you’re not interested in driving any of these, please still have a look at the Discourse category from time to time to participate in upcoming discussions around these. For any of these topics, your participation in discussions will be crucial.
Background
We’ve just published the OKRs for the Reps Program for H1 2020. These include two main areas, but there are more topics to tackle! We will need all your help driving discussions and implementation around these. Anyone is encouraged to think about the following topics and coordinate a deep-dive towards implementation or improvement.
The topics are:
- Reps Infrastructure
- Mentors
- Reps Onboarding (Tim Maks van de Broek has already made great progress on this one - more to come soon)
- Community Growth and Activation
You can find more information including what isn’t working, and what the vision could be at All issues we have for 2019 - OKR draft for 2020 H1. Note that this was a working document, this doesn’t capture all issues and visions are brainstormed and do not reflect decisions.
These topics were surfaced before the last All Hands, but they are not exclusive. If there is anything else that needs solving, feel free to work on these as well using the framework below.
If you’re interested in driving forward any of these, please consider the following framework. These suggestions are meant to provide a guide on how to efficiently tackle issues and to make sure that the solution will fit the problem statement.
Leading a working group can also be a task split by several people and includes the following:
- Encouraging others to provide feedback and their opinion
- Ask for clarifications in a discussion if something is not clear
- Keep the discussions going
- It does not mean that you need to lead a meeting every week, all work can be done on Discourse!
- It does not mean that you need to write a “Executive Summary” for the Reps Peers or Council every week - discussions on Discourse are open so that’s not needed
Framework
Some of you might remember the RepsNext initiative we did a few years ago. Every Council member was leading a specific group and worked with other Reps on solution finding and implementation. We want to take this spirit and bring it even further. This time we want all Reps to be able to drive forward certain topics, and of course Council members, as well as Peers, will help in discussions.
Finalizing the problem statement and setting a goal
The initial working document mentions quite a few “what is not working” statements per topic. These might not be current or complete yet. The first step is to finalize the problem statements through discussions. You can read more about Problem Statements here: http://www.ceptara.com/blog/how-to-write-problem-statement
We recommend creating a Discourse post for coordination, so anyone can jump in and mention their problems. An anonymous way of providing problems to consider might also be a good way, as long as they eventually are posted to the Discourse post as well.
Brainstorming solutions/experiments
Once you have one or multiple Problem Statements defined and agreed upon, we know what we need to solve. Any problem can possibly be solved using different mechanisms, which one fits the Reps program best though? This phase tackles this question.
Also, note that for many solutions we probably won’t know if it’s effective, so consider running an experiment to validate any solutions. If it doesn’t work, let’s experiment with another idea until we find the solution that works.
Periodic status updates
To make sure that feedback is gathered regularly from as many Reps as possible, consider posting a status update in a separate Discourse post from time to time. This allows anyone not to follow every single discussion post to still be informed about your work. Maybe this will spark some interest as well.
Meetings
While most of these tasks can be done through Discourse, sometimes it might be more efficient to have a call. This is completely okay, but please consider the following: the meeting time will not fit everyone, so please document any discussions and outcomes in a Discourse post.
We hope that many Reps would like to help out with this! If you have any suggestions, ideas or questions, please comment here and we will give our best to address these.
Thanks
Michael
on behalf of the Reps Peers and Council
