Mindsets applied: - Less trust, more truth - Seek accord, not permission - Decentralisation

Check ins

DAOs are noisy. Check-Ins to create signal that cut through the noise.

Check-Ins are short, bullet-point updates, written on a dedicated forum category every few weeks. They’re purposely infrequent and short, creating a calm feeling of steady progress so anyone can get caught up on their own time.

The Check-In feed becomes a single source of truth for a community:

• Collaborators - know where they can help (not just reactively like with bounties, but also proactively)
• Team Coordinators - ensure their direction is coordinated and supported by the DAO
• DAO joiners - figure out what’s going on

Project Check-Ins

If you’re leading or representing a project, share a few bullet points about the project:

Plans - Overall objectives (OKRs are great for this), priorities for the upcoming month

Progress - Wins & accomplishments, key metrics, recent lessons learned

Problems - Gotchas, delays, things you haven’t figured out, requests for help

This is done as frequently as this key information changes, but never more than a month between check-ins.

Tips

• These are easy and only take 5 minutes if you do them after a Priorities Workshop.
• Ask for help if you might need it, especially if you need a specific skill. Often just putting it out there helps attract the right person, but also feel free to tag specific people.
• Squads set their own goals but these are usually related to goals set by other squads, so read other check-ins to know what others are doing too.

Within project teams

Every day, change your chat status to share your mood and what’s going on. This helps everyone know how to approach you, and builds personal solidarity.

Every few weeks, write a quick note to update everyone with your top 3 priorities.

This way, everyone knows what’s going on, where they stand with you, and if they should connect with you about something. It also creates a sense of peer accountability and peer support.

Considering your top 3 priorities is a great way to find focus and achieve your goals. And as you get better at it, you’ll shift from writing your priorities as general projects (“work on the blog”), and more as specific outcomes (“get the blog to 3 posts per week and 1000 subs”)

Check-Ins are like sonar pings

This one act is a game-changer for self-organising, because it let’s anyone who can help you find you and connect.