Define responsibility roles & hours
Goal: Estimate how much time each task will take, grouped into roles with consistent definition across projects. Roll hours up for each task and multiply hours by an hourly rate that you decide on. This allows us to ground in a flat compensation rate and stable, pre-planned pay based on fixed budgets.
We're trying to categorize role types across projects, recognizing that teams will have unique needs and their additional titles as they see fit. The purpose of developing a common system is to help provide structure around estimated hours, show structure, and resist the tendency to box people into one kind of role. We're also trying to build budgets with an assumption that every person gets paid the same rate. But until we are able to cover costs of our work, all of us volunteer time and treat spaces as places where mutual aid is possible.
Roles are not tied to specific people nor equivalent to voting rights.
Embodying Characteristics
Responsibility Roles
Cross-project role types help us have common language for how teams are set up. But each time should have role descriptions visualizing the day to day. Our responsibility roles are based on relative hours spent and can change over the course of a project.
System Studio
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Research, create, and shepherd processes & policies driven by MJN values. Responsible for ensuring that the work advances.
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Provide regular advice or feedback on system innovation projects. Generally support sustainability of organization.
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Participate in system innovation by contributing needed wisdom at key moments.
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Provide general support and sounding board when capacity allows.
Venture Studio
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Turn organized ideas into plans & carry them forward. Responsible for team-building, project management, and implementation. May work before funding comes in and support fundraising efforts.
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Funded to independently advance areas of work, under guidance of Architects.
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Provide regular, critical advice, within their own capacity. At least 1 system studio member (2 recommended) must be a collaborator on every venture. This enables feedback loops to form as MJN system concepts are put into practice.
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Generate, organize, and plan ideas for ventures. After structuring a project, including setting up responsibility and voting roles and funding, may step out. Usually work before funding comes in.
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Provide general support and sounding board when capacity allows.
Tensions
How can we better estimate hours? And what happens if we find out we’re wrong mid-way through a project?
People work at different speeds. Could we unintentionally penalize people who do less — or more — on similar tasks?
Ground-up estimations of hours usually result in sticker shock. We don’t look at the bottom line first. Instead, we go through the exercise of objectively breaking down tasks in smaller units and hours before we multiply. The results are often surprising.
“Contract support” VS “team member”: not everyone we work with is automatically a team member. Sometimes, people are less interested or primarily seeking specific contract work at their own rates. Since our founding, contract rates have always more than what we pay ourselves.
How We Handle Tensions
For now, we handle uncertainty by setting aside a value pool. We also expect to re-evaluate these philosophies at least once a year.
