Build Your Own Organization

Basic elements that define an organization and are an accelerator to prepare your organization for what is coming. The necessary steps to get to this point are outlined as an guiding path for you the reader to also help you get ready to apply for your very own DHO and join us in this adventure together.

Where We Are Today

So far, Samara has completed all of the hard work of thinking though the foundations of our future organization and services. At the point of writing this book, one important ingredient is missing - we don't have our own DHO (Decentralized Human Organization) tool yet and the Hypha development team is hard at work to get the "multi-tenant" architecture working in the coming months. Once that is completed, Samara will be one of the first organizations to use a DHO, complete with our own tokens, governance and compensation. We believe that these basic elements not only define an organization but are an accelerator to prepare your organization for what is coming. The necessary steps to get to this point are outlined in the following pages. Again, this is meant as an guiding path for you the reader to also help you get ready to apply for your very own DHO and join us in this adventure together.

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Samara's Membership Model

Introduction

Samara is an open and decentralized member organization. There are no bosses and no hierarchies (in a traditional sense), Samara evolves on an evolutionary scale —when the time is right, new people and new ideas will appear. You can step into Samara, join a quest, hold a role, adjust your commitment, and step out at any time. 

Traditional workplaces only offer a binary "in-out" distinction between members and non-members. Either you're an employee with the pay, perks, and information access, or you're locked out. What's more, this critical decision of who's in and who's out is often made just from looking at a piece of paper, a couple interviews, and asking someone to commit long-term to a role and workplace that they've never actually tried. 

In Samara, we believe there's a more effective approach for discovering if your purpose, interests, and skills are a good fit for our organization and our people. That's why we have multiple stages of membership and multiple contribution types designed to support you in exploring your fit and commitment to Samara. Each of these stages is rewarded with a badge that members can apply to when the time has come and the criteria have been fulfilled.

The opening flower symbolises the journey of unfolding and contributing to Samara's purpose.

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Guest

You are automatically considered a Guest the first time you show up - invited or not! Samara welcomes, hosts and honours all Guests. You may decide to only stay for a little while, but we want to embrace you with the resources, conversations and tools you need to sense whether you would like to make a home here. Guests are not official members with the ability to vote in DHO decisions or receive compensation, but they are listened to in open forums and have access to our conversation spaces (Discord, Loomio, etc.) and knowledge gardens (Miro, Wiki, etc.).

We suggest reading this book and joining our open calls (link to come) as the best first steps when learning about Samara. If you'd like to explore Samara further through actively contributing, we welcome you to schedule an onboarding call (link to come). 

Apprenticeship 

Apprentices are official Samara Members, with the ability to propose your own quest to Samara,  request to join existing Samara quests, or apply for a role. We recommend starting with a quest before applying for a role, as it will give both you and Samara a chance to understand if it will be a good long-term fit.

As an apprentice, you'll have access to The DHO (what we call the blockchain-based tool we use conduct our governance and accounting/payroll), where you can officially propose quests, request to join quests, and vote on these sorts of decisions along with other members. For voting, you will receive your first Samara Voice tokens (SVOICE) when you receive your Apprentice Badge. Relative to longstanding members, you will have little Voice, however you can quickly earn compensation and more voice tokens by participating in Trainings (e.g. Scribe Training: taking notes on calls, disseminating notes and content after calls, and tending our knowledge gardens). These trainings are designed to provide you the skills and organizational norms that can help you steward Samara as you consider whether applying for a quest or role is the right next step. 

Fellowship 

If you've successfully completed a Quest or have been assigned to a Role, you automatically become a Fellow, receiving your Fellow Badge and a Voice bonus. Fellows are members that are actively participating in quest(s) or holding role(s), and will often be seen "Lamplighting" pods and circles, facilitating, and working on immediate deliverables while envisioning future quests and strategic directions for Samara. Fellows may be committed to Samara for just a month or indefinitely. 

Council Membership

If you wind up demonstrating excellence through contributions to Samara, you may be invited to join the Samara Council. Council Members are celebrated by Samara for their wisdom, and thus offered additional voice and recognition after an official acceptance vote in the DHO. Council status and its associated Voice bonus can be granted indefinitely or for a specific period of time, subject to renewal. Council Members may or may not hold an active quest commitment or role. 

Alumni Membership

Finally, if you decide to step away from actively contributing to Samara, you'll become an Alumni member. In gratitude for your service, and in open invitation to return if you ever desire, you'll be kept connected to Samara through regular updates, requests for strategic input, and events. Note the both Fellowship and Council members are eligible for the Alumni badge. 

Enrollment Criteria

The following table is listing our current criteria to enroll in member badges. Note that these are specific to Samara and your mileage might vary. 

Level Criterium
Apprentice You have successfully completed the onboarding exercise for Samara, which consists of one or more onboarding calls and a short checklist that is delivered through a quest template.  
Fellowship You are a holder of the Apprentice badge and have successfully completed either a full quest (not an onboarding quest) or have been assigned to a role for one or more lunar cycles. 
Council  You are a holder of the Fellowship badge for at least 6 lunar cycles and have been on 10 quests or lunar cycles for role assignments. 
Alumni You are a holder of the Council badge or the Fellowship badge and are no longer active in the organization. 

 

Samara's Compensation Model

 

Compensation

The compensation in Samara is based on a token mix that consists of SAMARA (equity/value token), SVOICE (voting weight token), HUSD (USD equivalent token), and possibly Seeds currency, if a reserve exists. This mix is determined by a "formula" that converts the USD Equivalent into the right mix of tokens. See the Samara Token page for more details on each of the tokens in use.

Compensation for contributors

Currently every contributor to Samara is compensated in the following way:

Example: 

Compensation for investors

$1 investment = 1 SAMARA, multiplied according to the active multiplier.

Current distribution of tokens to contributors and investors

The current way Samara allocates tokens is through this Compensations Spreadsheet . This is far from ideal but works as a record of all the contributions to Samara until the DHO is operational. It details historical contributions and earned compensation, including and the exact amounts of SAMARA, HUSD and SVOICE.

Salary Bands

Defining a salary for a role is an extremely difficult task to do. There are many, many variables involved in finding a fair and equitable salary for everyone in the organization. 

For these early stages, Samara is using three salary bands, namely B1 ($70k/year), B2 ($90k/year) and B3 ($110k/year). These bands are directly connected with the commitment levels, B1 for up to 49%, B2 for 50% - 79% and B3 for over 80%. See below for how we plan to evolve this structure. 
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Commitment

We define commitment as “mindshare” - not how many hours per week you work on an assignment. This is a new, challenging concept for many people used to being valued by the hour and living in a society largely organized around the 40 hour Monday through Friday work week.

Here’s how we think about mindshare: 

Members propose their commitment at the start of the cycle period and self-assess their actual contribution level after the cycle period ends. As well, Samara conducts a Collective Evaluation, a community building exercise where the team comes together to assess each other’s’ contributions – both their perceived quality and demonstrated commitment level.

This Collective Evaluation is not intended to dispute contributors’ honesty or create a hidden, hegemonic equation that determines the “true” relationship between amount of visible “work” and commitment level. It is intended to provide an opportunity for teammate feedback to be incorporated into self-reflection, and for invisible work, effort, awareness to be made visible and receive social recognition. Contributors retain complete autonomy to keep their original commitment level, or adjust it up or down after Community Evaluation.

Minimum commitment in Samara is 30% for regular assignments. Please note that your total level of commitment for the sum of all assignments cannot exceed 100%.

Commitment vs Contribution - future model

There is a new pattern arising with the introduction of contribution accounting (a co-evaluation process in which all participants openly rate contributions of everyone else). Personal commitment levels can vary widely from day to day, but what we "see who showed up for the work" is pretty clear and in front of us. With contribution accounting, we can move from personal commitment (what I think I did) to collective contribution (what we think you did). This step gives us an opportunity to explore an "open ceiling of human potential" - we simply don't know yet how far our passion can take us (think flow states, eudaimonia, potentiality, dream states, etc). All what counts is if you "were there and brought value back to the collective." How you got that value is not relevant (maybe you were in a flow state and received a download!).

Note that this pattern only works for group contributions like quests, not for individual contributions and roles that are more predictable, pre-determined and personal ("I am committed to this role in a 50% capacity"). We do have the option of due diligence during quarterly reviews ("I haven't seen you around for a while, are you still at 100%?") but those tend to lean towards performance tracking, a pattern we want to stay away from. However, even if we are planning to introduce a drastic change - dynamic commitments allow you to adjust your current level on a weekly, even daily basis ("I am going away for the rest of the day", I will take the next few days off"). This requires a high levels of trust and openness in the organization, which is exactly the foundation of Samara. 

Lastly, dynamic commitments  and the separation of commitment from contribution level resolves a critical bottleneck in this organization - let's say you have an assignment at 100% commitment; it is impossible to add more work (as it should be), but if you temporarily reduce the commitment to 90% (via dynamic commitment) you can join a quest and take full advantage of contribution accounting - now the collective decides how to decide on the payouts of the quest pie and if you had a deep insight during the quest, you will be fully rewarded! 

Future models for role and badge archetype

The goal is to match qualified applicants with open job postings. In traditional job markets, this process is overtaxing, one-sided, prone to trial & error and a guessing game between pretense & perception. In a decentralized human organization, we are using role archetypes as attractors for applicants and badge archetypes as qualifiers for applicants to optimize the matching process and to reduce bias. Role archetypes represent the complexity of the job and the capacity of the organization to support positions (e.g. the organization might have room for 5 storytellers at a complexity level of B3). Badge archetypes represent achievements and skillsets of applicants. Both archetypes are used to find the right applicant for the assignment. 

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Salary Bands - future model

Samara is analyzing a model with an universal, unique band, and two additional levels of rewards for complexity/intensity. 
Universal, Consistent & committed ‘Work/Play-Pay’ (B1) 
If the group intelligence agrees and there exists capacity (financial and organizational), you can take on more complexity, which necessarily takes up much more time and energy. There are currently two Gratitude/Gift bonus compensation increases which reward higher complexity and intensity. 

Complexity/Intensity Recognition Rewards: 

Mid Complexity recognition (B2):
Max Complexity/Intensity potential recognition  (B3):

Samara's Tokens

 

Introduction

Samara tokens are a type of cryptocurrency that represent an asset or specific use and reside on the Telos blockchain. Tokens are designed to work as a medium of exchange wherein individual token ownership records are stored in a ledger. Samara is utilizing four types of tokens:

  1. Samara Token (SAMARA) - represents the value we are creating and holding together (similar but different to equity)
  2. Samara Voice (SVOICE) - represents the voting power of individuals, this is a non-transferrable token that decays over time according to a "decay schedule"
  3. Fiat Bridge Token (HUSD) - represents a 1-to-1 value in United States Dollars and can be redeemed for non-tokenized US Dollars. 
  4. Seeds Token (Seeds) - the global utility currency brought to life by the SEEDS Movement to span circular, regenerative economies 

SAMARA Token

The SAMARA token lies at the heart of what we are building together. It encapsulates our work, our values, and our assets and rewarding people with this special token means we are entrusting them with a piece of Samara, not unlike a piece of ownership in a traditional organization.  The breakdown for the SAMARA token is as follows:

Multipliers for Samara Token

In the early stages of Samara, each contributor/investors tokens issued are multiplied by a factor to reward them for taking on the risk and believing in Samara as pioneers. The value for the multiplier changes when the risk reduces after important milestones are reached, such as securing additional funding or significant value inflows for services rendered. 

Current proposed multipliers are:

Multipliers are subject to change through DHO vote.

SVOICE Token 

The voice token is critical for the governance of Samara. Voice tokens must be earned over time and cannot be transferred or exchanged with other members. In the DHO, these tokens also "decay" over time, meaning every member will loose voice token over a special schedule, a "decay rate" that is set up for the DHO. In other words, if you stop participating and contributing to Samara, you will eventually lose all of your voice tokens and no longer be able to vote in DHO decisions. The breakdown for the SVOICE token is as follows:

Contributions from investors do not get SVOICE.

Membership Badge Voice Rewards

Voice tokens are linked to membership badges; once you earn a membership badge, all of your current active assignments, contributions and quests will be multiplied with a factor (outlined below) until you no longer hold the badge. There is only one active membership badge. 

Level Criterium
Apprentice You will receive an additional 5% on SVOICE for any earnings from activities.  
Fellowship You will receive an additional 10% on SVOICE for any earnings from activities.  
Council  You will receive an additional 20% on SVOICE for any earnings from activities.  
Alumni You will receive any additional 10% on SVOICE for any earnings from future activities, if you decide to join Samara again.  

Exact multiplier formulas are subject to change through DHO vote. 

HUSD Token

The HUSD token is a bridge between the fiat currency and the crypto currency, representing a 1-to-1 value in USD that can be redeemed for US Dollar equivalent. The "H" comes from the originator of this type of token, which is Hypha (there is no ownership associated with this naming convention). HUSD is currently used by Samara to compensate members of Samara for their fiat needs; HUSD can be redeemed on the Hypha DHO for BTC/EOS/ETH etc., which can easily be exchanged for USD or other fiat currencies through various currency exchanges. 

Seeds Token

SEEDS is the foundation for a new regenerative currency enabling a new kind of economy that is no longer based on extractive practices of the current financial system. There is plenty of information available on the SEEDS website, such as the introductory video Growing a Cooperative Financial System. The breakdown for the Seeds token is as follows:

Going further

Samara will evolve token allocation, introduce new tokens, adopt the DHO platform, manage token allocation with much less manual work. 

Samara's Archetypes

Introduction

Archetypes are fundamental building blocks of an organization (part of the DNA), they are defined once and then become stable and active for a longer period of time. Archetypes represent a recurrent symbol or pattern of the organization as a way to group certain kinds of activities together. These Patterns of behavior are defined by the needs and capacities of Samara and they are needed in balanced proportions in order for wholeness and coherence to arise. Each organization will have a different set of archetypes to create their own trajectory of where the organization is heading in the future. 

Archetypes are a way to combine natural talents and strengths with the needs and capacities of the organization. 

There are three archetypes that organizations need to define: 
  1. Organizational archetypes
  2. Role archetypes
  3. Badge archetypes

Organizational archetypes set the energy and direction of the organization - be that more radical, more spiritual, more efficient, more participatory, more chaotic, or more hierarchical, to name a few. It is very important to agree on the organizational archetypes early on, since this will have a detrimental impact on the way the organization (and by extension its people) act and behave inside and outside the membrane. It will also have an impact on the role and badge archetypes. 

Role archetypes are an attractor for the kind of work we feel drawn towards in our lives. They are also connected to job postings and describe the kind of activity a circle might be looking for. In that sense, role-archetypes "will find you" as you browse through the current job openings inside the organization. For example, a product development team might be looking for a B3 Building & Architecting archetype describing the base complexity and type of work required to fill this position. It can also limit capacity the organization is willing to hold and expand into ("we currently have budget for 3 people in the B3 Building & Architecting role archetype"). The framework for role archetypes is based on the work of Dr. Anneloes Smitsman.

Badge archetypes are part of the larger credentialing ecosystem. There are many ways to recognize an achievement, and many forms of proof for a variety of needs. A badge serves both as recognition of learning or unlocking achievement or confirming a status level AND digital proof of that accomplishment. Badges are also "signal amplifiers" that multiply your existing work in the DHO. For example, if you work in a 60% committed role earning $10,000, a potential badge could increase your SVOICE tokens by a factor of 1.01 for each salary claim (giving you 100 more SVOICE per claim). If you do not have a role (you do not have a responsibility and/or earn a salary), then the multiplier is 0 and the badge has no value. In other words, the badge only amplifies existing work and is only meaningful inside this context. 
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Samara's Role Archetypes

Note that these role archetype are specific to Samara and your mileage might vary.

Building & Developing 

 Researching

Facilitating, Cultivating, Caring 

Catalysing Bio-Regions and Pilot Projects 

New Paradigm Storytelling & Pollinating New Perceptions

Samara's Badge Archetypes

Note that these badge archetype are specific to Samara and your mileage might vary.

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Membership Badges

  • Samara Apprentice - The first level of membership for guests
  • Samara Fellowship The second level of membership for apprentices
  • Samara Council - The final level of membership for fellows
  • Samara Alumni - Membership badge after leaving the org

Basic Badges

Advanced Badges

 

Samara's Governance

Samara's decision making protocol

Samara has successfully passed a proposal for this protocol on April 14, 2021 v0.1

Aims of governance in a decentralised environment

No participant, or group of participants should be able to dominate discussions or control decisions in a decentralised and distributed authority environment. That is why we avoid voting when possible for day-to-day low-risk decisions that affect subgroups, but use voting to make clear and formal decisions when they affect the direction or mechanisms of the organisation as a whole. This doesn’t mean that all decisions need to be made by consensus, or that everyone will be happy with the decisions that are made; that could indicate a lack of diversity or potential for innovation. However, the process should be fair, recorded, and unbiased, while honoring the value created and invested in Samara by each member. 

As much as possible, operational decisions should be made by the people or bodies with a direct connection to the decision. Person/s who will carry out or establish the measures made in a proposal should be mentioned in the proposal, so that the work and responsibility it implicates are explicitly considered and understood.

Types of proposals

Proposals can come from individuals or groups. 

Proposals coming from individuals

Every Samara member can make a proposal. When possible, a proposal should seek advice from 3 other Samarians to refine it and give it the greatest chance of success before being brought to the attention of a wider audience.

Proposals coming from pods/circles/working teams

Pods/circles/working teams decide the method for making decisions within their group, as well as the way they want to record decisions made. It is recommended to record key decisions in a distinct way. A few days, weeks or months after a decision it is easy to forget the sequence of events should a group find that there were mixed expectations or misunderstandings about a decision, which is bound to happen at some point during busy periods.

For proposals that impact the entire organisation, the recommendation is for pods/circles/working teams to use the consent process before going further with the proposal for the entire organisation to vote on. Pods/circles/working teams can decide to use another decision method if that works better for them in general or for a particular decision. Decisions related to the budget/financial use or control of Samara (expenditures, roles, internal quests, compensations for contributors or consultants etc.) are all considered to impact the entire organisation because they will use the shared budget. This can be reviewed should different budgets be established or discretionary spending by circles becomes useful at a later stage.

Voting using Loomio

Loomio is excellent as both a polling and consent process container and gives clarity about how decisions have been made. The timeline is clear, all comments are recorded, and even those that are deleted can be found by admins. 

Process :

  1. Proposals that impact more than one pod/circle or the entire organisation will go to Loomio and ask for a vote from all Samara contributors (Samara DHO Group). 

  2. Note: Samara DHO Group is made of everyone who has contributed to Samara and has earned Samara Voice Tokens (1$ contribution = 1 Samara Voice Token)

  3. Decisions on Loomio can first be added as proposals for feedback if that seems to be useful for the person (group) making the proposal (no mandatory requirement, recommended for decisions that are riskier/irreversible).

  4. The decision method on Loomio is based on unity/quorum (80/20) - See definition below.  Walkthrough demonstration. Options for voting are Yes/No/Abstain. Voice computation is made in this spreadsheet after the vote period ends and the result is added to the Loomio thread.

  5. The voting period for Loomio is set to 5 working days for standard decisions.

  6. For urgent and reversible decisions the minimum voting period is 2 working days. 

* Note that Loomio is being used for proposals that impact the entire organisation until Samara DHO platform is available. 

Glossary of terms:

Unity/quorum 80/20: 80% unity - Yes votes represent min 80% of the total voice casted; 20% quorum - all votes cast (Yes/No/Abstain) must represent min 20% of total voice. This method ensures a significant minimum level of unity and minimum inclusion of voice without needing consensus or being held up by those unable/not voting.

Until Samara moves to the DHO system if someone leaves the DHO or is away for an extended time, they are not included in the quorum/unity calculation, so that necessary proposals are not blocked simply because some people are not around, have moved on or are on holiday.  

Consent: https://www.sociocracyforall.org/consent-decision-making/  

Proposal: ‘offer’ ‘proposition’ ‘plan’ that establishes some precedent, new or adjusted boundaries, shifts fundamental definitions or commits Samara’s resources towards a particular direction.

Samara fellow/member: Anyone who has earned Samara tokens by contributing time, energy and most importantly value can vote. A ‘Samara fellow’ is the first member stage that earns voice tokens. 

Samara's Structural Elements

 

The path to the current phase of Samara

It took us a while in Samara, to define the work that needed to be done and where to start, in order to create a DHO. Some of the initial steps that proved to be helpful on the way:

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At a later stage we further evolved a new KRs map: 

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As the work on each area advanced, it become clear that there were a lot of connections between KRs and that some separate conversations needed to be woven together.  

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The Primary Pods of roughly 4 contributors seemed to be a good structure for being able to coordinate between members, schedule calls, and do asynchronous work while maintaining connection to the collective intelligence. 

 The Path forward

Samara will further asses if and how the Primary Pods can serve it on its future path and how the structure will evolve to other working teams and more permanent circles in the future.