I think it’s time for ShapeShift to conduct an internal survey, such as one developed by talentDAO for its DAO Health Initiative. There may be other models that I’m unaware of, but talentDAO seems to have put a lot of research and work into theirs.
It should provide some insights – without the noise or bias of any personal drama that went on behind the scenes. Then once the key areas of obvious problems are identified, some changes would be warranted, if leadership is truly committed to the long-term health of the DAO.
Just as in the real world, psychological and emotional health should in theory be just as important as financial health. No idea whats been going on behind closed doors, but maybe this is the way to really take a step back and self-evaluate the DAO’s health in a more ‘scientific’ method, instead of everyone bickering back and forth in forum threads, or (cough) misjudging the intent of a post so badly that he/she posts the most over the top satirical response (cough).

hunt:

As we move towards cutting out essential workstreams, and furthermore leaders - I am starting to question exactly where these ideas/recommendations are coming from.

They are coming from people with experience running organizations and being accountable for multimillion dollar budgets over long periods of time. This includes but is not limited to me. However, all decisions in the DAO ultimately come down to the voting process and thus pro rata to those holding FOX tokens. Each day, those who hold FOX tokens are bearing all financial risk with their own capital on this enterprise. Anyone who doesn’t approve of where the DAO is going can sell and depart freely. Anyone who wishes to risk their capital may enter and influence our direction.
hunt:

Could the community that is recommending that we make cuts please explain/speak up not only on the cuts, but the sustainability solutions that are being recommended be run in parallel outside of cutting/firing people?

The first rule of any lifeform, or any business, is to survive. ShapeShift has survived through 2-3 brutal bear markets over 8+ years. It did this by making excruciatingly difficult decisions to cut staff and other costs as a bear market arrived. Significant scrutiny is being applied to the efficacy of workstreams and their output relative to costs right now, because the DAO should be spending less than it is. Nobody likes this process. It is the opposite of warm and comfortable. People’s feelings get hurt. People’s lives get affected and their relationships soured. It is pain and it is struggle, and yet it is the way through so we take it.
hunt:

Further, I’ve been told to fire contributors within Marketing, Growth & Globalization by people that are not elected leaders (to be frank some of them are ex-centralized ShapeShift executives). Does the community actually find that acceptable?

When you say, “I’ve been told to fire…” you are not acting like a leader, but like a victim without agency. You are currently a leader of Marketing and Growth. People can suggest things to you, and you can make decisions. You are accountable for those decisions, and ultimately the community will decide “what is acceptable” by voting to retain or remove you based on your decisions.
There are also a fair amount of people who are unwilling to publicly speak out against you because of the way you treat criticism and dissension (you attack people personally and revert to unprofessional, adolescent antics). When the dust settles from this difficult time, I hope you reflect on this feedback.

Putting any objections to the delivery of the content in this post aside, I think the poll above reveals that there might be something important to be discussed here. At the time of this writing, there are 19 total votes with 68% voting ‘NO’ and 31% voting ‘YES’. That alone is a reasonably high turnout for any post on this forum, and with this being a touchy subject, I do suspect that there are a significant number of opinionated DAO members who have decided not to get involved. If 68% of those who were sufficiently compelled to participate here do not feel that leadership is acting effectively, then something is wrong. With surveyed DAO members expressing discontent with leadership at a ratio greater than 2:1, I think it is very unlikely that we are operating optimally, and with external factors posing a direct existential threat to the DAO, it is imperative that we do so. I think that if we steer this thread in a more positive direction, there might be a very worthwhile conversation to be had.
I have previously expressed significant unease with the leadership structure that has emerged within the DAO, and as a FOX holder, have expressed strong discontent with the DAO-wide austerity strategy ostensibly having been formed and put into action by a small number of individuals from the DAO outside the governance process. I do not think this is fair to the community of FOX holders. There are other strategies on the table, and whether or not any of them are viable or realistic, I think that the entire community should have been given the opportunity to make the decision on which of those the DAO would take. It is very likely that we would have arrived at the same outcome by governance vote, but the community would have been able to rest assured that it had made the best decision for itself with all factors considered.
Beorn:

Nobody likes this process. It is the opposite of warm and comfortable. People’s feelings get hurt. People’s lives get affected and their relationships soured. It is pain and it is struggle, and yet it is the way through so we take it.

, to some degree this is unavoidable, but I think the negative effects could have been minimized should we have taken a direct community approach to organizational problem-solving. It is incumbent on every FOX-holding DAO participant to adopt an ownership mindset and keep the success of the DAO as the top priority. With ownership comes the responsibility to endure discomfort in support of a higher objective, and sometimes this even means taking one for the team. I think this comes in contrast to the role of a hired participant in a traditional corporate structure, where the understanding is that decisions will be made from above and imposed on those below, regardless of whether there is group consensus or even majority support for those decisions.
We are a new instance of a new type of organization in a new industry. Significant growing pains are to be expected, and this is okay. I can’t be sure why those who voted ‘NO’ above did so - these could be objections to the existence of the leadership group, the actions that group has taken, or absolutely anything else, but given that we are sailing in shallow waters with low winds and it is crucial for us to chart an optimal course, I think we would be remiss not to listen to these concerns and to quickly course correct where it is appropriate to do so. Absent any fortuitous external factors, rocking the boat is sometimes the only way to get it unstuck.

I agree that is not an effective leader. I say this as a friend, and after watching the stress levels and double-binds compound upon him over recent months. Somehow, we’ve taken a promising and dedicated individual, someone brave enough to take on a job which needed doing and take on a significant amount of personal and career risk to do so, and chewed him up and spit him out. His failure is the DAO’s failure, and placing the blame on him for not being emotionally resilient enough or buckling too easily is thoughtless and counterproductive.
What sticks out the most to me about this post is how non-dramatic it is compared to the usual stressed-out-hunt! Everything he’s brought up is reasonable, the wording is professional, no-one’s called out by name — the degree to which this represents a positive response to previous feedback is amazing, and speaks of the depth the concerns he’s expressing.
Frankly, anything that’s a big enough problem to make stressed-out-hunt stop cussing about it scares the shit out of me, and should probably freak everyone else out too.

Beorn:

hunt:
As we move towards cutting out essential workstreams, and furthermore leaders - I am starting to question exactly where these ideas/recommendations are coming from.
They are coming from people with experience running organizations and being accountable for multimillion dollar budgets over long periods of time.

This is kind of the problem. Recommendations to cut — and how deeply — have not come from a place of community consensus. Certainly runway forecasts and advice have been delivered by Tokenomics, but at least as far as I’m aware people matching this description have not been the public drivers of in the process. More to the point, anyone like this who is driving the process has therefore been perceived by hunt and others to be doing so in an less-than-public and potentially inappropriate manner. (This includes myself, though in my case it’s probably fairer to say that I perceiving the possibility that things could be perceived that way. Besides, I only had one possible cut to make and an unexpected family situation come up which made doing do the obvious choice!)
Personally, I don’t feel that whatever “emergent governance phenomenon” is occurring here can be fairly described in terms of a sinister shadow government of ex-ShapeShift officers. Still, I can definitely appreciate how it could be perceived that way, especially by people under significant stress.
One of the things I’m very aware of as a security professional is how essential it is not just to act in a trustworthy manner, but to be perceived as acting in a trustworthy manner. It is by no means your duty — or that of any other former ShapeShift-the-company executive — to confine yourself to providing input through the public governance process. Freedom of speech is a thing, and people have the right to express their thoughts to certain people and not others. However, I believe that former ShapeShift executives who involve themselves in governance in any manner that is not very obviously public, consensus-based, and above-board is extremely risky to the DAO, especially in light of recent events — or more precisely, perceptions of them.
(I don’t see the DAO as being able to successfully function if any significant portion of its membership feels that they don’t have a real voice and distrusts the portion which they perceive does.)

mcchadwick:

If 68% of those who were sufficiently compelled to participate here do not feel that leadership is acting effectively, then something is wrong. With surveyed DAO members expressing discontent with leadership at a ratio greater than 2:1, I think it is very unlikely that we are operating optimally

With respect, it may bear repeating that this DAO (as with all DAO’s) are not a democracy. While polls are useful tools to gauge sentiment, we do not govern by poll of forum users. We govern by on-chain vote of FOX holders.
Regarding this 2:1 ratio in vague disapproval, let’s ask ourselves, “if we polled ShapeShift ( the company) ahead of layoffs, what would the vote look like?” I bet most would vote disapproval of the layoffs. Shrinking an organization is, by definition, unpopular. If the majority of people were actively engaged and in favor of reductions, they would’ve happened. They aren’t. So, other cohorts of FOX holders are taking the initiative to propose specific plans to the community.
As always, any one of you are free and welcome to propose alternatives! What isn’t helpful, though, is vague references to alternative plans that are always on the horizon. We need to see things in writing, in this forum, and then formally moving ahead via the governance process.
MrNerdHair:

we’ve taken a promising and dedicated individual, someone brave enough to take on a job which needed doing and take on a significant amount of personal and career risk to do so, and chewed him up and spit him out. His failure is the DAO’s failure

This is quite a removal of responsibility from Hunt. Hunt is responsible for his actions and behavior as an individual and as a paid leader.
MrNerdHair:

Recommendations to cut — and how deeply — have not come from a place of community consensus.

I’m not sure what you mean by this. Anyone in the community is welcome to propose plans here, and move them through governance. “Community consensus” comes from the on-chain vote. If a plan moves forward without a vote approving it, then we have a problem. I’m not aware of any such thing happening, are you?
MrNerdHair:

However, I believe that former ShapeShift executives who involve themselves in governance in any manner that is not very obviously public, consensus-based, and above-board is extremely risky to the DAO, especially in light of recent events — or more precisely, perceptions of them.

Are you suggesting that individual members of the DAO should be forbidden from private conversations among each other? Are you suggesting that all conversations about the DAO need to occur in public?
My assumption is that quite a few conversations happen in private, continually, in parallel to public discourse, and there’s nothing wrong with that. I’d be shocked if anyone in the DAO hasn’t had private conversations with others?
What must be public is declared via our governance process: Specifically, the forum post which initiates a proposal and the formal comments, the resulting proposal itself, and the on-chain vote. All of this is public, always.
To everyone: If you don’t like something the DAO or people within the DAO are doing, please propose alternatives, rather than complaining or insinuating sinister conspiracies. Move your ideas through governance. We are all free to do so, and to vote on ultimate outcomes.