We seem to have fairly good evidence for the cost-effectiveness of the current model (one-off conversations of around 45 minutes, gathering some information from people beforehand, and with some email follow up afterwards). So we expect that model won’t change a huge amount over the next year.
One thing we’ll be focusing on early in the new year is getting a more fine grained sense of where the value in advising comes from. There are a whole bunch of different things we do in an advising call, with different people getting value from different parts. This includes: discussing cause prioritisation, suggesting career options the person hadn’t yet considered, helping rank options, providing encouragement to apply for things where the person might be too diffident, making introductions, giving more information / context on specific roles or organisations, recommending particular resources, brainstorming a concrete plan / next steps. We have some sense of which of these are more commonly helpful and for which people, but not yet as much understanding as we’d like of what parts we should be focusing on. Learning more about this seems important to do while the team is small, because the answer is likely to affect what kinds of hires we make in the future, and because changing strategy is harder to do with a larger team.
There are a few other specific things we’re likely to want to experiment with over the next year. One is thinking through ways to make our advising process more efficient, for example by writing up bits of advice we find ourselves often giving. We did a bit of that by producing a podcast episode on advising. Another is thinking through how much we should be a team of specialists (in the way that Niel is a US AI policy specialist) versus generalist advisers (which Jenna and me currently are). At the moment, we sometimes get feedback that it would be helpful if the person an advisee talked to had a more in depth knowledge of some field, but on the other hand we also frequently talk to people who are considering a broad range of options and would like to discuss and compare all of them.
We seem to have fairly good evidence for the cost-effectiveness of the current model (one-off conversations of around 45 minutes, gathering some information from people beforehand, and with some email follow up afterwards). So we expect that model won’t change a huge amount over the next year.
One thing we’ll be focusing on early in the new year is getting a more fine grained sense of where the value in advising comes from. There are a whole bunch of different things we do in an advising call, with different people getting value from different parts. This includes: discussing cause prioritisation, suggesting career options the person hadn’t yet considered, helping rank options, providing encouragement to apply for things where the person might be too diffident, making introductions, giving more information / context on specific roles or organisations, recommending particular resources, brainstorming a concrete plan / next steps. We have some sense of which of these are more commonly helpful and for which people, but not yet as much understanding as we’d like of what parts we should be focusing on. Learning more about this seems important to do while the team is small, because the answer is likely to affect what kinds of hires we make in the future, and because changing strategy is harder to do with a larger team.
There are a few other specific things we’re likely to want to experiment with over the next year. One is thinking through ways to make our advising process more efficient, for example by writing up bits of advice we find ourselves often giving. We did a bit of that by producing a podcast episode on advising. Another is thinking through how much we should be a team of specialists (in the way that Niel is a US AI policy specialist) versus generalist advisers (which Jenna and me currently are). At the moment, we sometimes get feedback that it would be helpful if the person an advisee talked to had a more in depth knowledge of some field, but on the other hand we also frequently talk to people who are considering a broad range of options and would like to discuss and compare all of them.
Thank you for this answer (and the rest of them!). Could you link to that podcast episode on advising?
I’m afraid it’s not out yet. It will come out in the new year, likely when I’m back at work.
Oh I see, I misunderstood you.
Thanks, looking forward to the episode to come out.
Here is the podcast episode I mentioned.
Thanks for the follow up!