Re: CEA should consider creating a public dashboard of its commitments to others
It’s not currently a priority to maintain a public or private dashboard of such commitments, partly because we generally try to avoid making public commitments about our plans.
As I demonstrated several places in my analysis, the main problem with CEA missing public commitments is that it makes it difficult for other community members to make good plans. CEA avoiding making public commitments doesn’t really solve this problem, and could make it worse. Similarly, it doesn’t help much if CEA says “we hope to do X by Y date, but don’t consider this a commitment” because people are still likely to use that info in their plans for lack of a better option.
A far better outcome would be for CEA to make more accurate public commitments (by adding conservatism and/or providing wide ranges around dates/deliverables to incorporate uncertainty) and then providing timely updates when not on track to meet those commitments. CEA is too important an organization for other EAs not to be able to plan around.
I personally don’t think we can expect orgs to “make accurate predictions”, it’s just too hard.
I’d instead aim to have the org share their best guess often, including “here is our uncertainty” (not as a number, but as something they know better, like “we don’t know if our previous product, X, will be adopted quickly or need a lot of changes”).
Or some other method that as a manager you’d want to use with an employee.
+1 to “not giving any estimates doesn’t solve the problem”, just like it wouldn’t if you’d be a manager and your employee would stop giving estimates
Maybe I was a bit casual saying that “we try not to announce plans publicly”.
We’ve definitely updated in this direction since 2019, but I think that our current communications probably allow people to coordinate relatively well with us.
Let’s look program-by-program:
We plan and announce events well ahead of time, at the point where we confirm venues (arguably we could give even more notice, this is something that we’re working on).
The online team plans major goals on a monthly cycle and then does weekly sprints towards those goals, so there would be at most a 1 month delay between a particular plan being made and it being public.
The groups team is mostly doing repeatable work (basic groups funding, monthly VP rounds, etc). We iteratively make small improvements to those programs, so again there shouldn’t be big gaps between changes being planned and being public.
In terms of less “routine” groups work:
For UGAP, as with events, we announce rounds ahead of time.
The CBG program has mostly been operating via hiring rounds recently, which again are announced/publicised to the appropriate people once we have firm plans. We work with local stakeholders on these rounds.
The Community health team does some “routine” work, which we maintain and iteratively improve (for instance our work on interpersonal harm). For non-routine work that we can discuss publicly, I think that we’ve tended to also announce it publicly.
If we were to stop or majorly deviate from routine work, we’d let people know about that.
So I think that when you look at the program-by-program specifics, I think that people would at least know about our plans shortly after we’ve made them. I think that the key thing that we’ve stopped doing is to commit to timescales for specific improvements to our programs, but I don’t think that this is likely to be causing significant negative externalities (let me know if it is).
I also want to say that if people are worried about stepping on our toes:
Competition can be good! Feel free to just go ahead, and if we end up trying a similar project, then may the best one (or both) succeed.
Please feel free to reach out to us (see my profile for various ways you can do this) to ask whether we have any half-implemented work here, and to see if we can share any advice. (Again, ignoring staff time, ideally people wouldn’t have to ask, but I hope that this setup is reasonably accessible and more time efficient.)
I think that our current communications probably allow people to coordinate relatively well with us.
Yeah, I think you’re generally doing an improved job in this area and that people can currently coordinate fairly well, particularly around the “routine” work you describe. I guess I see part of the benefit of a public dashboard as making sure that routine commitments continue to be met (e.g. timely announcement of event dates and timely delivery of grant money). I’d also expect it to be helpful for monitoring how things are going with new projects that come up (the EA Librarian is a relatively recent example of a new project where commitments weren’t met, albeit one with pretty minor knock-on implications for the community).
I also want to say that if people are worried about stepping on our toes:
Competition can be good! Feel free to just go ahead, and if we end up trying a similar project, then may the best one (or both) succeed.
Please feel free to reach out to us (see my profile for various ways you can do this) to ask whether we have any half-implemented work here, and to see if we can share any advice. (Again, ignoring staff time, ideally people wouldn’t have to ask, but I hope that this setup is reasonably accessible and more time efficient.)
I think it’s great you’re open to people reaching out (though I’m somewhat concerned people will be reluctant to for fear of wasting your time). I also think it was a very positive step for CEA to publish a list of areas where you’re not focusing.
However, I get the sense (especially from your first bullet point) that you’re significantly underestimating how much people will want to avoid competing with CEA. It’s a huge hurdle to compete against a better funded, better connected, and better known organization. I’d guess that if someone inquired about CEA’s plans in an area and were told “we’re not currently working on that but might want to do something in a couple of years” that would still constitute a major deterrent.
I also think there’s an important historical context here, which Peter Wildeford described in late 2019:
I think CEA has frequently tried to “acquire” core activities from other organizations, sometimes using fairly overt pressure. In many cases this has turned out well, but in many cases this has pushed out another group that may have done a good job only for the newly acquired activity to end up “under delivered” by CEA.
While CEA has improved in a lot of areas since 2019, I’m not sure how much progress has been made in this area (which, quite understandably, people are generally reluctant to discuss publicly). I can think of at least one post-2019 instance where, while not exactly matching the pattern Peter describes, I think CEA did much more gate-keeping of an area than was warranted.
Coming back to this, I’m not sure that I have tonnes to add here: I think you’re right that saying that would probably deter people. I think generally in such cases we’d drop the second clause (just say “we’re not currently working on that”, without the “but we might in the future”), to decrease this effect.
I am also aware of some post-2019 instances where we put off people from working in an area. I think that this was mostly inadvertent, but still a significant mistake. If you’re open to DMing me about the instance you’re thinking of, I’d be interested in that. One of our core values is alliance mentality—we want to work with others to improve the world rather than trying to grab territory. So I think we’re trying to do this well. If we’re ever deterring people from doing work, I’m keen to hear this (including anonymously), and I’ll try to make sure that we get out of the way as much as possible.
I strongly encourage people to compete with CEA and ask us about our plans.
Re: CEA should consider creating a public dashboard of its commitments to others
As I demonstrated several places in my analysis, the main problem with CEA missing public commitments is that it makes it difficult for other community members to make good plans. CEA avoiding making public commitments doesn’t really solve this problem, and could make it worse. Similarly, it doesn’t help much if CEA says “we hope to do X by Y date, but don’t consider this a commitment” because people are still likely to use that info in their plans for lack of a better option.
A far better outcome would be for CEA to make more accurate public commitments (by adding conservatism and/or providing wide ranges around dates/deliverables to incorporate uncertainty) and then providing timely updates when not on track to meet those commitments. CEA is too important an organization for other EAs not to be able to plan around.
I personally don’t think we can expect orgs to “make accurate predictions”, it’s just too hard.
I’d instead aim to have the org share their best guess often, including “here is our uncertainty” (not as a number, but as something they know better, like “we don’t know if our previous product, X, will be adopted quickly or need a lot of changes”).
Or some other method that as a manager you’d want to use with an employee.
+1 to “not giving any estimates doesn’t solve the problem”, just like it wouldn’t if you’d be a manager and your employee would stop giving estimates
Maybe I was a bit casual saying that “we try not to announce plans publicly”.
We’ve definitely updated in this direction since 2019, but I think that our current communications probably allow people to coordinate relatively well with us.
Let’s look program-by-program:
We plan and announce events well ahead of time, at the point where we confirm venues (arguably we could give even more notice, this is something that we’re working on).
The online team plans major goals on a monthly cycle and then does weekly sprints towards those goals, so there would be at most a 1 month delay between a particular plan being made and it being public.
The groups team is mostly doing repeatable work (basic groups funding, monthly VP rounds, etc). We iteratively make small improvements to those programs, so again there shouldn’t be big gaps between changes being planned and being public.
In terms of less “routine” groups work:
For UGAP, as with events, we announce rounds ahead of time.
The CBG program has mostly been operating via hiring rounds recently, which again are announced/publicised to the appropriate people once we have firm plans. We work with local stakeholders on these rounds.
The Community health team does some “routine” work, which we maintain and iteratively improve (for instance our work on interpersonal harm). For non-routine work that we can discuss publicly, I think that we’ve tended to also announce it publicly.
If we were to stop or majorly deviate from routine work, we’d let people know about that.
So I think that when you look at the program-by-program specifics, I think that people would at least know about our plans shortly after we’ve made them. I think that the key thing that we’ve stopped doing is to commit to timescales for specific improvements to our programs, but I don’t think that this is likely to be causing significant negative externalities (let me know if it is).
I also want to say that if people are worried about stepping on our toes:
Competition can be good! Feel free to just go ahead, and if we end up trying a similar project, then may the best one (or both) succeed.
Please feel free to reach out to us (see my profile for various ways you can do this) to ask whether we have any half-implemented work here, and to see if we can share any advice. (Again, ignoring staff time, ideally people wouldn’t have to ask, but I hope that this setup is reasonably accessible and more time efficient.)
Yeah, I think you’re generally doing an improved job in this area and that people can currently coordinate fairly well, particularly around the “routine” work you describe. I guess I see part of the benefit of a public dashboard as making sure that routine commitments continue to be met (e.g. timely announcement of event dates and timely delivery of grant money). I’d also expect it to be helpful for monitoring how things are going with new projects that come up (the EA Librarian is a relatively recent example of a new project where commitments weren’t met, albeit one with pretty minor knock-on implications for the community).
I think it’s great you’re open to people reaching out (though I’m somewhat concerned people will be reluctant to for fear of wasting your time). I also think it was a very positive step for CEA to publish a list of areas where you’re not focusing.
However, I get the sense (especially from your first bullet point) that you’re significantly underestimating how much people will want to avoid competing with CEA. It’s a huge hurdle to compete against a better funded, better connected, and better known organization. I’d guess that if someone inquired about CEA’s plans in an area and were told “we’re not currently working on that but might want to do something in a couple of years” that would still constitute a major deterrent.
I also think there’s an important historical context here, which Peter Wildeford described in late 2019:
While CEA has improved in a lot of areas since 2019, I’m not sure how much progress has been made in this area (which, quite understandably, people are generally reluctant to discuss publicly). I can think of at least one post-2019 instance where, while not exactly matching the pattern Peter describes, I think CEA did much more gate-keeping of an area than was warranted.
Oh I should have said, I’m on holiday for the next week, so I won’t be responding to replies in these threads for that period, hope that’s ok!
No problem, have a great holiday :)
Coming back to this, I’m not sure that I have tonnes to add here: I think you’re right that saying that would probably deter people. I think generally in such cases we’d drop the second clause (just say “we’re not currently working on that”, without the “but we might in the future”), to decrease this effect.
I am also aware of some post-2019 instances where we put off people from working in an area. I think that this was mostly inadvertent, but still a significant mistake. If you’re open to DMing me about the instance you’re thinking of, I’d be interested in that. One of our core values is alliance mentality—we want to work with others to improve the world rather than trying to grab territory. So I think we’re trying to do this well. If we’re ever deterring people from doing work, I’m keen to hear this (including anonymously), and I’ll try to make sure that we get out of the way as much as possible.
I strongly encourage people to compete with CEA and ask us about our plans.