[Discussion] Required Vice-Captainship

Summary:

Policy which mandates teams have and train a Vice-Captain, in case of Captain absence. Also allows for distribution of responsibility more easily.

[Discussion] Required Vice-Captainship

Yossipossi 15 Jul 2021 16:44

Hey everyone.

Recently in staffchat (and even more recently in the AdCap Monthly Meetings), the issue of the lack of delegation and proper responsibility succession came up. I wanted to bring up a solution I came up with during the meeting and refined slightly since then.

The policy is, essentially, that all teams would be required to have a Vice-Captain, which would be able to take up responsibility in the event the Captain 1) takes an extended leave or 2) steps down / is removed from their position. Vice-Captains would be trained to handle the responsibility of the Captain(s) in the event they are unable to perform them or are temporarily unavailable. This allows for the delegation of some duties and power, while also reducing the bus factor of staff as a whole.

Vice-Captains currently have access to the Admin-Captain Chat, and would continue to do so under this policy.

A discussion point for staff: how do we encourage/ensure Captains properly train/delegate their duties to their Vice-Captains? In the past, we've had issues with Captains not properly training their Vice-Captains for the role, which essentially nullified the purpose of it. Is there any way to enforce this in policy, or should it be emphasized as a cultural change in Captainship?

This discussion is open to all staff.

Last edited on 15 Jul 2021 16:59 by Yossipossi Show more

Re: [Discussion] Required Vice-Captainship

ManyMeats 15 Jul 2021 17:50

For some added context, I was in a position just the other month where I was a "standard member" of the Site Crit team. Through no fault and without a predictable trigger, our team went down the Captain and Vice-Captain in an almost back-to-back fashion. Understanding that this type of experience is not normal and nor it is really worth a high degree of planning for, the broad purpose of this proposal is a really useful one.

Part of the greater driving force in burnout is highly effective staff members feeling like they are required to have their hands on almost everything from policy to discussion to PR. If you feel like there is nobody capable of picking up your slack for a week or two while you work on your own private shit or just take a small vacation, then that's a problem. One of the cleanest ways to minimize this as a pressure driving people towards burn-out is by designating the VC as a Captain-pro-tempore structurally and then giving them the adequate training to actually do so.

To realize this, I think we need a couple of things…
1) The Captain's duties on any given team should be clearly defined on that Team's O5 hub page.
2) The Vice Captain should be appointed by whatever means the Team's Captain feels appropriate, be it their designation or a vote of team members, et cetera.
3) The appointed VC should be able to do all of the duties listed under the Captain's bullets, and if they cannot, receive training directly from the Captain until they can make such a claim.
4) A formal designation that appointment to a VC does not necessarily either entitle or obligate someone to become the permanent Team Captain should the need for one arise.

Per my #3 above here, I'd imagine that after establishing what duties the VC is not comfortable performing on their own, the Captain would then walk through those duties with the VC as they come up. For example, nominating staff for promotions isn't something you can just really manufacture so that type of a duty would have to wait for opportunity.

Re: [Discussion] Required Vice-Captainship

Yossipossi 15 Jul 2021 17:57

These points are excellent and I have no qualms with folding them into the proposal if there's support for it.

Also, in addition to #3, a secondary Vice Captain could help compliment the other Vice Captain, and solve the issue — though your method would likely be preferred.

Re: [Discussion] Required Vice-Captainship

WhiteGuard 15 Jul 2021 18:00

Not going to fully comment on all of the points, but I would certainly agree with the hubs being the place where the Captain's duties are displayed.

Re: [Discussion] Required Vice-Captainship

flagsam 15 Jul 2021 22:49

I always just assumed we had some sort of document outlining the responsibilities that every level of staff on a team might end up handling. I'd be pro one of those.

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Pls look at my pretty art <3

Re: [Discussion] Required Vice-Captainship

ManyMeats 16 Jul 2021 01:00

This is a question I explored last year and the answer is a devastating "no" across the board for most positions on the wiki. The good news is we can fix this with just a bit of elbow grease.

Most duty lists are limited to talk about the greater team. Some staff hubs further explain a couple of duties but there is no real uniformity to it and that needs changing.

Re: [Discussion] Required Vice-Captainship

flagsam 16 Jul 2021 11:46

Being honest, I don’t even know what most of the people on my own team (Licensing) do. I’m not exactly the most involved Staff so it kind of makes sense, an internal document or a public one would be pretty helpful for new staff or anyone looking to query something with a specific team who may not use IRC. For example, I know, CelesteKara does not match any existing user name does license boxing, so if I was looking for advice with that it might be nice to know that. I’ve also received random licensing questions I haven’t seen because my site presence is spotty, I’m mostly on the team because I’m happy to do the Etsy licensing, even if I do it somewhat sporadically. Having a more efficient break down of who users would be best contacting for what seems like it could help.

This might be veering away from the initial topic though, so I’m not too sure if I should go more in depth, but I just want to say I’d be happy to do what I could to help make these lists if the idea grows wings, I don’t just want to dump more work on already burnt out staff.

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Pls look at my pretty art <3

Last edited on 16 Jul 2021 11:53 by flagsam Show more

Re: [Discussion] Required Vice-Captainship

flagsam 16 Jul 2021 11:54

I’m all for this idea. I also like the vice vice captain.

how do we encourage/ensure Captains properly train/delegate their duties to their Vice-Captains? In the past, we've had issues with Captains not properly training their Vice-Captains for the role, which essentially nullified the purpose of it. Is there any way to enforce this in policy, or should it be emphasized as a cultural change in Captainship?

I suppose having open and honest discussions with the vice captains might be the best way? Like a HR job review after a view months, see how they’re getting on, whether they’re learning stuff. The only thing is, I don’t know what repercussions we could give if they’re not training their captain, because if we demote them, we lack a trained captain. But, I can’t really expect anyone would not want to have someone to take some of the pressure off them, and therefore train their vice captain(s), even if it might take them a while.

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Pls look at my pretty art <3

Re: [Discussion] Required Vice-Captainship

cybersqyd 16 Jul 2021 12:15

This feels like a necessary step in the right direction but I'm not convinced it's sufficient. I would like to see more teams moving towards having dedicated sections where appropriate — though obviously not every team is suited to it. I would also like to suggest that moving folk between sub teams somewhat routinely is going to be necessary if we want folk to grow towards being a captain — if a vice-captain, or even a potential vice-captain candidate, spends all their time dealing with issues in one area of their team, they're going to be less aware of what the rest of their team is up to. It should also help alleviate burnout — it's easier to feel enthused to work on stuff if it's not the same kind of thing for months at a time. Obviously this is very team dependent — it doesn't make sense to move someone to an area of tech team if they don't have the skills to work there; and some teams (e.g. rewrite) are small and focussed enough that there's not really a good way to have sub-teams for them.

I would also like to suggest the role of captain is less permanent — having three or four people in most teams who can be captain and who alternate the role will allow for a lot more effective management of staff work levels.

how do we encourage/ensure Captains properly train/delegate their duties to their Vice-Captains? In the past, we've had issues with Captains not properly training their Vice-Captains for the role, which essentially nullified the purpose of it. Is there any way to enforce this in policy, or should it be emphasized as a cultural change in Captainship?

This should be a cultural change in captainship. There's, no real way to do it in policy that accurately reflects the unique circumstances every captain and team is in. This said: having the expectation of a) having a Vice-Captain and b) having the Vice-Captain be responsible for Captain level stuff when possible should generally provide sufficient to ensure that a vice-captain becomes ready to become a captain with time.

Re: [Discussion] Required Vice-Captainship

Yossipossi 16 Jul 2021 15:39

Regarding more sections: definitely a proposal for MAST's 05 Updating Subteam, though it wouldn't be applicable to every team (Forum Crit and Rewrite, among others, would find it hard to create subteams, but Licensing and Tech could likely do it).

Regarding rotating captains… I'm less fond of the idea, since it mostly just messes with cohesion and long-term projects. I'm open to finding ways to reduce consolidation of responsibility/power bloat, but I don't think this system would work particularly well.

Regarding your cultural change point: that's a good take, and I'd be willing to go forward with that in mind.

Re: [Discussion] Required Vice-Captainship

gee0765 16 Jul 2021 16:12

I would also like to suggest the role of captain is less permanent — having three or four people in most teams who can be captain and who alternate the role will allow for a lot more effective management of staff work levels.

i like this. less stagnation, more fresh views on things etc.

Re: [Discussion] Required Vice-Captainship

aismallard 16 Jul 2021 19:25

Given the role captains presently have (e.g. adcap access), I don't think it makes sense to rotate them regularly. For the desired effect you could encourage more movement within teams and lessening the bus factor of the captain role for a team, without swapping things out in a way that may be more disruptive than helpful.

Re: [Discussion] Required Vice-Captainship

cybersqyd 18 Jul 2021 09:19

I'm gonna reply to points both you and Yossi (ETA: and I guess Croq too huh) raised here because it feels like they have similar answers.

Given the role captains presently have (e.g. adcap access), I don't think it makes sense to rotate them regularly.

I mean, the way I'd envision this working is a lot more like having four people in a shared captaincy, where 3 are on reserve and only one is active at a time. Tying this into Yossi's concerns re cohesion and long-term projects: the way this works means that there's one person expected to handle all the Captain level stuff at a time, but more people available to handle e.g. specific areas that might be more up their alley, or to take some slack if the active Captain is busy. Which means if e.g. person A is handling a long term plan, then even when they step back from captain for a while, they can continue pushing that.

The main difference between this and having more Vice Captains is the expectation that Captains explicitly get downtime more frequently — instead of always being the point of call, they're more, only the point of call say, for three months at a time with it switching quarterly. The intent being that this allows folk to explicitly expect other folk to take up some of the slack at times, while having a bigger pool of experienced folk who can take the lead if something comes up.

I would agree about this not being suitable for every team — Rewrite being the best example due to it's small size — but a lot of teams handle a lot of quite different tasks and have a lot of members (e.g. CO, IO, MAST) and having a broader share of experience/perspectives in their captaincy can only really be a benefit.

Either way, this is a quick idea I had and I'm not necessarily hugely invested in it.

Last edited on 18 Jul 2021 09:19 by cybersqyd Show more

Re: [Discussion] Required Vice-Captainship

Yossipossi 19 Jul 2021 02:15

I feel this idea adds more bureaucracy and doesn't really solve the problem facing captainship properly, which is responsibility/power bloat. Additionally, you begin to run into issues when Captains explicitly disagree with one another on policy, or when promoting new captains (who adds new captains to the cycle? Admins?). I don't see the system working simply or without major issues.

Re: [Discussion] Required Vice-Captainship

Croquembouche 16 Jul 2021 23:24

I would also like to suggest the role of captain is less permanent — having three or four people in most teams who can be captain and who alternate the role will allow for a lot more effective management of staff work levels.

I think this should be the sort of thing each team (read: captain) decides for themselves. If one team decides they want to take on a flatter structure and vary the designated captain every now and then, which would effectively result in a group of pseudo-captains, then so be it. I don't think there's anything that requires a specific person to be captain and if there is then that should be fixed. But not all teams work or want to work that way.

Re: [Discussion] Required Vice-Captainship

DrBleep 16 Jul 2021 15:22

Echoing Cybersqyd here that while I strongly support this motion, I think it's but one stepping stone towards moving staff away from the sequestration of specific Power Staffers who stack up responsibilities like they are collectors coins.

IIRC, we are working on generating several major structural proposals to more evenly distribute staff responsibilities, encourage if not outright force upper level staff to delegate and maneuver day to day responsibilities away from themselves in a more distributed fashion to the general staff body, and train general staffers in the skills they will need to not only potentially become captain of their team at some point, but prepare them for both moderator and Administrator level responsibilities.

Additionally a major issue right now is a distinct lack of segmented organization in several major staff teams. This leads not only to no clear line of succession, but power staffers accumulating multiple responsibilities and being a chokepoint for decision making, as there is not autonomous delegation to general staffers. MAST is currently the gold standard for staff team organization. If I were to vanish tomorrow, almost every aspect of MAST would be able to run without me, and those proposals that would normally need my input, would fall to my vice captains, and if they vanished, a similar situation, section heads would and should be able to make executive calls at that point regarding proposals.

Having distinct section heads, sub-team captains, etc. and encouraging them to rotate or pass their duties off to newer staffers while exchanging advice and providing a through line for consultation not only allows for delegation of duties and avoids accumulation of responsibilities in one person, but also prepares newer staff for upper level staff leadership by teaching them when it is appropriate to hand responsibility off. I have had five vice captains in my tenure as MAST captain, each of them was previously a section head of one of the MAST sections, and barring current circumstances with my current vice captains, each of them reached a point where they passed on the responsibility for their section to a newer staffer. This has consistently prepared MAST staffers for upper level staff positions, as the majority of new moderators, vice captains, captains, and admins originated with in MAST.

I see this as a necessary movement if we are to continue to grow as a site, and as a maintenance body to support and advance the interests of the wiki and the community. The days of a handful of people being able to manage all site functions have come and gone, and we need to adjust.

Last edited on 16 Jul 2021 15:38 by DrBleep Show more

Re: [Discussion] Required Vice-Captainship

gee0765 16 Jul 2021 16:09

disclaimer this is sorta similar to things others have said but i wrote it earlier and don't want to waste the words

While there's definitely some benefits to the proposal, I don't think it fixes the issue it's trying to as much as it just makes it less likely.

Unless I'm misunderstanding, this is intended to fix the issue that very small numbers of specific individuals (captains in this case) going on break/retiring etc. causes disproportionately large sections of staff action to all but entirely grind to a halt. But the solution here isn't just to appoint a few more specific individuals (though I do think this should be part of a larger proposal), it's to have a focused initiative to minimise reliance on captains and distribute all responsibilities except those which absolutely have to be restricted to a small group among the whole staff team (MAST does a pretty good job at this but for some teams the section head thing wouldn't be as applicable, and honestly to some extent does a similar not entirely fixing the problem thing to the current proposal). This would also have the benefit that a fresh captain wouldn't have as large of a workload facing them.

Essentially I think my point is that we need to have a rethink and a new definition of what exactly a captain does, how one is chosen, etc. before we work out how many are needed in each team.

Re: [Discussion] Required Vice-Captainship

Croquembouche 16 Jul 2021 23:40

Essentially I think my point is that we need to have a rethink and a new definition of what exactly a captain does, how one is chosen, etc.

I think I'm finding myself agreeing with this. My initial reaction to "Vice-Captains would be trained to handle the responsibility of the Captain(s)" is 'hang on, are Captains receiving training in the first place?' (as a non-captain I do not know)

I'm realising that, beyond someone who represents their team in adcap, I'm not really sure what a captain is, what a captain should be in theory, and what the difference is between the two. I'm also unsure whether that definition should vary between teams or not. I think laying out what a captain is would be really helpful, and that would help define what a vice-captain should be.

In the meantime, though, and even while captains are poorly-defined, I don't see any downsides to making sure that each team has a backup captain.

Re: [Discussion] Required Vice-Captainship

ManyMeats 17 Jul 2021 18:34

Essentially I think my point is that we need to have a rethink and a new definition of what exactly a captain does, how one is chosen, etc. before we work out how many are needed in each team.

Emphasis mine. There's 0 reason this has to be exclusive.

Re: [Discussion] Required Vice-Captainship

Yossipossi 18 Jul 2021 06:15

Agreeing with Meats here. I can create another thread for this topic if need be.

Re: [Discussion] Required Vice-Captainship

(account deleted) 21 Jul 2021 13:32

Apologies if this seems a bit jumbled, I have been feeling a tad bit under the weather lately.

This proposal has good intentions but I think has one fundamental flaw: at the end of the day, Captains are not a concrete role in terms of what they do - there is an abstract element to the responsibilities a Captain has, especially when it is unclear where certain issues/situations fall in terms of team jurisdiction. Creating a vice captain by *requirement* could complicate many things and would be hard to do without defining what a captain can and cannot do, full stop, and that would be difficult in of itself due to the sometimes abstract nature of the responsibilities of the position. I am not saying that we shouldn’t do this, mind you - but to do *this* we first have to do the above.

It makes sense for teams like MAST to have Vice Captains - the scope of their responsibilities is so vast that it would be foolish not to have any. Teams like IO and CO and Tech that already have 2 captains, however, I don’t see this being needed. Sure, the CO situation with myself and Procy both absent recently would say otherwise, but the reasoning behind both absences is extremely circumstantial and is unlikely to happen for a double-departure. Even if it does happen again, CO and IO both operate as a large number of sub-teams. Where MAST operates as sections, the sub-teams (on CO at least) are left to pretty much manage themselves at their own level. Procy and I are fairly hands-off on the sub-teams we are not personally involved in. For example, Site News largely runs without oversight from either of us and is left to its sub team captain, as is Introductions and Seminars (McB is the sub team captain of that team with me).

Essentially, while I think this is a good idea, I do not think it is a good idea to make it a *requirement*. This should be made an official position but it should be left up to Captain discretion whether or not a vice-captain is needed based on how the team can operate without a captain present for a short period of time.

Of course, if a captain is out for an abnormally long amount of time (6 months to a year imo), it would definitely be good to have someone appointed as the official fill-in or replacement. For teams without two captains, I think that the constant vice captain makes sense for this reason, but again think it should be encouraged but not a requirement.

tl;dr: a lot of people have stated similar things to me but I spent time writing this out so I posted it.

Re: [Discussion] Required Vice-Captainship

Yossipossi 21 Jul 2021 20:23

There is an abstract element to the responsibilities a Captain has, especially when it is unclear where certain issues/situations fall in terms of team jurisdiction. Creating a vice captain by *requirement* could complicate many things […]

While I understand the concerns, the role of a Vice-Captain currently would be simply to be able to serve as a backup for the Captain in the event of long periods of inactive or Captainship change. While the responsibilities of a Captain are indeed abstract as a whole, each team does have a set of responsibilities which a Captain performs. Introducing a person who would be capable of performing the same duties as the current Captain — and then actually executing them when becoming the Captain or filling in for the Captain — would not, from my viewpoint, inherently disrupt the functions of any particular team.

Regardless, since a few people have brought up the abstractness and the need for definition of Captainship, I think it would be worth creating a separate thread just to discuss this topic, which I will be doing shortly after posting this.

Teams like IO and CO and Tech that already have 2 captains, however, I don’t see this being needed. […]

While this argument is valid in regards to handling responsibilities while Captains are away, we also need to consider the reduction of the bus factor in teams. For instance, IO and Rewrite recently suffered from a catastrophic bus factor when their former Captain resigned. Although there was a Vice-Captain in IO, they were not willing to take up the position due to other ongoing factors; in Rewrite, despite it being such as a small team, no one was ready to permanently take up the Captainship position. Having a Vice-Captain who is usually capable of filling in for a Captain be ready to become Captain when the former Captain leaves would allow for teams to become significantly more modular and allow Captains to be unavailable without worry of team functions stalling.

Regarding the latter half of the paragraph, it should not be too surprising to hear that MAST and IO function almost entirely without direct control from their captains. The subteams tend to manage themselves. However, intra-team function isn't necessarily the only thing hindered by a lack of Captains; rather, even inter-team communication and policy-making is also severely impeded. For instance, according to an admin I spoke to, CO's Captains absence has resulted in 3–4 proposals being shelved or delayed as it either affected them tangentially or directly. Having a trusted person with similar training to a captain being able to comment on and potentially approve or delay proposals would prevent the symptoms we've been experiencing this past month.

In addition, there is one CO Team which is entirely composed of CO's Captains. As CO's Captains left during that time, contests had to be delegated to naepic after some confusion, and resulted in you needing to step out of your break occasionally to help wrapping up 6kon. Having a Vice-Captain would have alleviated this problem almost entirely.

For teams without two captains, I think that the constant vice captain makes sense for this reason, but again think it should be encouraged but not a requirement.

I'm not against this, but having a designated survivor at the very least wouldn't do any harm.

Re: [Discussion] Required Vice-Captainship

(account deleted) 21 Jul 2021 22:07

My points are essentially what you’ve posted here and I can only assume I was not as clear in my intentions - yes, a backup-captain is a good idea.