# Some feedback re Flock / AA / A1

Hey guys, saw both of your posts and just wanted to express some views about the whole situation before the call on Tuesday which I would like to only be focused on solutions - I think they are best provided here, but I'm happy to post them online should you think that's the best avenue.

I very much love the spirit of optimism that @luis expressed on Flock in https://forum.aragon.org/t/an-optimists-take-on-flock/1299, but what I think is not particularly realistic is the optimist feeling that it can sort itself out (in the bazaar framing of @jorge), or can do so nudged by a little bit of oversight by the AA.

I think what is clear by now is that the wider network doesn't particularly care about the day-to-day dynamics of Flock. Or, let me rephrase: it seems clear that there is no voter participation on Flock proposals, and that literally ALL of the Flock discussions come from members of the Flock teams, or the AA, plus 2, maximum 3 people that are not involved in the day to day (and for those I am thankful).

Now, that's not a bad thing by itself, it's just stating a fact. I really wouldn't know who could have the time to stay up to date on this. I think that it becomes a useful fact in addressing what the problem is for Flock, and that in my opinion is a lack of leadership.

To me, it seems clear that the Aragon Network is operating without a CEO or leadership figure. I find that very worrying, as I've never seen anything work without that.
I assume that at Flock's inception, it was imagined that the role could be itself decentralized to the community, but that has not materialized - and thus we need to course correct.
If instead the thought was that the AA would have been that leadership role, then we might have had some miscommunication as that is not how I saw it.

While decentralizing the development is an awesome trailblazing experiment, it can't happen without some strong, committed leadership to make it happen - and for what it's worth I don't think it's something that you can hire away.

The AA is still a 2 people operation (as the board felt it premature to scale faster), and has a host of tasks to manage - most operational - that leave very little time or mental cycles to think in a strategic way and execute on these topics.

The AA has legal, accounting, events, Nest, coordination of Flock AGPs, AGP process in general with execution, managing a host of payments and DAOs, handling all of the security auditing processes, and more.

Therefore I'd like to clarify what has become apparent to me at this point.
I do not think:
- the AA has currently the capacity to take on that leadership role
- the AA is the best entity to take it on anyways, as it would remove centralization from one part and create it on another, while also creating a high cost structure at the AA level, which would need to duplicate a lot of efforts that are already implemented inside the core development teams.

Additionally, in the past year it was never mentioned specifically that the AA should have taken on such a role.

Our current stance, communicated a few times to the board, has been to provide the lump sums (in quarterly or bi-annual payments) without retracting funding. The safeguarding mechanism is in the network being the ultimate judge if a Flock team worked or not by not renewing their membership.

The underlying root cause, is the fact that A1 continues on its strong development path, as it should, but holds similar expectations from Flock teams, without some sort of active process to get them there.

All while at some level kind of wanting to dictate a bit who gets to stay and who doesn't.
I think that is actually a good way to make it work - but it conflicts with how the program is structured and communicated.

Now, we clearly have some responsibilities and are to be blamed at the AA, because we really have not been able to pick up the pace on the reporting - and our efforts in aiding communication between Flock teams, including the working groups, have definitely not yielded the results that we would have hoped.

But one of the few mistakes you might have done was to think that you could somehow form the AA, and outsource two full-time jobs (Alexa and Maria) and then pile on a lot more stuff (Flock, AGP process, treasury, etc.) and clearing that from your minds without being in charge of it.

I think that a decentralized governance framework works very well, but mostly for oversight - not for maximum operational efficiency.

I think we need to clearly identify who the "CEO of the network" is.
It could be a person, a team, or even an organization - but it needs to clearly be communicated, have the right skin in the game, and skills for it. It definitely can fit in a decentralized governance scenario and can be voted in and removed by the ANT tokenholders.

My personal opinion is that it is very hard to make it work if that's not (plural) you (founders) - but if I were to see some different potential paths, I could definitely be convinced otherwise.

I hope this feedback is useful.

This year has been extremely formative for everyone including myself and the whole Aragon Community, plus in general the whole decentralized governance space.
I like to see it as a needed investment in the direction we want to take, but also see it very worthwhile to reflect on the things that have worked and things that didn't in order to make it a better process for the coming years.

Looking forward to chatting on Tuesday to see how we can immediately address the current situation, and then maybe having a deeper conversation about the structure of Flock and the role of the AA!
🦅
Ste