This is not so much a framework as a simple taxonomy that underlies the overarching vision & strategy for Coεmeta, specifically regarding the types of "work" we do. These might be thought of as "business units", "verticals", or "functional areas" in more traditional corporate or functional strategy.
The pillars are:
| Freelance & contract work | Content creation | Open source toolmaking | Relations: capacity & community-building |
|---|---|---|---|
| Traditional hourly rate or project-based work, consulting etc. | Part of Working In Public as well as building a public presence, portfolio & demonstration of capabilities, etc. All with an orientation towards positive externalities, public goods & contribution to knowledge commons, etc. |
Creating open source & open access tools & resources. Related to & overlapping with Content creation, but with a more technical & functional focus, vs informational & didactic resources. Again oriented towards public goods, etc. |
Building capacity through networks of mutual support, partnership & exchange, etc (e.g. mutual aid & microsolidarity). (More conventionally / cynically: networking, growth hacking, clout chasing, social climbing, etc. But intent is more positive-sum.) |
It was obvious & important to enumerate these as we initially conceived of the core activities of Coεmeta, & they recur throughout the other frameworks for obvious reasons. Once enumerated, they provoke an obvious followup question: how they relate to each other via interconnections, interdependencies & feedback loops, which subsequent frameworks explore below.
Of course we can't avoid some sort of 2x2, the bullshit peddler management consultant's favorite WMD (weapon of mass defrauding). However, we feel these mutant versions are sufficiently novel & abstruse to avoid the most pathological forms of consultant-itus. And anyway, all such frameworks operate similarly via some sort of complexity- or dimensionality-reduction (e.g. of the true territory to an approximate map). 2x2's just tend to be among the most egregiously reductive.
Nevertheless, these help to visualize a few pertinent dimensions of these pillars & the relations between them.
There's a lot going on in these, both visually & conceptually, but suffice to say: the right-side is identical to the left-side, with additional arrows indicating potential feedback loops (& their relative strengths, via line type & weight). Just wanted to preserve a cleaner / simpler version on the left, without the Feedback Loop dimension.
The dimensions we wanted to capture & convey:
- Certainty of Outcome (x-axis): for some fixed amount effort or 'input', how confident can we be in the outcome or 'payoff'
- Scalability (LOE vs potential outcome) (y-axis): how high is the 'payoff' ceiling for some fixed amount of effort / input
- Potential Outcome Range (inner circles, see legends): a sort of confidence interval or distribution around the range of expected outcomes or payoffs. (we're most dissatisfied with the clarity & interpretability of this element)
- Feedback Loops & Interdependencies (arrows, right-side): Fairly self-explanatory, how outputs & outcomes from one pillar / node might impact or contribute to another, & what virtuous cycles (flywheel!), efficiency-gains & tactics this might imply
- (as is probably clear, these dimensions are not entirely orthogonal / independent from each other, but worth distinguishing to be able to reason about their relative potentials & strategic implications)
As usual, we're not entirely satisfied with these, but they served their immediate purpose: to clarify fuzzy notions in our head, via marginally-less-fuzzy lines on a surface. The result is fairly dense with info, assumptions & implications, but if you stare & squint long enough, some observations emerge: (click to expand)
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Freelance work is depicted as high-certainty & low-scalability (`x` vs `y` axis), with a narrow outcome range (inner circle viz) & several interdependencies (arrows). Let's unpack that:
- High-certainty: Due to the contractual nature of this work, outcomes & payoffs are pre-specified to some degree, resulting in relatively high certainty. NB: non-monetary outcomes (e.g. social impacts) are obviously less certain, & this does not account for the inherent uncertainty in securing freelance work, but rather applies to the work itself, if & when secured.
- Low-scalability: Again, due to the contractual nature, it's unlikely that we'll agree to a fixed rate & scope of work & then end up making 10x that, without an additional ~10x effort. Thus the marginal gains per unit of work are fairly constrained.
- Narrow outcome range: Again related to the pre-specified quid pro quo nature of contract work, the expected outcome range is fairly bounded by the rates I'm willing to accept vs the rates clients are willing to pay, & most often will fall somewhere in the middle. Of course it's always possible that some extreme outlier event occurs, or an enormous non-monetary impact is achieved, but we're working in the realm of average outcomes & expected value here.
- Interdependencies: The theory depicted here is that the other 3 pillars all might contribute fairly strongly to freelance work (e.g. by generating interest, growing network connections & referrals, etc). But freelance work will only contribute weakly back to them (e.g. by open-sourcing work projects, generating ideas for content creation, & growing the network of contacts & partnerships). And a happy client is often a repeat client or referrer, so freelance work can lead to more of itself. These hypotheses, like everything else in these frameworks, will have to be tested in practice & adjusted accordingly. (science!) — 2023 UPDATE: see 🔄 Updates & Model Check section below
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By way of contrast: Content creation is depicted as low-certainty & highly-scalable, with a wide outcome range (skewed toward the low end) & again several interdependencies. I won't elaborate these in the same detail, but suffice to say:
- Any given piece of content is most likely to attract a very small audience, but could possibly go viral with practically unbounded upside for the same level of effort. This accounts for the first 3 dimensions.
- As far as interdependencies, it should be fairly self-evident that creating content might lead to creating technical implementations & vice versa, as well as attracting some audience, potential collaborators & clients.
- The same reasoning is applied to the other two pillars, so won't belabor them here.
- Will just comment that this exercise helped to crystallize & confirm some assumptions, & convince us of an initial strategic focus on the more scalable pillars while having some cushion & runway to experiment & roll the dice for a potential big payoff, or at least build some more scalable foundations & start seeding the ground / greasing the flywheel.
Final notes on these mutant 2x2s:
- Each pillar of course has its own (sub)strategy & tactics, integrated w/ the macro strategy, which we'll publish here in the future.
- Locations of pillars / nodes in the x-y plane should not be static, but could (or should) be moved (as part of strategy).
- Temporal aspects are not captured, but there is a temporal strategy implied (as mentioned above):
- initially invest in low-certainty / high-potential work, to seed flywheel dynamics
- partnerships as potential interim / intermediary accelerant / amplifier
- freelance as 'safety net' fallback of safer bets but lower potential
We've noted our experience in practice vs the original theory of these models in several Public Work Logs as of early 2023:
- 2022.3.WSU (Winter Solstice Update) — Cycle Completion (see 📜 Prologue & Epilogue ♻️: a TL;DR in Github or Roam)
- 2023.0.VEU (Vernal Equinox Update) — A New Cycle (see ⏳ Timeline, Mar 2023 section in Github or Roam)