Council survey (#1383)

Author: Mark-Simulacrum

posts/2024-08-26-council-survey.md

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+---
+layout: post
+title: "2024 Leadership Council Survey"
+author: The Leadership Council
+---
+
+One of the responsibilities of the [leadership council](https://www.rust-lang.org/governance/teams/leadership-council),
+formed by [RFC 3392], is to solicit feedback on a yearly basis from the Project
+on how we are performing our duties.
+
+> Each year, the Council must solicit feedback on whether the Council is
+> serving its purpose effectively from all willing and able Project members and
+> openly discuss this feedback in a forum that allows and encourages active
+> participation from all Project members. To do so, the Council and other
+> Project members consult the high-level duties, expectations, and constraints
+> listed in this RFC and any subsequent revisions thereof to determine if the
+> Council is meeting its duties and obligations.
+
+This is the council's first year, so we are still figuring out the best way to
+do this. For this year, a short survey was sent out to all@ on June 24th, 2024,
+ran for two weeks, and we are now presenting aggregated results from the
+survey. Raw responses will not be shared beyond the leadership council, but the
+results below reflect sentiments shared in response to each question. We invite
+feedback and suggestions on actions to take on Zulip or through direct
+communication to council members.
+
+We want to thank everyone for their feedback! It has been very valuable to hear
+what people are thinking. As always, if you have thoughts or concerns, please
+reach out to your council representative any time.
+
+## Survey results
+
+We received 53 responses to the survey, representing roughly a 32% response
+rate (out of 163 current recipients of all@).
+
+### Do you feel that the Rust Leadership Council is serving its purpose effectively?
+
+| Option            | Response count
+|-------------------|---------------
+| Strongly agree    | 1
+| Agree             | 18
+| Unsure            | 30
+| Disagree          | 4
+| Strongly disagree | 0
+
+### I am aware of the role that the Leadership Council plays in the governance of the Rust Project.
+
+| Option            | Response count
+|-------------------|---------------
+| Strongly agree    | 9
+| Agree             | 20
+| Unsure            | 14
+| Disagree          | 7
+| Strongly disagree | 3
+
+### The Rust Project has a solid foundation of Project governance.
+
+| Option            | Response count
+|-------------------|---------------
+| Strongly agree    | 3
+| Agree             | 16
+| Unsure            | 20
+| Disagree          | 11
+| Strongly disagree | 3
+
+### Areas that are going well
+
+For the rest of the questions we group responses into rough categories. The
+number of those responses is also provided; note that some responses may have
+fallen into more than one of these categories.
+
+* (5) Less drama
+* (5) More public operations
+* (5) Lack of clarity / knowledge about what it does
+  * It's not obvious why this is a "going well" from the responses, but it was
+    given in response to this question.
+* (4) General/inspecific positivity.
+* (2) Improved Foundation/project relations
+* (2) Funding travel/get-togethers of team members
+* (1) Clear representation of members of the Project
+* (1) Turnover while retaining members
+
+### Areas that are not going well
+
+* (15) Knowing what the council is doing
+* (3) Not enough delegation of decisions
+* (2) Finding people interested in being on the council / helping the council
+* (1) What is the role of the project directors? Are they redundant given the council?
+* (2) Too conservative in trying things / decisions/progress is made too slowly.
+* (1) Worry over Foundation not trusting Project
+
+Suggestions for things to do in the responses:
+
+* (2) Addressing burnout
+* (2) More social time between teams
+* (2) More communication/accountability with/for the Foundation
+* (2) Hiring people, particularly for non-technical roles
+* (1) Helping expand the moderation team
+* (1) Resolving the launching pad issues, e.g., through "Rust Society" work
+* (1) Product management for language/compiler/libraries
+
+## Takeaways for future surveys
+
+* We should structure the survey to specifically ask about high-level duties
+  and/or enumerate areas of interest (e.g., numeric responses on key questions
+like openness and effectiveness)
+* Consider linking published material/writing 1-year retrospective and that
+  being linked from the survey as pre-reading.
+* We should disambiguate between neutral and "not enough information/knowledge
+  to answer" responses in multiple choice response answers.
+
+## Proposed action items
+
+We don't have any concrete proposed actions at this time, though are interested
+in finding ways to have more visilibity for council activities, as that seems
+to be one of the key problems called out across all of the questions asked. How
+exactly to achieve this remains unclear though.
+
+As mentioned earlier, we welcome input from the community on suggestions for
+both improving this process and for actions to change how the council operates.
+
+[RFC 3392]: https://rust-lang.github.io/rfcs/3392-leadership-council.html