MIMICTRUNK TEAM FORMATION SYSTEM

Democratic Team Building with Weighted Voting

Addendum to MIMICTRUNK-LIEUTENANT-SYSTEM.md

THE SCENARIO

What if 10 people sign up for the same position?

Traditional answer: Pick the “best” one, reject 9 others.

MimicTrunk answer: Let them form a TEAM. Let THEM decide who stays.

TEAM FORMATION PROCESS

Step 1: Application Pool Opens

COMMUNITY LIEUTENANT POSITION
━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━
Applications received: 10

Applicants join: #community-lieutenant-candidates (Discord)

Status: TEAM FORMATION PHASE

Step 2: Discord Discussion Period

Duration: 48-72 hours

What Happens:

• All candidates can see each other
• Introduce themselves in channel
• Discuss their approach to the role
• Ask each other questions
• Get a feel for who they’d work well with

Founder’s Role:

• Provides context on what’s needed
• Answers questions about the role
• Does NOT pick favorites
• Observes dynamics

Step 3: Anonymous Voting

After discussion period, each candidate votes:

ANONYMOUS BALLOT
━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━
For each candidate, vote:

[ ] YES - I want to work with this person
[ ] NO - I do not want to work with this person
[ ] ABSTAIN - No opinion

Candidate A: [YES] [NO] [ABSTAIN]
Candidate B: [YES] [NO] [ABSTAIN]
Candidate C: [YES] [NO] [ABSTAIN]
... (all 10 candidates)

Note: You cannot vote on yourself.
━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━

Step 4: Vote Calculation

Base Rule: Majority YES votes = accepted to team

Weighted Voting for Incumbents:

As team forms, early members get slightly more voting weight:

Why Incumbent Weighting?

• They’re there first → they have more to lose if bad fit
• Uprooting cost is real → give weight to those invested
• Prevents late-joiners from overwhelming early culture
• Still democratic → incumbents can’t unilaterally block

Step 5: Results & Team Formation

VOTING RESULTS - COMMUNITY LIEUTENANT TEAM
━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━

Round 1 (all votes equal):
  Candidate A: 7 YES, 2 NO, 1 ABSTAIN → ✅ ACCEPTED (first)
  Candidate B: 8 YES, 1 NO, 1 ABSTAIN → ✅ ACCEPTED (second)
  
Round 2 (A and B now have 1.2 weight each):
  Candidate C: 5 YES (3 reg + 2 incumbent) = 5.4 weighted
               4 NO (2 reg + 2 incumbent) = 4.4 weighted → ✅ ACCEPTED
  Candidate D: 4 YES, 5 NO → ❌ NOT ACCEPTED
  
Round 3 (A, B, C now have 1.3 weight each):
  Candidate E: ... (continues)
  
FINAL TEAM: A, B, C, E, G (5 members)
NOT ACCEPTED: D, F, H, I, J (5 candidates)

━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━

EXIT COST ESCALATION

“Not LOCK Locked In, But Make Good Choices”

The Problem:

• People might join impulsively
• Realize it’s not for them
• Leave, disrupting the team

The Solution: Escalating exit costs

How Exit Costs Work:

VOLUNTARY EXIT
━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━

You joined: Community Lieutenant Team
Days on team: 3

Exit cost: 5 Credits

Your current balance: 12 Credits

[ ] I understand I will pay 5 Credits to exit
[ ] I understand this is voluntary and non-refundable
[ ] I understand the team will be notified

[Confirm Exit] [Stay on Team]

━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━

What Happens to Exit Fees?

Exit fees go to:

• 50% → Team pool (compensation for disruption)
• 50% → Platform (administrative cost)

“Normal Contract Rules” After Day 7:

After the first week, standard contractor exit applies:

• 2-week notice period (or pay equivalent)
• Handoff responsibilities to team
• Exit interview with Founder
• No hard feelings, clean departure

TEAM DYNAMICS

Multiple People, Same Role

Traditional Model: 1 person = 1 role

MimicTrunk Model: Team shares the role

COMMUNITY LIEUTENANT TEAM (5 members)
━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━

Member A: Handles Discord (primary)
Member B: Handles Twitter/X (primary)
Member C: Handles member onboarding
Member D: Handles escalations
Member E: Backup coverage + special projects

Coverage: 18 hours/day across timezones
Redundancy: No single point of failure
Quality: Peer review on outputs

━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━

Compensation Split

Base pool divided by active members:

Team bonus rewards collaboration over competition.

Internal Team Governance

Teams self-organize:

• Elect a team lead (rotates monthly)
• Set their own schedules
• Divide responsibilities
• Handle internal disputes
• Report to Founder as a unit

ADDING NEW MEMBERS LATER

When Team Wants to Grow

TEAM GROWTH REQUEST
━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━

Community Lieutenant Team requests:
+ 2 new members (capacity increase)

Current team votes: 4 YES, 1 NO → ✅ APPROVED

New application window opens...
Candidates join #community-lt-expansion
Same voting process applies
Incumbents have 1.5 weight (5+ team size)

━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━

When Member Leaves

TEAM MEMBER DEPARTURE
━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━

Member C has exited the team.

Options:
[ ] Absorb workload (no replacement)
[ ] Request replacement (new candidate pool)
[ ] Reduce team scope

Team votes on approach...

━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━

When Team Wants to Remove Someone

Performance-based removal:

1. Team member raises concern
2. Documented performance issues shared
3. Team votes (2/3 majority required for removal)
4. Founder reviews for fairness
5. If approved, member has 7 days to improve or exit

Note: Removal votes require documentation. No “we just don’t like them” removals.

DISCORD STRUCTURE FOR TEAM FORMATION

LIANA BANYAN DISCORD
━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━

📢 ANNOUNCEMENTS
├── #announcements
├── #observatory-updates
└── #challenge-announcements

🏛️ THE CATHEDRAL
├── #general
├── #introductions
└── #questions

🎯 LIEUTENANT RECRUITMENT
├── #how-to-apply
├── #community-lt-candidates ← Team formation happens here
├── #creator-lt-candidates
├── #operations-lt-candidates
└── #voting-booth (private, bot-managed)

👥 LIEUTENANT TEAMS (private, members only)
├── #community-team
├── #creator-team
├── #operations-team
└── #all-lieutenants

🏆 CHALLENGES
├── #active-challenges
├── #submissions
└── #past-winners

━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━

IMPLEMENTATION CHECKLIST

Discord Setup

• Create server structure
• Set up roles and permissions
• Configure voting bot (or manual process)
• Create onboarding flow
• Write channel descriptions

Application System

• Create application form
• QR code pointing to form
• Auto-add to Discord on application
• Track applicants in spreadsheet

Voting System

• Design ballot format
• Calculate weighted votes
• Anonymous submission method
• Results announcement template

Exit Cost System

• Track join dates per member
• Calculate exit cost on request
• Process credit deductions
• Distribute to team/platform

SUMMARY

“The team chooses itself. Trust the process.”