Service Guild Values: Fun, Service, Friendship, Generosity, Integrity
The Service Guild is not a company. It is not a non-profit. It is not a church, or a monastery, or a university, or the military. It is a Guild. It is a crew of friends collaborating on fun service projects. It is a funprofessional working co-operative focusing on the themes of Love, Curiosity, and Empowerment.
Accordingly, the strategies, tactics, and playbooks of those kinds of organizations may not suit the Guild. They might, in which case we are happy to use them. We are certainly inspired by them, borrow heavily from specific moves and ideas we have seen elsewhere, in other contexts. But not all moves will make sense in the Guild, for we are a different kind of organization, with different goals and values, with a different playbook.
We are like a company in that we care about excellence, competence, rigor.
We are like a non-profit in that we are motivated by values, by a cultural ethical perspective, that transcends economic viability.
We are like the military in that we are hierarchical.
We are like a church or monastery in that we have a shared spiritual worldview, culture, language.
We are not like a company in that we are not maximizing for profits, shareholder value.
We are not like a non-profit in that we do not have a mission.
We are not like a military in that we do not defend a country, and we do not use violence.
We are not like a church or monastery in that our shared worldview is implicit, tacit, rather than explicit or dogmatic. Our goal is not merely community for its own sake, nor the edification of our members for its own sake.
Advice is context dependent. Advice that applies to an early-stage startup might not work for a later-stage startup, or an enterprise company with thousands of employees and hundreds of millions or even billions of dollars in revenue.
In the same way, good advice from other contexts may not apply to ours. We seek advice and listen to feedback from people who have demonstrated that they meaningfully understand our context. People who understand us, our values, our vision, and adapt their suggestions accordingly.
There are many kinds of Guilds, both historically and contemporarily. We are a crew of friends who enjoy serving, doing projects, collaborating. We have shared values and visions that make the themes we have chosen—Love, Curiosity, and Empowerment—palpably available between us. We share a common language, sensibilities, ideals.
Generosity is a core value of The Service Guild and our projects: “I aspire to give my life as a gift, to cultivate the virtue of generosity.”
We offer our projects by generosity wherever possible. Sometimes this means giving away something for free, with a permissive Creative Commons license when possible. Sometimes this means using $0+ pricing for a book or other digital file. Sometimes this means holding an event with PWYW pricing. And sometimes we charge for specific products and services, when that product or service could only exist by doing so.
We believe, in agreement with Peace Pilgrim, that spiritual teachings should not be sold:
Spiritual truth should never be sold—those who sell it injure themselves spiritually.
— Peace Pilgrim
This means that we do not sell the offerings of the Love Department, in particular, which shares teachings of Love, mettā, and the brahmavihārās. To the extent that we see that the offerings of the other departments veer into spiritual territory, we do not sell those offerings, either.
We are not paid employees; we do not have equity in a shared venture; we are volunteers.
We volunteer our time, we give our talents and time and energy as a gift, as a prayer that it will serve the world and all beings.
Each person, besides the Guildmaster, is part time. Each person has their own larger vow, of which our shared efforts are part but not all. Each person is responsible for their own livelihood, although we hope our being connected as a crew, in the context of a larger community, will help us all to succeed practically, to flourish deeply.
We are not colleagues at an office job. Our relationship is not confined to a particular place or particular hours.
We are friends! We love each other, care about each other, want each other to succeed in every dimension. We flourish together.
We are friends first and foremost. If a project does not feel good, does not bring us joy, is interfering with our friendship, we will set it aside to prioritize the relationship, the friendship.
We are friends who enjoy working on projects as a form of fun. Collaborating on projects is one of our great joys in our friendships. We select projects that feel fun for us, that bring us great joy. We want to have as much fun as possible!
We are learning to select, execute, and iterate on projects so that they are increasingly fun over time.
We choose projects that are fun for us in particular, that are us-shaped. Tasshin-shaped, Mary-shaped, Zev-shaped, Bee Eye-shaped, Abi-shaped, Kristijan-shaped, Vincent-shaped, Anansi-shaped, Rosie-shaped, Aspen-shaped. Guild-shaped.
The projects that are ideal for us would not necessarily be ideal for another crew. They may not make intuitive sense from the outside, or be demonstrably legible or logical. We are weird. We are quirky. We are neurodiverse. We are an odd bunch of heroes. We choose our quests accordingly.
If our body says yes, if our intuition calls us, that is the way we go. We may not understand why. We may not be able to explain it. If our body says no, that’s a no. We trust our bodies, we trust our hearts, we trust our intuitions. They have led us well so far, even if our path is strange, even if the road is uncharted.
Duct tape is good. Scrappiness is good. We do what we can with what we have. We have limited time. We have limited resources. We are working outside the bounds of legal structures, without the affordances of companies or non-profits or government funding. We tape it together, we make it work, we take pride in accomplishing much with little.
Many of our projects are built with just an internet connection, a Zoom room, a laptop. Curiosity is the fuel of the value of a podcast, love the fuel of a value of a guided meditation—both can be accomplished practically and spread widely with very little marginal cost.
There are often solutions that would be simpler or more straightforward in another context, that might be easier for us—but we take the roads we can given what makes sense for us.
The Service Guild is an experiment in mutually supportive feedback loops. We hypothesize that our departments and our members will flourish more fully, deeply, successfully if we intentionally create mutually supportive feedback loops between them. We flourish together.
We are “funprofessional”—neither professional nor unprofessional, but a third more unfamiliar yet more intuitive thing. We seek excellence, like professionals, but set aside stiff collars and suit ties. We seek to have a good time, like unprofessionals, but avoid sloppiness. We seek a balance of competence and joy, excellence and fun.
We are playing long games. We know what we are standing for, what theme we are working on, and we will work in this direction for years and decades. In my case, I have tattooed icons of each department to my body. We are not going anywhere. We want to go far, so we will go together. We may not go fast. We are not alone.
“If you want to go fast, go alone; if you want to go far, go together.”
Not all value is economically measured. Not all impact can be quantified. Some of the most important values are not economically viable, cannot be quantified.
It is difficult to measure the value of a kind word, or a good question, or a meaningful reflection. It is difficult to measure the value of a good idea, or a loving friend. It is difficult to put a number to the value of a friendship or relationship or connection. A novel’s meaning cannot be quantified, the beauty of art cannot be weighed, there is no profit to be made in the soul of a moment.
We seek, are drawn to projects that have this kind of value, this kind of meaning and importance—a felt value. The kind of value that brings laughter at a wedding, or tears to eyes at a funeral.
Generosity is for those who see the value in such things and wish to support it, see it thrive.
Generosity is a relational connection that benefits all parties, that deepens over time, rather than a transaction that ends.
Generosity is a two-way relationship. Generosity cultivates virtue in the person who gives money, the virtue of generosity. This is a spiritual virtue. Generosity makes possible good things in the world. It is a gift not only to the person who receives the support, but also for those who are benefitted by their work, by the impact they have with their deeds and projects.
The Service Guild is optimizing for service project throughput. Service project throughput is a compound metric or composite metric that has both quantitative and qualitative components.
Service project throughput is the product of three factors: the rate at which U complete service projects (quantitative), the amount of fun U have doing them (qualitative), and the benefit or impact those projects provide to the world (qualitative).
Service Project Throughput = Fun * Benefit * Rate
Economically speaking, the radical hypothesis at the core of The Service Guild is to prioritize qualitative benefit, qualitative fun, and the quantitative rate of completing fun service projects, rather than optimizing for the traditional quantitative metric of money alone. We are trying to shore up our collective quantitative reasoning, measurement, thinking skills—these are demonstrably useful—but we still bias towards qualitative impact / improvement.
Optimizing for maximum deep benefit is intrinsically a qualitative endeavor, because depth of impact is qualitative, even if breadth is quantitative.
To the extent that we could be said to have a mission or vision, The Service Guild aims to bring about a heavenly realm. But, in practice—just us friends, having a good time doing our projects for years and decades—that is already a heavenly realm, that is already joyful for us, that is already of benefit to the world.
Thank U to Andrew Rose for asking the question that prompted this essay.