notes on Enspiral Services Organizing System

services-os.md

Enspiral Services organizing system

livelihood pod

your pseudo-family

• who to share financial commitments with
  • trust and compatibility of financial needs
  • group folx with similar expectations of financial commitments together
    • high dependents (family, mortgages, etc) versus high passion (travel, mad science, etc)
• treat financial need as a problem to be solved
  • what are your financial needs?
  • how do we fulfill your financial needs?
  • maintaining a buffer to normalize feast and famine cycles
  • financial interdependence: sharing of needs and responsibility to fulfill those needs

business community

for example: Craftworks

• what work we do (services offered)
• who to work with (folx who can provide services)
• shared assets: brand, pipelines
• mentorship and professional development
• creating shared guides on best practices
• Craftworks is three-prong business: entrepreneurship, development, design

umbrella community

for example: Enspiral Services or Enspiral Academy

• home to do work in
• shared assets: legal entity, bank account
• how we do work (supplementary practices)
• practical processes (how to invoice, how to manage project)
• support structure (legal, accounting, operations)

@ahdinosaur - interesting to me that pipeline sits at business community rather than umbrella community space. I think one of the things we're not doing effectively in Services is leveraging the whole company to bring in really meaty contracts. At the umbrella level (other than Core Group keeping things ticking over) there isn't a lot of cross-pollination or collaboration happening. Do you see this as a feature or a bug?

Also interested in whether you see this being a nested structure i.e. livelihood pods nested in business community, nested in umbrella community or whether you would see the livelihood pods potentially not being people from in the same business community?

great questions, to be honest i have no idea.

I also see one of the roles of the umbrella community is a financial underwriter for the financial commitments of the pods. Yes, each pod manages their own financial commitments, but ultimately the pod must be accountable to the company (the umbrella community) who is processing invoices. The community will intervene if the pods are not being financially responsible.

@chloewaretini livelihood pods can take different forms. I think there are forms that belong in the business community and forms that don't. I also think each person will have multiple livelihood pods that they belong to eg immediate family, extended family, co-op, apartment building?... etc.

So for me I am interested in the former: what does it look like to have a livelihood pod in the business community? Straight away we are talking about pod members having to belong to the business community. The implication is that can a non community member belong to a livelihood pod in the business community - an edge case that could be dealt with case by case, with the default being no. Remember individuals may belong to multiple livelihood pods, including outside the community & network.

One key advantage of livelihood pods in the business community is that you are very informed of the business each of you carry out. This would make it easier to action and aide each other as needed. It also means that we can use the same services/tools as the business community for the management of shared assets.

@locksmithdon yes totally agree with the principle, though I think we need clear boundaries. ie a pods account drops below a threshold. I also think it only applies when the umbrella functions as an underwriter. ie not for livelihood pods. Bare in mind at eda we are talking about a working pod needing to have a buffer - this is a condition of asking the umbrella community to underwrite a financial commitment to an individual. If there is a pod that does not want to have underwritten financial commitments than they don't need to have a buffer. Essentially they are part of the business community as an eat what you kill pod.

I don't think there is a right way, a group may decide that they want to be an eat what you kill (EWYK) pod because they all have a livelihood pod that they have a buffer/savings within. Another may decide they want financial commitments so save for a buffer. Another may decide they want both. I think a key point is that an individual may:

1. join an existing business pod and form a financial commitment
2. join an existing business pod as an EWYK member
3. form a new pod with others and do either of the above
4. join/form a livelihood pod and become fiscally co-dependant with others.

My big thing is choice - I go on and on about it :) So what I would be looking for is a system that gave each individual the opportunity to decide how they wanted to organise there finances with others in the business community. Several choices and the chance to propose alternatives - an open ongoing dialog on how do we become more fiscally resilient as individuals, as groups, as a community.

At the moment at EA we are forming pods and dont have a buffer saved - one thing I have been thinking about is how does the community deal with the risk of a pod asking for financial commitments when they have no funds. I have been toying with idea that for a pod to form the commitments the group must essentially save 1/2/3 x the monthly salaries of the members. At the moment we have underwritten the pods even though they dont have there buffer - essentially putting them into crisis mode (kaitiaki involvement) - which makes no sense. Not saying we should change anything, more an observation for the future.