A Framework for Generosity
The permission I never realized my team needed.
3 min read
I was talking with a buddy recently and the idea of generosity came up. I told him it's something I try to embody in how I run GoodFolks, both internally and with our clients, and that it's mattered to me for as long as I can remember.
Then he asked me a question I didn't have a good answer for. He said: “Does your team know that?"
I honestly couldn't say. In almost ten years of running GoodFolks, I wasn't entirely sure I'd ever said it out loud. I think part of me assumed (and probably hoped) that it would rub off on people just by being around it, which sounds a little silly when I type it out.
The amazing part is I think it actually has. The good folks already live this way with each other. Inside the team, generosity happens all the time. People cover for each other, give hours they don't technically have, and go further than the job requires without anyone asking. I love that about this them. But it's a culture we drifted into rather than one we chose on purpose.
So my buddy suggested I write down my thoughts and turn it into something I could hand to the team that gives them the latitude and autonomy to be generous on behalf of GoodFolks, without needing to run it by me first.
“A framework doesn’t fence people in. It points them in a direction and trusts them to walk it.”
When he said it, I realized part of what had been blocking me all these years was that in my head, writing this down meant creating a "policy", and I can't stand that word. Policies feel like they exist to protect the company from its own people. They're written for the worst case and the worst actor. I never wanted to hand my team a document that says here's exactly how generous you're allowed to be, no more and no less. That felt like it would kill the thing I was trying to grow.
But a framework is different. A framework doesn't fence people in. It points them in a direction and trusts them to walk it.
So I took an afternoon and started jotting down what comes to mind when I think about being generous, and what it might mean for us as a team.
You don't need my permission.
If you see a chance to be generous with a client, take it. Comp the thing. Give the extra hour. Fix the problem that technically isn't ours. If it turns out to be too much, that's a conversation, and it'll be a kind one. I would rather clean up after generosity than wonder why nobody felt free to offer it.
Generosity is personal.
We're not sending fruit baskets to account numbers. Being generous means paying attention to the actual human on the other end of the email. What are they stressed about? What would genuinely lighten their week? A small thing aimed at a real person beats a big thing aimed at nobody in particular.
It should cost us something.
If it doesn't cost us anything, it probably isn't generosity. Real giving takes something from us. Time, money, convenience, the hour we didn't have. The cost is how you know it was real.
Nobody keeps score.
We're not doing this to win loyalty or set up a favor we can call in later. If a generous act comes with an invoice attached, even an invisible one, it isn't generous. We give because it's who we want to be, and we let the results take care of themselves.
That's it. That’s the framework, or at least the first version of it. Now that it's out in the open, I hope the team will sharpen it as we live with it. It's better as ours than just mine.
Almost ten years in, and I’m just now learning that even the values that come most naturally still need to be said out loud. This one had been running quietly in the background the whole time. Now it has a name.