The Service Calculation

An exercise in negation, self-knowledge, and honest accounting — written with the full awareness that I don't know what I don't know.

The Premise

Be of service to my Country.

As hokey as that sounds, I mean it. Throughout my time in the Army, I sought to hone this commitment through negation — not by chasing a title or a billet, but by systematically understanding what wouldn't fulfill me and working inward from there.

What follows is structured in three parts: what I've ruled out (and why), a self-assessment framework I call Spectra, and a statement of commitments and value. I include the reasoning not to perform rigor but to open myself to critique. I don't believe I've half-assed this.

Service by Negation

What I know I don't want — and the thinking behind each door I closed.

Service as protection

Secret Service, Regional Security Officers, special operations contractors securing sites. Important work, not my work. The protective mission narrows the aperture to physical security; I seek a broader engagement with the problems that create the need for protection in the first place.

Service as traditional armed forces

Company command of an infantry line unit, staff work for BN/BDE exercises in Garrison.

I love serving with soldiers. I also recognize that increases in responsibility accompany grander increases in scope — tactical to operational to strategic. My calculation for transiting out of the Big Army weighed each fork:

Service as law enforcement

FBI, ATF, DHS, DEA, and the rest of the domestic-centric three-letters. ("Etc." not being a three-letter — bad joke, moving on.) Domestic focus is too narrow for what I'm drawn to.

Service as academic

I don't believe I'm bright enough — nor do I have an acute enough interest — to be of real use as a quality academic. Honest accounting, not false modesty.

Service as purely political or policy

I temper this with the understanding that I love the process of politics, rich understanding of policy, and knowing how to play the politics to implement the policy. But policy shops and think tanks feel peripheral — support-focused — whereas I seek to be directly engaged in what they're studying. I'm committed to theoretical paradigms, historical backgrounds, and the wider contexts. I also seek to use those as a means to an end, not as an end in themselves.

The Two Questions

In seeking to specify how I can best serve, I kept returning to:

1. What am I suited to do? (skills, experiences, dispositions)
2. What does my country need me to do?

Both are based on my assumptions — which is exactly why I lead with DKDK.

Spectra

A self-assessment framework. None of the categories below are mutually exclusive; each complements the others.

Autonomy

1 = Entrepreneur → 10 = I want a boss

Range: 3–5

I bias toward greater autonomy. In CORO and the Army, I bent against that bias and found that a committed group could create and access possibilities largely unavailable to individual effort. While I value freedom (only-child syndrome), I value being part of something greater than myself more.

The most elite military units fall in the 1–3 range. Proven ability positively covaries with autonomy. I want to earn the right to be autonomous — not assume it.

Open question: Where can I earn that right?

Size

1 = Small → 10 = Large

Range: 6–8

I seek to serve somewhere with the ability to effect change on issues of global consequence. Size isn't synonymous with depth of impact, but economies of scale afford greater resources.

I don't walk around with a niche interest. A West Point professor once drew the distinction: MPPs have an acute focus; MPAs manage their passion to ensure its effectiveness. I'm more the latter. When pressed for specificity, my response was an enumeration of issues and their complexities rather than something direct. My reluctance: I fear being pigeonholed. The truism stands — we can have whatever we want, just not everything we want.

Travel

1 = Anywhere → 10 = Rooted in one place

Range: 1–3

I have no geographic desires. I will follow service where it leads me.

Timeframe

1 = < 2 years → 10 = > 5 years

Range: 6–8

I desire depth over breadth. I purposefully sought an array of complementary experiences to identify where to invest my service. Now I want to invest.

Profit Orientation

1 = For-profit → 10 = Nonprofit

Range: 5 (neutral)

A mentor from college taught me about community and economic development. Whenever we met someone well-meaning and incompetent, she'd say: "Nonprofit doesn't mean for loss."

On the for-profit side, a former Mitchell Scholar leaving a large consulting firm drew a useful distinction:

• Value-driven organizations: We have a set of values and will apply them where we're paid to apply them.
• Mission-driven organizations: Our mission drives us to invest our skills in places that will promote and progress that mission.

Different people find significance in each. For them — and for me — a value-driven approach lacked the purpose they desired.

What I Want My Commitment to Look Like

General Commitments

• A commitment to service
• A commitment to something greater than myself
• A commitment to a consequential cause, preferably global in scope
• A commitment within an organization that views its people as lifelong learners
• A commitment to a daily challenge

Sector-Specific Commitments

My Value

I am not driven by a specific cause. I never have been. My bias is to defer to the relatively more ardent among those with whom I mostly agree and help them meet our now-desired end — community development consulting, running a campaign, leading soldiers. I don't see this as a lack of focus or moral agnosticism. I know my core beliefs. I also think the world is terribly complex — often because we make it so. That complexity bleeds the black and white of absolute morality into grayscale, where I am cautiously comfortable operating.

I have the tempered arrogance — suspect concept, I know — to believe I can help structure the world in a way that produces a net positive for the majority of people. To earn the right to serve in such roles, I must develop depth in some subjects while continuing to broaden my understanding of how we slow the world's spin more generally.

The idealist in me is a little disgusted by the phrase "play in places of power." The realist understands that power exists and someone will wield it.

Threads That Run Through Everything

• Via negativa is the method. Knowing what I don't want is often more valuable than knowing what I do. It reduces noise to find signal.
• Earning precedes autonomy. The right to operate independently is conferred by demonstrated competence, not assumed by desire.
• Mission over values-for-hire. Purpose must drive the work, not merely accompany it.
• Depth funds breadth. A narrow foundation limits what you can build on top of it. A deep one makes breadth sustainable.
• Complexity is not an excuse for inaction. Grayscale is where the work happens. Operating there requires honesty, not paralysis.
• Service isn't about what we want; it's about what the country needs. The two questions keep that tension honest.