Abundance vs. Scarcity Mindset in the Social Sector

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In a recent team meeting at a Social Sector organization, I saw a wide gap between colleagues who view the world via  an abundance mindset, and those who operate with a scarcity outlook.

Scarcity Mindset
The scarcity mindset says that resources are limited and there is a zero sum competition between resources of time, money, attention, notoriety, or network. This mindset  taps into the ancient human brain  construct of survival competition over scarce resources like food or water. It connects our actions to a pre-modern part of evolution that required a physical fight to the death to control, dominate or carve up limited food and territory to the strongest and meanest human. It associates specific resources with the ultimate goal of survival and reproduction. An example of a scarcity mindset is the hoarding of toilet paper and surgical masks in the United States at the onset of the Covid19 pandemic. In the Social Sector, examples of scarcity mindsets are usually present during the organization's budget allocation process, or around the selection of people for management or executive positions. If they get more, I’ll get less. If they get that position, I won’t and my life and influence will be diminished. The binary win/lose moment sets in and triggers a cascade of negative emotions and starts to weaken the group through artificial conflict.

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Mindsets for Abundance
The alternative polarity to scarcity is the concept of abundance. The abundance mindset knows that there are plenty of resources to go around if we use creativity and cooperation to build something more than would have been possible on our own. The ultimate modern example of abundance is the wealth that the global economy creates every day. The combined productivity of people, companies, and the Social Sector structures that underpin a strong economy have generated massive wealth and increasing living standards for humanity. 

Likewise, the formation and evolution of strong Social Sector entities across the United States and the world has exponentially increased the ability of individuals to make a strong difference. Organizations like Charity Water, Doctors Without Borders, Building Goodness Foundation and so many others make it possible to scale your donations, combined with others to help the world every day. 

Weeds exist in the garden, and evil thrives in the world. Abundance mindsets don’t try to deny this reality, but they can help us see ways around, through, and over the very real challenges that exist. 

Abundance Strategies
Think win / win - As we negotiate in any scenario, it is easy to sink quickly into zero sum, or win-lose thinking, where one person loses and the other person wins. The idea is that there is a limited gain in any situation, and if one person gets more, the other person has to get less. Whoever tricks, convinces, or threatens the best will win the argument. The win-win approach recognizes that there is usually a way to have both people benefit from any negotiation. Moving into any negotiation with a win-win mindset changes the way the discussion takes place. If you are thinking about how to help the other party, then that creates a new strategy where you are not their adversary. Instead you are engaging in an exploration on how you can both benefit from the interaction and come out stronger and better in the end. 

Grow the pie, don't cut it up -  As you seek win-win solutions, look at ways to make more for everyone, not just more for yourself. What can you do in this situation to create additional opportunities, new collaborations and unexpected connections instead of simply trying to divide up what has already been discovered. 

Knowing what enough looks like - The modern Stoic author Ryan Holiday frequently relays a story about the author Kurt Vonnugut and his friend Joseph Heller. They were attending a party at a billionaire’s house in New York. Vonnegut asked Heller about how he felt that this billionaire earned more in a day than Heller would earn in his lifetime from his popular books like Catch 22. Heller replied, “Yes that’s fine, but I’ve got one thing that he’ll never have… the knowledge that I have  enough”

Finite vs infinite games - The author James Carse defines finite games (something like American Football) as having a clear set of rules, with an indisputable ranking of winners and losers. In contrast, infinite games are more fluid competitions where the rules keep changing, there are no clear winners and losers, and the only goal is to continue to play the game. Choosing to play an infinite game of life and work will reorient our approach toward a more abundant mindset. 

Tactical abundance: using scarcity
In our everyday lives, we get the chance to make decisions that track toward abundance or scarcity outlooks. There are many things such as time, our lives, those of our friends and loved ones that are objectively and unquestionably limited. Life is finite; we all are granted  a limited amount of time.Using those very real constraints, and flipping them to an abundant way of thinking can help us thrive within those boundaries. 

The shortness of life - We are born, live, and then die.  The indisputable end date on these conscious hours, days and years can lead to a scarcity mindset (I won’t have enough, I need to get more, etc..). However, there are some positive upsides to scarcity that we can enjoy and use in our generally abundant Social Sector pursuits. 

Positively interpreted constraints - Scarcity can be a positive force in creating an abundant life. If we know that life is short and ending, then we eventually come around to the realization that working on the right things and being grateful for the time that we have, becomes enjoyable. As the author of Four Thousand Weeks: Time Management for Mortals, Oliver Beekman writes: “...why treat four thousand weeks [the approximate span of a human life] as a very small number, because it’s so tiny compared with infinity, rather than treating it as a huge number, because it’s so many more weeks than if you had never been born? Surely only somebody who’d failed to notice how remarkable it is that anything is, in the first place, would take their own being as such a given—as if it were something they had every right to have conferred upon them, and never to have taken away. So maybe it’s not that you’ve been cheated out of an unlimited supply of time; maybe it’s almost incomprehensibly miraculous to have been granted any time at all.”

Tap into something bigger than yourself - When we spend our lives working on a Social Sector cause, as part of a religious group, or as a dedicated member of something like a cycling club, we tap into a stream of abundance that surpasses the constraints of time, geographic place and life. 

Making it work for you
How do you see abundance in the Social Sector and beyond? Are you living an abundant or a scarcity based life? What areas would you change to increase your abundance? 

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