Abundance Mindset – let’s shift to a mindset that we are enough, know enough and have enough to serve the wellbeing of all

There are three important elements required to reimagine our systems and business models:

1. Daring Leadership
2. Abundance Mindset
3. Collaborative Narrative

In this post I dig in to the term ‘Abundance Mindset’ and why I believe it is important at the individual leader level, and also at a cultural level for our societies and organisations.

“No problem has been more puzzling to thoughtful people than why, in a troubled world, we make such poor use of our affluence (Galbraith)” in J.Suzman. Work: A deep history.

Have you ever wondered why we believe time is scarce? Working long hours is seen as the way to create value? Material goods and money are the main indicators of our success? Competition and being the ‘winner’ is what counts?

Here’s the thing we live in a ‘scarcity-fuelled’ society. Scarcity meaning: “being in short supply or shortage”. We get taught from a young age onwards that we have to compete for the best grades and future jobs – this continues in adult life with performance rankings, material status symbols, the artificial desire for constant consumption. It has become our underlying mindset for our lives and the social and economic constructs. We are taught we are not enough, we don’t have enough and we don’t know enough.

I outline what living in scarcity does to our behaviour and creativity in the post on Daring Leadership. The work by Dr. Brené Brown shows that when we are in a scarcity-driven state of anxiety we are more likely to armour up and isolate ourselves further, rather than dig into vulnerability, creativity and courage to open up to new ways of operating. So being in a scarcity mindset is not going to be a great position to help us with the challenges around us and reimagining new systems.

An additional great piece in the puzzle as to where this ‘scarcity-fuelled’ way of operating may be rooted was provided in the recent publication “Work: A deep history, from the stone age to the age of robots” by James Suzman. As an anthropologist, James Suzman provides a view at a societal and economic level over our work history: from hunter-gatherers, via foraging, to farming, city-dwellers, the industrial revolution and finally our current times. I highly recommend reading the book to learn way more than I highlight in my summary and take-aways below. It provides a provoking insight. (Note: Direct quotes from this book are marked in italics)

James Suzman’s main conclusion is that we operate in a scarcity-driven system that originated in the agricultural period. Now, if we understand how our scarcity mindset originated it enables us to take a step back from our scarcity obsession and question if it is still a valid mindset for how we want to operate in our societies and businesses going forward. It allows us to recognise our own man-mind constructs, which means it is not fixed but up to us to change it.

If we move from a scarcity-driven mindset to an abundance mindset as the main notion underlying our activities, it will allow us to tap into creativity and curiosity. An abundance mindset is one where we focus on ensuring basic needs are met and beyond that the underlying notion is that we are enough, have enough and know enough. Of course we have to make sure basic economic needs are met globally and real scarcity is a thing of the past. Yet, I am convinced starting with an abundance mindset (plus daring leadership and a collaborative narrative) will play a key role on achieving more balanced distribution of the wealth and affluence we have.

As James Suzman highlights in his book, John Maynard Keynes called for an economics of abundance and that in such a scenario inequality would become irrelevant. Similarly, “Galbraith was of the view () individuals would relinquish the pursuit of wealth in favor of worthier work.”

So let’s dig into the case James Suzman builds around our work history and where scarcity originated:

James Suzman proposes that originally hunter-gatherers focused on meeting solely their immediate needs and established systems like ‘demand sharing’ with flat hierarchies. What they needed to cover their immediate needs was abundantly available and required limited amounts of their time to obtain, giving them time for leisure. In summary they had a form of affluence without material abundance as they had modest desires, which were easily met. In the consequent stage of foraging, foragers still enjoyed a form of affluence based on far greater material abundance. It is also the phase where people began to adopt a longer-term, more future-focused relationship with work.

The move to farming is really when the future-focused relationship with work and anxieties about scarcity developed and intensified. James Suzman summarises that climate changes led to a situation where the environment could not provide sufficient food year-round, so it changed the relationship with the land and work. Farmers had to focus on fewer but more prolific plants and also new farming techniques. Any gains in productivity were matched by growing populations. The situation led to an expansion into new spaces and to cultures based around anxieties about scarcity and productivity. “The sanctification of scarcity and the economic institutions and norms that emerged during this period still underwrite how we organize our economic life today“.

It is also in the farming period that the concept around money starts. “The origins of money lies in the credit/debt arrangements that arose between farmers – who were, in effect, waiting for their land to pay them for the labor they invested in it and the people who depended on their surpluses”

Later, when the industrial revolution changed farming productivity and with the continued population growth people started to aggregate in cities. Less people were occupied as farmers to work the land, and new specialist trades developed for organising how people lived in the larger populations and settlements. “This required bureaucrats, judges, soldiers, and those who specialized in keeping order and binding people together into urban communities with common values, beliefs, and goals.”

Furthermore, 20th century economic concepts and mindsets have contributed significantly to our scarcity and productivity focused systems: “Taylorism” – the focus to maximise efficiency with standardisation and assembly lines, it may have addressed a need for a while and certain industries, yet the issue here being “the right person for these industrial jobs was someone limited with imagination, boundless patience, and a willingness to obediently do the same repetitive tasks day in and day out.” “Consumerism” – producers and advertisers have been creating fears and artificial needs to keep consumption and growth up as well as “creating desires for material products would make people feel like they were moving upwards and worry less about inequality. “Talent” – a concept around a war for talent, has since been challenged for it’s issue that leads to “competitive narratives also amongst employees, overvaluing individuals, creating a corrosive culture and decreasing collaboration“.

Finally, yes wealth was created with this focus on scarcity and productivity – however this wealth has been highly concentrated amongst a few: “The richest 10 percent of people on earth own an estimated 85 percent of all global assets, and the richest 1 percent own 45 percent of all global assets”

So our relationship with scarcity are by-products of the transition from foraging to farming. James Suzman highlights how again and again it was observed by historians how people were losing their sense of belonging and purpose in these systems. For example, Durkheim was curious about the “malady of infinite aspiration” and he coined a term “anomie” as the feelings of intense dislocation, anxiety, and even anger in people due to their social isolation. We see today the concerns around growing isolation and it’s impact on mental and physical health. Already Durkheim recognised how creating safe working environments with strong relationships could potentially be a solution and when we today talk about daring leadership and purpose we are recognising the same. We are “A species whose evolutionary history has been shaped so profoundly by its need for purpose and meaning”. Besides the social cost, there is the environmental cost as we are aware and the mentioned wealth inequality cost.

No one can summarise how important this work is than James Suzman himself in the conclusion of his book:

“Recognizing that many of the core assumptions that underwrite our economic institutions (and notions of scarcity and a preoccupation with economic growth) are an artifact of the agricultural revolution, amplified by our migration into cities, frees us to imagine a whole range of new, more sustainable possible futures for ourselves, and rise to the challenge of harnessing our restless energy, purposefulness, and creativity to shaping our destiny”.

So are you ready to reimagine and start building our societies and economic models based on a notion of abundance? Start with this – you are enough, you have enough and you know enough to contribute to the change we want to see.

Source: Work – A deep history, from the stone age to the age of robots. James Suzman, Penguin Press 2021.