Collaboration

The Myth of Scarcity

Mar 11, 2014

“Life is this simple: we are living in a world that is absolutely transparent and the divine is shining through it all the time. This is not just a nice story or a fable, it is true. ” ― Thomas Merton

There just doesn’t seem to be enough. Enough time, enough money, enough of this, or enough of that. If you’re like most of us, with long daily “to-do” lists, and seemingly endless appointments and obligations it seems as if there is never enough time to do the things we need to. In many ways, we have become conditioned to believe that the things we need most are in short supply. It’s important to address these feelings of scarcity because in turn it will effect how we view the world and our place in it. If we internalize this idea that the things we need are in short supply it supports the current zero sum mentality you find everywhere. Like an oxygen-depleted tank we begin to take short breaths with our very lives. Preferring to hoard for fear of not having enough. A win for you, in the zero sum model, becomes a loss for me. In an environment of perceived scarcity there is no room for collaboration or authentic connection. It is you against me and vice versa. This is a dangerous worldview as it restricts our solutions to real problems to the existing broken paradigm. If we are to make substantive changes to how we construct our perspectives we must address the myth of scarcity.

In reality, resources are not scarce at all. It is our warped perception that makes it appear so. On a macro level, the planet is more than capable of supporting our needs. Waste rather than scarcity is a far more significant problem even with something as serious as our food supply. In the marketing/advertising game, lack of budget (client mandated scarcity) is hardly a problem as global adverting spends reached an all time high in 2012. So if the facts don’t support scarcity then what’s gone wrong? Simply put, our zero sum attitude, fueled by perceived scarcity prevent us from combining intellectual, physical and economic resources for fear of “losing”. If you perceive my success as being opposed to yours how can we partner to create something new that could actually be mutually beneficial.

The world is bountiful and we should view it through those eyes. The things we need to make our lives productive and worthwhile are here in abundance. Love in all its facets, love for each other, love of what we do, love of our potential to create great things are all overflowing. We need only to embrace a different outlook and throw off this notion of scarcity. This single act is not a cure all. But it does allow us to begin to build new processes, new institutions with a clean slate. After all, what is there to be afraid of if there is nothing to lose?

In Each Other We Trust

philmckenzie /

Dec 2, 2013

When I was in business school at Duke University we didn’t talk much about the idea of trust. We emphasized teamwork a ton, and actually the “Team Fuqua” culture was a huge part of my decision to attend school at Duke and I loved every minute. One could say that the idea of a team culture implies a trusting culture. After all, can teammates work effectively if they do not trust one another? Lack of trust between teammates can make it a harder road but it won’t necessarily doom the team to failure. The reality is many teams in academia or in traditional workplace environments are hoisted upon us. We don’t make the choice to team up, so the team whether dysfunctional or not must find a way to produce “something” even if that output is not the potentially best result. My point is that even in a leading institution like Duke, with a strong culture of teamwork doesn’t directly address the concept of trust. This is not unusual as a discussion of values, whether trust, sharing, collaboration, love are not usually front and center in the “alpha-type” construct of business and its training ground, business school.

It is outside of a traditional corporate environment that trust must be one of the most important working facets of any relationship. In fact, it is likely #1. Relationships are ultimately about how we choose to transact with one another. The classic language of “give and take” is a simplistic rendering of a relationship. Beginning a relationship with a foundation of trust has the power to place into motion meaningful actions that will drive the success of that transaction. Too often we think about our transactional future in terms of devices, speed of transfer of data, or the language of contracts. Our transactional future turns most significantly on how we choose to interact with one another. That begins with whether or not we value trust as a key component in our interactions.

Trust is both the easiest and scariest thing one person can do. Trust requires you to be open. If you are open, you must be vulnerable. Our fear of being vulnerable comes from a fear of being hurt, or taken advantage of, or duped. If we confront this fear we will find we have the capacity to be comfortable within our vulnerability and draw strength from it. Trusting becomes an active choice in the faith of other human beings to not harm us. Our transactions can now come from a place of bravery rather than fear providing a much stronger foundation. The old model of transactions is fear based. We enter relationships, thinking about what we have to lose, how can we get hurt, how do we protect against the “down-side”? Trust makes us work to keep the fear at bay. Bad things can and always will happen but it shouldn’t color the way in which we treat one another. In an increasingly fragmented creative world, it should be a core operating strength that smaller organizations work together. Big organizations have the advantage of resources and scale. Smaller organizations should build coalitions of trust in order to create better work and establish better working economies for themselves. Instead smaller organizations often act like serfs toiling on the land of the corporate landowner. At a time in history when our goals have never been more aligned many are resistant to scrapping the old “fear based” ways of working and creating. If we can embrace trust as a starting point to forge a different transactional future we can go a long way toward creating a new normal that is braver than the old.

Feminine Values & Gender

philmckenzie /

Oct 25, 2013

Each day I feel there are new conversations and opinion pieces that tackle the idea of feminism and what it means to have an inclusive society. I have good friends that do great work in this arena advocating for the inclusion of women and their perspectives in a myriad of fields that currently do not include much diversity. I applaud and support those efforts but I do believe we need to shift the conversation in a different direction. Instead of seeking out representation based on gender we need to focus on representation based on values. The idea of promoting feminine values, among them empathy, collaboration, and sharing, in order to create better institutions is critical to move the world forward to a more inclusive and just future.

When I was a kid my mother had an old saying “Your color isn’t always your kind”. What this simply means is that just because someone looks like you doesn’t mean they are like you. These flimsy shells of different colored skin and boy or girl parts that we obsess about only tell part of the story. They are easy identifiers that we all use to assign group identify and superficial behavioral traits. We must go deeper and establish a link to our values. The beliefs that we hold dear and align ourselves with carry more weight than almost anything else we encounter. It is increasingly important to find, connect and share with those who embody the same values. In the case of feminine values, the challenge is if we triumph only gender we assume that biological similarity will equate to shared perspective. This is not always the case.

The recent work by author/consultant John Gerzema “The Athena Doctrine” researches these values from a global perspective. He interviews men and women who subscribe to feminine values to build coalition and drive change. The work of Leonard Schlain examines our philosophical and cultural history and relationship with femininity in his seminal work The Alphabet Versus the Goddess. Both authors frame their work from a values based construct rather than a gender based construct.

During our upcoming Influencer Conference NYC, we will be discussing feminine values in a conversation titled Embrace the X: How Feminine Values Will Save The World. We invite you to join us in this discussion by registering for Influencer Conference NYC this coming Nov 6^th – Nov 8^th.