INsight/ The Scarcity Mindset

Photo by Joel Mott on Unsplash

Manila, 13 January 2021 — How is scarcity thinking blocking your leadership?

Story

It happened in the spring of 2015 when I asked advice from Soemantri Widagdo why leadership is still scarce, and how aspiring leaders should start. Pak Tri, as he is affectionately called in his home country Indonesia, is deeply aware of the scarcity mindset that prevails in the world, drawing on his rich experiences as an internationally-acclaimed innovation scientist and also an art curator and social change maker. Here is what he had to say at the time: “The three key steps I recommend aspiring leaders in Asia to take are first to be open, second to venture out, and third to grow in an environment of trust." Read more in his Asian leader’s story here.

Last week, Pak Tri updated me about his recent experience using these three steps in his trail-blazing work with the TiTiañ artists’ community in Bali. This is an experience you can learn from when you are willing to see your daily work as a form of art — which Seth Godin, a marketing guru, advises us to do. 

The essential step for the artists to advance, Pak Tri explained, was to shift from a scarcity mindset to an abundance mindset. “Once they feel and realize that there is a slight doubt of the validity of the #scarcity viewpoint, the flood to transformation has started. Planting this doubt is the key.“ 

Challenge

The challenge that Pak Tri talks about is to get out of the prison of your scarcity mindset, with its self-limiting beliefs, feelings, and fears that you will never have enough of what it takes to succeed in the next chapter of your life. So you give up trying and end up staying between the lines. Leaving this prison is easier said than done. Yet it matters greatly because this mindset holds you back from playing a bigger game as a leader of change. Pak Tri uses specific forms of language to mark the shift between the two mindsets. If you’re interested to find out what they are, let me know.

Zooming out for a moment, let’s recognize that some of the world’s wisdom traditions support your search for the abundance mindset while others use more of a scarcity paradigm. Having experienced both mindsets in my life, I realized the difference and why it matters. Wisdom traditions in Asia offer a rich set of pointers to the abundance mindset, and if you want to go further, you can also explore the examples of mystics who defied mainstream dogma to find and describe abundance.

Back to Bali. How do the artists working with Pak Tri make the mental transformation from scarcity to abundance? By using three platforms, explains Pak Tri. First, to engage in a dialogue with each other and learning to listen and let go of ideas of what’s right and wrong. Second, to experience freedom in the act of creation by being nudged into producing something they hadn’t done before. And third, to enjoy exploration outside their past experience and comfort zone without fear of judgment by others. Pak Tri’s three steps and three platforms give us plenty to chew on.

Question

As you reflect on your takeaway from Pak Tri’s story with the artists, think about what’s holding you back from playing a bigger game in your leadership this year. Here are some questions to help you get started. Where do you feel stuck between the lines as in the photo? How is scarcity thinking blocking your leadership growth and what are you going to do about it, starting now?

If you need further help, shoot me a message.