A few Fridays ago, I was in the office of a major consulting firm in downtown Boston. It was around the end of the day and consultants were winding down with their choice of, among other things, Sam Adams (would you expect an occasion without it in Boston?), imports, and microbrews. While this (insert your definition here) wasn’t a new sight for me, it came with stark contrast to events and dialogue earlier that day.
That week, MA Governor Deval Patrick announced first round budget cuts to the tune of $1 billion and that Friday, many of us in the nonprofit arena learned how those cuts would impact our organizations. MY TURN, the organization I’m currently working with, wasn’t left unscathed and neither were many of the other organizations hosting New Sector Alliance fellows this year. There was some interesting e-mail dialogue that Friday afternoon on various listservs I follow about how the cuts were manifesting themselves: some employees were told to get ready to wear a jacket in the office all winter; others were told things like the coffee, tea, and Splenda wouldn’t be replaced; and others saw entire programming, like college scholarship funds, put in jeopardy.
While program cuts really sting—and brings to light the importance of building sustainable programs—the juxtaposition of the other two manfisestations of the cuts next to what I witnessed in the consulting firm that day really got me thinking: How can nonprofit organizations protect against having a culture of scarcity?
Cultures of scarcity are dangerous. They are tiring. They threaten employee morale and in turn threaten employee productivity, focus, and premature burnout.
Nascent organizations seem to battle cultures of scarcity with the abundance of unrealized opportunity and impact in the mission. The same could also be said of organizations scaling, executing aggressive growth plans, or those with visionary and restless leaders. But what about other organizations? The current economic situation makes this a question worth exploring.
Let me ask you. How do organizations you work with prevent scarcity from overwhelming their culture? Do you have strategies for reinvigorating the abundance of opportunity that lies in your organization’s mission, even if you’ve been doing the same work for 25 years and much of the excitement in your mission has been realized? Or, do you have some simple strategies for preventing employees from feeling the burden of doing so much with so little? Please share.
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I agree with Matt in his basic argument that cultures of scarcity are not always conducive to the healthiest work environments and can often cause high turnover rates and make it difficult to draw talent.
However, I remember with gusto creating a website for Groundwork Bridgeport (www.groundworkbpt.org) with no money by connecting with a web designer on idealist.org, getting free software on techsoup.org and putting in plenty of elbow grease.
When resources are scarce, individuals can be extremely innovative and create an amazing return on investment. In complement to Matt’s question, I would also ask, “Where have you seen true innovation and value creation in spite of resource scarcity?”
My former gusto, that is common in youth, often fades when individuals have to ‘grow up’ in the sense that they need to provide for someone other than themselves. I will comment more on this in my next post