In a world where many people feel like they are ‘never enough’, ‘there’s never enough time’, and ‘I didn’t get enough done’, they hustle to do more and be more. Many international development professionals find themselves feeling stressed, overwhelmed and under pressure to create more with less. But does this constant hustle to do and be more actually get in the way of innovation, and impact and our ability to create sustainable economic and social change?
To answer this, first we need to understand the origins of the ‘do more with less’ and ‘hustle culture’ and explore how it is showing up in the sector.
Understanding the origins of ‘do more with less’ (lack) and ‘hustle culture’
We all have beliefs about ourselves, life, the world and others, some of them conscious but many unconscious that shape the way we see the world and impact on our ability to create what we want. Our belief system is closely linked to how we were raised, our experiences as a child. It’s when we are children that we learn who we have to be, and how we have to behave, in order to feel a sense of belonging, significance and safety. We carry this through into our adult life and the way we show up and the decisions we make are deeply rooted in our belief system.
While everyone’s belief system will be unique to them, one thing that I’ve found to be common to everyone is lack and the never enough problem. To this day I’ve yet to meet anyone or have a single client that doesn’t in some way feel that they are not enough.
Let’s take a quick poll so you can assess this for yourself. Make a note of how often you might feel any of the following:
I didn’t get enough sleep last night? I don’t have enough time? I don’t have enough money or resources? I don’t know enough? I’m not important enough. Not skinny enough, healthy enough? Not spending enough time with my spouse or kids?
If I asked you to fill in the blank of this sentence what comes to mind for you?
I’m not _________________enough
I bet it only took a few seconds for you to fill in the blank with your own thoughts from the tape that plays in your head.
We all get lack because we live it…it’s an epidemic. Lack is the never enough problem. We spend an inordinate amount of time calculating how much we have, need, want, don’t have, how much everyone else has and who we have to be in order to make sure we belong, have significance and feel safe. Our ‘enoughness’ is always directly linked to who or what we have to be to feel safe.
Not enougness thrives in a culture where everyone is hyper aware of lack and that’s a problem for international development because the fundamental premise of what we’re trying to achieve is to move communities, organizations and economies from a place of lack to a place of ‘enoughness.’ Literally billions of dollars are being spent every year trying to solve for lack.
The impact of lack and hustle on the International Development sector
As professionals working in the sector, our own feelings of lack impact on our ability to show up fully for the work we are doing. If the ‘I’m not enough’, message is always playing in the background in your head, think of the lengths you’ll go to, in order to prove that you are. Working longer, harder, checking and double checking your work, censoring everything you say to please your boss or others around you. Afraid to put your most innovative ideas forward in case they are not well received.
And, the thing is, if the never enough message is there, no amount of doing more giving more or sacrificing yourself at the expense of others will ever fill the hole. It just leads to perfectionism, anxiety, stress and overwhelm and kills innovation. If you’re feeling stressed and burnout you diminish the impact you can have.[1]
Let me give you an example to illustrate this further. You’re designing a new program to improve education outcomes in the Pacific and you’re getting ready to share it with the donor organization. But because of how you were raised or how you approach the world, you’ve knowingly or unknowingly attached your self-worth, your ‘enoughness’ to how your product is received. That means one of two things can happen. If they love it, you’re worthy, so you will for sure get more work, if they don’t your worthless and won’t get hired again. So that means you might agonize over sharing it, procrastinate, make what you’ve created less risky or not have the courage to put your most innovative ideas. You design it in a way that you think will be acceptable to the establishment and the current industry standards, ‘rules’ and ways of doing things. In this case the industry misses out on your most innovative ideas and the fullness of your talent and creativity because you hold part of yourself back. You feel lacking because you’re not expressing the fullness of who you are.
On the flip side, you choose to be bold and brave and innovative and it’s not well received, you shut down, beat yourself up and remind yourself that you’re not good enough. At this point you’re not feeling good about yourself and the industry has missed an opportunity to be innovative because all the other people around you are hyper focused on following the rules and industry standards and ways of doing things so they can please, fit in, belong etc. You suffer and the industry suffers because we can’t create the change we want to see in ourselves or in the sector if we keep doing the same thing based on our limiting beliefs about ourselves or the rules and ways of doing things.
When we show up in our own lack and scarcity it starts to permeate our organizations and the ways we manage our people and our resources. Research I conducted in 2018 with international development professionals, aimed at better understanding what international development professionals are experiencing, showed that a big frustration felt by international development workers was that the organizations they are working for are failing to walk their talk internally and a culture of lack is greatly impacting on the way people are leading and managing their teams.
Lack and scarcity is also impacting on the way we are designing projects and programs. The dominant paradigm in international development is a problem-based approach that identifies the gaps and problems (or lack), and then harnesses technical solutions to fix them. We focus on improving systems and processes or building technical capacity or infrastructure to solve all the problems.
Yet what positive psychology approaches such as Appreciate Inquiry (AI) have identified is that human systems move in the direction of their images of the future (what you focus on expands). The more positive and hopeful the image of the future, the more positive the present-day action.[2]Thus, when designing international development programs, the questions we ask set the stage for what we discover and this information become the stories out of which the future is conceived and constructed. If this process is grounded in lack with a focus on problems, it will have a major impact on the choice of what to focus on because our vision of the future has a major impact on the action we take now. On the flipside the more positive and hopeful the image of the future, the more positive the present-day action, positive questions lead to positive change. Positive images lead to positive actions.[3]
AI principles are widely acknowledged in organizational development work, coaching and counseling practice, and in business psychology in concepts such as ‘what you focus on expands’, ‘change starts from within’’, be the change you wish to see’, ‘thoughts held in mind create after their kind’. Well known coach and author, Tony Robbins has worked with global leaders such as Bill Clinton, Serena Williams, Marc and Benioff. He asserts that 80% of success in business is mindset and not systems or processes or technical knowledge.[4]There is also a large body of work in quantum physics and molecular biology linking our thoughts to our reality. Biologist, Bruce Lipton for example, and his work “The Biology of Belief” outlines why and how your life is a printout of your subconscious programs.[5]
Despite this awareness, the dominant problem-based paradigm coupled with solving for lack through technical solutions is largely unchallenged in the international development sector.
So, the question then becomes, how do we address lack for others when it’s what we know, live and breathe on a daily basis? I would argue we can’t do it well because we can only take others so far as we are willing to go ourselves. Until we can shift our own thoughts of lack we will continue to see things not as they are, but as we are, and a problems-based approach will continue to dominate.
What’s the antidote?
I believe that the saying change starts from within couldn’t be more relevant for our sector and they are many things we can do to create change at the individual level.
Firstly, we can begin to examine our own beliefs, thoughts, patterns and behaviors around lack and scarcity and re-program our subconscious minds from lack to abundance. This might be through coaching, meditation, yoga, hypnosis journaling, taking a mindfulness class, energy healing, or any type of practice that promotes and supports self-reflection, and emotional growth.
It might be that our organizations begin to place more focus on access to coaching or other self-awareness programs for staff particularly those in leadership. One thing that’s clear, is that within the sector we absolutely need more discussion around mindset, self-care and the relationship between mindset and impact so that we can create the change we all want to see and have more impact without working harder, burning ourselves out or sacrificing our relationships with those that we love.
When we can create this shift internally, we can show up to the table grounded in our own value and show others what it looks like to embody that, instead of trying to fix others or solve for lack through technical solutions.
We also need much more focus in development work on helping beneficiaries and partners to understand the link between mindset and sustainable change and provide them with tools and space to create this type of change for themselves. Our beneficiaries are just like us, if they are holding patterns related to lack and ‘not enoughness’ they will show up in their ability to do their job and lead and manage their organizations and businesses. Mindset work is particularly important in all types of capacity building and leadership programs, organizational development activities and in private sector development initiatives.
As a sector we can also commit to moving away from problem-based program design and consistently adopting appreciative inquiry and other positive psychology methods, recognizing the importance of our words and actions, knowing that the design process itself can empower and support stakeholders to claim their positive core and build on what’s already working. Together we can more consciously focus on a positive and hopeful the image of the future, more positive present-day actions and create the change we all want to see.
[1]To learn more about scarcity and the never enough problem see Brené Brown and her work https://brenebrown.comin particular her books Daring Greatly and Daring Leadership
[2]Appreciative Inquiry (AI) was pioneered in the 1980s by David Cooperrider and Suresh Srivastva, two professors at the Weatherhead School of Management at Case Western Reserve University. See http://www.davidcooperrider.com/,
https://www.centerforappreciativeinquiry.net/more-on-ai/what-is-appreciative-inquiry-ai/, https://appreciativeinquiry.champlain.edu/
[3]For more on the five principles see Cooperrider, Whitney, & Stavros, 2008. See also the Center for Appreciative Inquiry
[4]https://www.inc.com/sonya-mann/tony-robbins-says-entrepreneurship-is-not-for-everyone.html