Abundance vs scarcity mindset

Scarcity mindset is believing there will never be enough. In our world, it means protecting our expertise. If someone has our skills, then there’s only so many problems to solve. If someone automates it, then there’s no problem for me to solve. So, we protect our fiefdom because because it could mean our job.

One time, I was in a bind. In order to do my job as a consultant, I had to automate the deployment of an application. The difficult part was that up to that point, all deployments were being done by one individual - manually. This individual was the person I had to work with in order to install deployment agents on the target servers.

He had two choices. He could have chosen to see me as a threat. An external consultant who was doing work he did not agree with. A consultant who was automating his job away. A job that could have been perfectly fine in his eyes. This would have been scarcity mindset. “Protect my realm so that I continue to be effective and do what I know so that I have a job.”

He also could have chosen to think in terms of abundance. He could have been open to the value of automation and the opportunities of streamlining his manual tasks. He could have been curious and asked questions and helped me make the project a success. He could have seen the opportunity to become the champion of the cause within his company. He was in a perfect position to take charge and lead the way after my involvement. With time, if he became more proficient, he could teach others so that they can continue the work and be seen as a leader. So that the movement might have gained momentum. So that his impact would spread. He could have evolved to be a DevOps engineer or more. He also would have had job security.