Tag Archives: scott miller

Our Spending Choices Are Changing the Economy

coinsHow we choose to spend our money will determine whether the emerging economy increases or reduces poverty, protects or further degrades the planet, and makes us a happier or a more miserable society.

Our individual consumer habits matter. Every dollar is a vote for the world we want to create. Worried about climate change? Notice how often you tank up or travel for leisure. How about that new plastic gadget? How long before it ends up in the landfill? How about food shipped from a distant part of the country? As millions of us awaken to the detrimental impacts of our spending habits on the environment and on our health, we will generate a major shift in how our economy functions.

An economy should serve the greatest number of people for the highest good. It’s a system that we invented for the primary purpose of generating value for one another. We don’t just work to make money. We work because we have an inherent need to contribute to others. Human beings have spent the majority of their history working together in small groups to survive. Deep in our social DNA is the protective instincts of taking care of one another so that each of us can make our necessary contributions to thrive as a group.

There is far more cooperation in successful economies than we realize. Think of the coordinated efforts in providing you with this book to read. There are too many companies to list that were involved in making the complex products and providing the services necessary for me to write on a computer, email it to an editor, have it uploaded onto a publishing and distribution format, notify you that it’s available, and prepare the cup of coffee that you might be having while reading it.

Imagine if we understood the notion that the best economy is one that works for everyone. The tragedy of poverty would end. The United States has more than enough resources to eradicate poverty, literally overnight if we chose to do so. These realities can happen once a critical mass of people adopts a new paradigm about the purpose and goals of the economy.

From the book: Enough Money, Meaning & Friends ~ By Scott C. Miller

To learn more about Scott Miller, please see his website here.

Archetypal Roles in Organizations

Several leaders we work with like to use the following court roles as a metaphor. To be effective, organizations must have strong people playing the roles of King/Queen, Warrior, Lover, and Wizard.

King/Queen

The primary responsibility of the King or Queen is to download the initial vision and communicate it regularly to others so that it can be built upon through a shared vision involving the key stakeholders of an organization or community. John Kotter, author of Leading Change, speaks to the importance of creating a sense of urgency.

The Queen

or King cannot underestimate how frequently she or he needs to articulate his or her vision and eventually the shared vision. In most organizations, the King or Queen is played by the CEO, president, or executive director. In collaborative leadership, it can be an entire group of leaders who are playing this role in tandem with each other.

Warrior

Every organization is vulnerable. Its weaknesses must be monitored and addressed by the Warrior. Unexpected threats arise, and it is the role of the Warrior to take responsibility to protect the organization. Too often this role is left to the King or Queen, which is inappropriate. It is too difficult to effectively lead and protect at the same time. The Warrior role is typically played by the CFO, executive assistant, and/or COO. His or her job can also include protecting the King or Queen from himself or herself as needed. Obviously, there is a strong level of trust between Warrior and Queen or King.

Lover

Lovers are the ones who attract others to the organization. They typically work in sales, fundraising, marketing, communications, and community engagement positions. Lovers are those you want to be around, join with, and have ongoing interactions with throughout a process. They are very easy to get along with and will go out of their way to help you.

Wizard

The Wizard develops and maintains the magic that an organization creates in products and services. He or she is the one generating the value added for the world. The Wizard(s) can be the chief technology officer, services or products manager, chief designer, etc. Because the Wizard is producing on behalf of the organization what the world is buying, it is easier for the Wizard to confuse his or her role with the King or Queen than for the Lover or Warrior. When and if that happens, the King or Queen must immediately assert his or her role and reset the boundaries to eliminate confusion.

The more able we are to understand these personality traits in ourselves and others, the easier it is for us to build a conscious leadership team that is capable of functioning at a high enough level to bring about transformations. Does your organizational leadership team possess each of the archetypal roles: King/Queen/Warrior/Lover/Wizard? If not, how can you bring someone onto your team to play these crucial roles?

Learn more: Transformational Leadership: A Framework to End Poverty ~ By Scott C. Miller

To learn more about Scott Miller, please see his website here.

Thriving in the Emerging Economy

“Science fiction is the very near future.” –Mark Lautman, author of When the Baby Boomers Bail

Looking into his crystal ball, my friend and colleague Mark Lautman, national economic development architect and author of the book When the Boomers Bail , gave me his well-informed forecast about the emerging economy. He tells me we are dispensing with most blue-collar jobs and even the white-collar ones like attorneys, mortgage brokers, etc.that can be done with automation and artificial intelligence. On the one hand—good — people don’t have to do as much grunt work. But where are the jobs for all the people we want to support out of poverty? Although it is unclear, there may be a completely new concept of an economy being birthed that holds the promise of providing people with enough money to pursue enough meaning and friendships to thrive. This new economy will likely be a hybrid of paid work, community work, and a new level of sharing that reduces expenses while increasing a sense of community with others.

I realized that our program, Circles USA, and other approaches like it are offering intentional communities where people have each other’s back to help secure basic needs as well as to advance in the emerging economy. In Circles, we recruit people from middle-income and upper-income households to enter into powerful and meaningful relationships with people who want to become economically stable. Ironically, many volunteers recognize that they, like me, carry around a lot of financial anxiety through unconscious spending. The relentless pursuit of making and spending money has contributed to both a sense of ennui and isolation. We are sacrificing time for meaningful activity and quality friendships in pursuit of the quick fix that a new purchase provides. I suggested to our Circles USA leadership team that it was time to refocus on the message of supporting everyone to have enough money, meaning, and friends . We need a new American Dream that will help more people live happier lives.

Too Much Evolves into Just Enough

Using a more appropriate measurement than the outdated poverty guidelines adopted in the mid-’60s by the federal government, the current economy, according to a recent New York Times report, is generating a 50% poverty rate. The official White House assertion in 2018 was that the poverty rate is actually 3%. Quite a difference in the “facts.” Regardless of what the rate really is, the emerging economy is trending toward more disparity and fewer people experiencing the ideals of the American Dream of the ’50s, ‘60s, and ‘70s. Therefore, new structures such as Circles are emerging to help people learn not only how to have enough money, but enough meaning and friends as well.

According to the website Sapiens, https://www.sapiens.org/debates/simplicity-culture, almost 60 million people in the United States are embracing voluntary simplicity — working fewer hours, spending less money, and being more mindful about how they live. Perhaps the Great Fog is beginning to lift for a critical mass of us.

From the book: Enough Money, Meaning & Friends ~ By Scott C. Miller

To learn more about Scott Miller, please see his website here.

Fully Empowered Leadership Teams

A fully empowered leadership team is aligned to a shared vision and works together to move others through the process embodied in the Transformational Map. Each knows his or her role and has enough authority to carry out his or her responsibilities. She or he must also be aligned with her or his own organization’s top management team.

The team at the top of an organization must be analyzed to determine its capacity to lead transformational change. Standing committees, ad hoc committees, and de facto leaders and groups who have “always done things the same way” can become siloed in their approach to meeting the organization’s mission and its new change agenda. In order to implement the change that is envisioned, the way in which work gets done must change to align with the new strategies. Here are examples of how the leadership team must evolve as it moves into the various stages of the Transformational Map.

The defining criterion for membership in the top leadership team is the ability to fulfill a staff member’s role in supporting the transformational change process.

Practices and Procedures

Leaders must analyze existing practices and procedures to assure alignment with the change initiative.

Definition: Practices and procedures are the way policies and strategies are carried out in the organization or system. They might develop formally or informally over time. They might be invisible — we don’t notice many of them because they are “the way we do things around here.” Some are in writing, some are not. Leaders and managers usually have the authority to change them without changing policy.

Examples: performance review, communication systems, staff development, leadership development, recognition systems, compensation systems, budgeting processes, purchasing, planning work activities with individual workers, and many others.

Exercise: Identify the key structures, practices, procedures, or organization attitudes that will hinder your organization from moving through the transformational map

You should now have an outline for the organizational shifts that must occur for you to align your leadership efforts to achieving the vision. Management should be firmly delegated to others, and the leadership team should focus on articulating the vision, gaining agreement and commitment from stakeholders, facilitating learning, and embedding change into the culture.

Learn more: Transformational Leadership: A Framework to End Poverty ~ By Scott C. Miller

To learn more about Scott Miller, please see his website here.

Visible and Vulnerable: The Honesty of Leadership

We live in an age where leaders are exposed to a near-constant barrage of criticism. The media thrives on scandal and focuses its attention on what grabs the audience share rather than on what is truly worth our attention. Leaders are visible and therefore vulnerable to being attacked. Social media gives people ample opportunity to generate negative commentary. Opinion makers love controversy and will find leaders to undermine at every turn. As we watch leaders being criticized on a regular basis, it can be easy for most of us to conflate leadership with potential exposure to shame and humiliation.

The great lie of our culture is that we are not good enough. Leaders, like everyone else, are susceptible to feeling inadequate because of the culture-wide conditioning that we somehow do not measure up to others. If I do not conform to society’s religious or sexual norms, there is something wrong with me. If I don’t make as much money as “they” do, I am less than they are. If I make more money than they do, then there is something better about me. Perhaps making more money will protect me from feelings of inadequacy.

There are taboo subjects that generate shame, confusion, and feelings of less-than. The main topics that many of my generation were told to keep private include money, sex, politics, and religion. Yet we live in a world in which money, sex, politics, and religion are central elements of our lives. To not talk about these issues with others is to deny human nature.

The most atrocious assaults that we humans make against each other come from distress patterns related to one or more of these taboo topics. The shame surrounding these topics creates toxicity within us that can compel us to shy away from leadership.

In sharing views on the taboo subjects of sex, money, religion, and politics, we open ourselves to attacks from others. The more visible we are, the more exposed we can feel. If you look like you are doing really well, people who don’t feel successful might turn their feelings of jealousy into weapons. Unconsciously, we don’t want to raise our heads above the crowd just to have it chopped off.

As a leader, I find myself shying away from telling people I am a member of a new-thought spiritual center. “Is that even a church?” one person asked me. Not really. It’s a center where people study and practice a spiritual pathway together, in community. We draw from the ancient wisdom that informs all of the great traditions of spiritual disciplines.

Many of my peers have had brutal experiences in religious upbringings that used fear and guilt to manipulate them. And yet, being from a traditional church in which so many of the congregants don’t embrace the spiritual pathway of the church is somehow more acceptable than being a member of a congregation that embraces diversity, dismantles shame, and explores the full potential of what it means to be a human without trying to control anyone in the process.

Because of my position as a national nonprofit leader with donors, volunteers, and those we serve being of different political affiliations, I also shy away from owning and sharing my political preferences. I was taught that you don’t talk about politics in public. But why? Politics affects what happens to the environment, the economy, the legal system, and almost every other important aspect of life. If I say I am affiliated with this party or that party, I invite attacks—more so now than at any other time in my life.

The time has come for us all to get honest, to openly discuss the important issues of the day, and to allow leaders to be human. This shift is essential to support our most dynamic leaders who are creating a world that works for everyone.

From the book: Enough Money, Meaning & Friends ~ By Scott C. Miller

To learn more about Scott Miller, please see his website here.

Ending Poverty by 2050

When I woke up on January 1, 2050, I joined my large circle of friends to formally celebrate the elimination of poverty from Story County, Iowa. Let me tell you how this happened. It’s an amazing story that few believed possible 60 years ago.

Once we were sure that all our children were safe and healthy, then, and only then, did we turn our attention to making our personal lives more comfortable. Schools no longer charged fees for extracurricular activities. All children now had access to computers in the home so that the playing field was level from the beginning.

We helped couples decide to postpone having children. Adults made the conscious decision to slow down and take the time to really notice the extraordinary individuality of each child in our community. We decided to invest more of our time and energy in raising our children than in the pursuit of wealth. We got so interested in children that we were right there for them, in appropriately sensitive ways, on the very days when they had questions about sexuality, feelings of loss, and anxieties about being loved. We became more sophisticated about what children need from adults and made it our priority to give it to them. We watched while teen births gradually decreased, then became a thing of the past. During 2049 in Story County, no child was born to teenage parents.

Adult parents in Story County learned how to value maintaining a committed relationship above all else—how to simplify life by reducing unnecessary consumption, freeing up time and energy for building and strengthening their commitment. We realized that the benefits of having a successful, lifelong partnership far outweigh the difficulties we all experience sustaining one. People stopped tolerating emotional and physical abuse—indeed, the community developed strong, assertive plans to interrupt patterns of abuse in families.

Men and women realized the necessity of establishing good relationships with one another in order to stay close. People got better about asking friends for help with negotiating the challenges of staying together and raising a family. Children observed these changes and so learned how to choose compatible mates and how to communicate effectively to maintain a good, intimate relationship. The rate of family breakups fell from 50% to 6%.

Employers in Story County saw the wisdom of turning away from short-term earnings, investing more time and money into building teams of steady, reliable, well-paid workers able to fully utilize their talents to provide meaningful services to the community. During the past 40 years, employers have shifted away from generating products and services of questionable value for people and the environment, moving toward a deep commitment to enrich lives, while conserving and renewing natural resources for future generations.

Health insurance became universally accessible, benefiting thousands of vulnerable families in Story County. Many of the county’s older residents still remember the years of preferential medical care; younger people hear those stories with disbelief.

Transportation changed as radically here as in the rest of the nation. Electric vehicles replaced the fleet of polluting cars we once had. Supplementing our clean energy supply by natural gas burning facilities is necessary less than 5% of the time. Electric bus service now extends to all area businesses and communities. The use of bicycles increased dramatically as it became safer and easier to pedal around the county on hundreds of miles of newly constructed bike paths. As generosity and making new friends became a normal way of life, carpooling became easy. People with lower incomes now don’t have to worry about maintaining a car. There are plenty of ways to get where they need to go. Those who absolutely need a car but can’t afford the price can obtain a donated vehicle that has been donated.

The cost of housing decreased dramatically during the past 40 years. No one now has to spend more than 30% of take-home pay for rent. The city of Ames and Story County, through a number of bold public initiatives, paved a clear and reasonable path for anyone to move from affordable, subsidized rental situations to home ownership.

Because adults focused more on children, Story County citizens enthusiastically created the best childcare support system we could. Iowa joined the rest of the states in  providing excellent and affordable childcare for all. Most people had more time to spend with their own children because of their commitment to staying together as families, and, as life became more affordable and manageable, they didn’t feel compelled to work ever longer hours.

Story County developed such a powerful social safety network that it became virtually impossible for anyone to suffer poverty in isolation. These emergency financial support services have become just as important to us as our emergency police and fire services. People in our communities now know when families are in financial trouble and so are able to reach out quickly and effectively before evictions, job losses, family breakups, and a host of other destructive outcomes occur. Every community has ample emergency funding, plenty of skilled volunteers and professionals who know how to intervene, and Circles USA to ensure that people don’t fall back into poverty.

A family’s financial crisis is treated as an opportunity for community members to reach out in service to a neighbor—to support a family out of isolation. We have realized that every member of the community has gifts to share, and we’ve stopped wasting human potential by marginalizing individuals and families living in poverty.

When I woke up on January 1, 2050, I realized that at some point during the previous 40 years, a critical mass of people had figured out how to have enough money, enough friendship, and enough meaning in their lives to be truly happy. This core group became the catalyst necessary for making it an eventual reality for all. Story County had been transformed.

Learn more: Transformational Leadership: A Framework to End Poverty ~ By Scott C. Miller

To learn more about Scott Miller, please see his website here.

Letting Go of the Drama Triangle

There can be a strong temptation for some of us to try to rescue each other from our problems. This attempt often backfires and creates resentments in our closest relationships. Circles USA warns volunteers about the Drama Triangle, also known as the Rescuer Triangle.

In his book A Game Free Life (karpmandramatriangle.com), psychotherapist Dr. Stephen Karpman explains the roles and interaction of the Drama Triangle:

Persecutor: Appears controlling, critical, angry, authoritative, rigid, superior.

Rescuer: Needs to be needed. Enables others to remain dependent and gives them permission to fail; rescuing helps rescuers avoid facing their own issues.

Victim: Appears oppressed, helpless, powerless, ashamed—finding it difficult to make decisions or solve problems.

As friends, we are vulnerable to being lured into the Drama Triangle frequently. How do we know we are in it?

  • We criticize, blame, and do our best to make someone else wrong—assigning fault.
  • We feel we don’t have viable options or the ability to negotiate to get what we want.
  • We rush to fix something so that someone else feels better.

As Americans, we tend to be indirect in our communications, taking a more passive-aggressive approach when we are not getting what we want. In Circles USA, however, we encourage everyone to learn how to steer clear of the drama triangle and simply ask for what they want or need, knowing that if the other person can’t give it to us, we have other options for meeting our needs and wants.

As a leader, I receive occasional invitations from people to jump on the Drama Triangle with them. It typically starts with someone’s feelings of disappointment, the subtext being “you are not doing what I want you to be doing, and there is something really wrong with you for not doing it the way I think you should be doing it. I am going to try to make you feel guilty enough to give me what I want.”

If we don’t get onto the Drama Triangle, there is no drama. There is simply a renegotiating of expectations and moving forward under a new and updated agreement. Or, the agreement might be that we don’t go forward together but rather move in different directions. Either way, the result is healthier than making decisions and acting while still emotionally stuck in the Drama Triangle.

If we make decisions because we feel attacked and shamed, then we will resent the other person in the relationship. If we decide to quit a relationship while angry or feeling victimized without communicating clearly what we want instead, we risk ending things prematurely and recreating the dynamics with someone new. We miss out on the lesson underneath what the distress is all about, a lesson that makes us stronger and more cognizant of our own unhealthy patterns.

I have organized my work and personal life so that I have fewer and fewer interactions with people who use the Drama Triangle as a way of doing business with others. If we create an environment in Circles USA that reinforces direct and respectful communication and extend that into all of our professional and personal relationships, it can become second nature to simply say “no” when the invitation to play in the Drama Triangle shows up next.

While stepping out of the Drama Triangle may necessitate leaving some friends behind, the relationships you consciously choose to keep will be of a higher quality, which creates more stability in the long run.

From the book: Enough Money, Meaning & Friends ~ By Scott C. Miller

To learn more about Scott Miller, please see his website here.

Leading Versus Managing

Whether you are a visionary, facilitator, or practitioner, you need enough time to play your role. Each role must engage in the entire Transformational Map: articulating a vision to others, aligning with other leaders and facilitating a shared vision, helping yourself and others learn whatever is needed to achieve the vision, and building policies and program structures that will embed the vision into reality. Realistically, three to four days each week are needed to provide leadership to people through all four stages of the Transformational Map.

Many leaders find themselves saddled with management responsibilities. They are busy with budgets, personnel issues, and administration. If one is spending the majority of time in management, there is no way one can lead a transformational process to change the culture of an organization, a community, or a system. Sure, some management is unavoidable, but leaders must have time to read, write, think deeply about ideas, and then discuss those ideas with others. Leadership is needed in order to create a shared vision that makes people feel they can achieve something great.

Transitioning from manager to leader requires careful planning. The first step is to decide such a transition is important and then to find ways to delegate management to others. This might require re-prioritizing budgets, raising funds to hire a manager, and letting go of low-impact programs. Remember, high-impact programs change the community’s and organization’s mind-set from poverty management to poverty reduction. Which of your current programs are doing that, and which are not? What can be done to either bring programs from low impact to high, or to eliminate programs in order to free up time and resources?

Learn more: Transformational Leadership: A Framework to End Poverty ~ By Scott C. Miller

To learn more about Scott Miller, please see his website here.

Having Enough Friends

“Wishing to be friends is quick work, but friendship is a slow ripening fruit.” – Aristotle

Harvard’s Happiness Research Points to Quality Relationships

An 80-year longitudinal study by Harvard revealed just how important caring relationships are for health and happiness. “Good relationships don’t just protect our bodies; they protect our brains,” Harvard researcher Robert Waldinger said in his TED talk.

A University of Kansas report published in the Journal of Social and Personal Relationships by associate professor of communication studies Jeffrey Hall states that it takes roughly 50 hours of time together to move from mere acquaintance to casual friend, 90 hours to go from that stage to simple “friend” status, and more than 200 hours before you can consider someone a close friend.

Close friends provide us with an emotional immunization from some of the suffering in life that we might experience otherwise. A good friend can give us comfort, guidance, perspective, and resources when we need it the most. Investing some of our 112 waking hours a week in developing and sustaining close friendships is time well spent. When we have enough friends, our sense of belonging is satisfied and we are happier.

A national survey of adults 45 and older conducted by AARP Research revealed that one in three people are lonely. The percent jumps to one in two if their income is less than $25,000 a year. The report also cited health studies that put loneliness in the same risk category as smoking 15 cigarettes a day. For many, this loneliness comes with social isolation—lonely people simply do not have enough structured activity in which to engage with others. We, humans, have a tendency to keep this loneliness in our lives with more than 40% reporting that their loneliness has lasted more than six years.

How much friendship is enough for each of us is a very individual determination, but on average, people who reported in the AARP study that they are not lonely have 8.2 people who have been supportive in the previous year, compared to 4.3 people for the lonely group. When asked how many people they discuss matters of personal importance, the not-lonely group said 4.0, and the lonely group said 2.1.

Like money, the number of good relationships we need to be happy is probably less than we might think. While the brain might be able to handle up to 150 relationships at a time, those whom we really call friends are few indeed. A study by Robin Dunbar, an evolutionary psychologist at Oxford, shows that the average person does not have time for more than five close friends at a time. If you are in a committed relationship, the number may be smaller. Her research shows that you can be happy with just one close friend.

From the book: Enough Money, Meaning & Friends ~ By Scott C. Miller

To learn more about Scott Miller, please see his website here.

Visionary, Facilitator, or Practitioner?

Are You a Visionary, Facilitator, or Practitioner?

All three roles of visionary, facilitator, and practitioner contribute to achieving the vision of ending poverty, and we each possess all three capabilities. The question is: Which one is most dominant for you, and how does that fact affect your leadership? How you communicate your vision will in part be informed by whether you identify as a visionary, facilitator, or practitioner.

Based on a military model adapted from a talk by Vipin Gupta, a colleague and a research physicist at Sandia National Laboratories, here is a description of the three types:

The visionary says we need to take the hill. It’s an impossible task to most, but the visionary makes the impossible seem possible.

The facilitator prepares the hill to be taken. By negotiating with the visionary and translating the vision into action, she or he turns what’s possible into something probable.

The practitioner implements the day-to-day details for taking the hill. By collaborating with the Facilitator, he or she makes what’s probable more predictable.

Visionaries can see, often with great clarity, how the world could function after the transformation. Even in the face of many unknowns, visionaries have confidence that something new is possible. Facilitators appreciate the visionary’s vision and can see it well enough to help make it a reality. Facilitators possess patience and enthusiasm to figure out the practical steps, so they can implement the plan. It is often a disaster to put visionaries and practitioners in the same room without facilitators, because a practitioner’s questions might stop the flow of a visionary’s process.

We all have habits that identify our preferences. A practitioner might say, “Just tell me what needs to be done.” A facilitator might say, “I don’t want to be in charge, but I can help organize things in the background.” A visionary might say, “Let’s do this completely differently.”

Knowing what role feels best to you is important information. If you are not called to be a visionary, take heart, you can still lead a tremendous change. As a facilitator, you can seek out visionaries who need someone like you to translate their visions to others. If you are a practitioner, you can insist that visionaries and facilitators join the leadership team to play their roles.

Understanding the preferences of your teammates is equally important. If you plug people into the wrong roles, you will end up with unnecessary difficulties. Take the time to learn how to read people’s interests and skills with regard to the roles of visionary, facilitator, and practitioner.

Learn more: Transformational Leadership: A Framework to End Poverty ~ By Scott C. Miller

To learn more about Scott Miller, please see his website here.