A giver will typically change scarcity into abundance and a taker will typically change abundance into scarcity. The difference is not in the circumstances itself but the intent with which the circumstances are engaged. The intent to give or serve others produces abundance.
There’s research to back this line of thinking up. Researchers, executive coaches and self-help gurus like to call this the Abundance Thinking. That you can create lots out of apparently little or nothing. There are numerous examples of people around us who manage to build the proverbial oasis in the midst of the desert by using the abundance thinking. For the sake of simple clarity, I will cite two examples:
Abdus Sattar Edhi:
The great Pakistani humanitarian who died this year after serving people of all faiths, ethnicities and backgrounds for more than six decades built the largest private welfare organization in the country, if not the world. Consider the stats:
The Edhi Foundation has the biggest fleet of private, voluntary ambulances in the world according to the Guinness Book of World Records 2000. The Foundation has saved thousands of abandoned infants, given up 20,000 babies for adoption after careful scrutiny, rehabilitated 50,000 orphans, trained 40,000 nurses, has more than 300 welfare centers operating as food kitchens, rehab centers for the abandoned and the addicts, and shelters for the homeless women, the elderly, the animals. The foundation has picked thousands of unidentified bodies from all over the country, stored them in their own private mortuaries and buried the unclaimed with dignity. Moreover, all this has been made from private donations only. Never has the foundation accepted or demanded government support and aid.
And, all this was built out of a scratch literally.
Edhi Sahib as he is fondly called, resolved to do something for humanity the day his mother died. For two years, he had been taking his bedridden mother to the hospital on a rickshaw because there were only two ambulances in the city of Karachi back in the late 40’s. He saw how uncomfortable and tiring this was for patients and the elderly. So after she died, instead of playing the part of a victim, instead of complaining and protesting the circumstances, he decided to buy a vehicle from his savings that he drove around as an ambulance.
Little by little, he kept seeing opportunities to serve from within the gaping holes of need that existed in Pakistan’s social structure. People trusted him with their money blindly. If he felt the crunch of donations, he’d beg with a bowl on the street and people would rush over to give whatever they had.
In spite of being uneducated, Edhi Sahib did what many affluent, eloquent, well connected and educated leaders have failed to do.
Farooq Shahid:
The MD of FMC United (An agricultural solutions multinational giant with manufacturing facilities in Pakistan) helped turnaround his company into a profitable concern within a few quarters of his taking up the post when it was in the doldrums ten years ago. A chemical engineer by profession, Farooq was a novice at business management and yet he was posted as the MD following his remarkable success as a Plant Manager at FMC United. He had transitioned the moribund production to a level where exports began to take place.
By his own admission, his lack of managerial education and experience made him decide that he had to spend 70% of his time in the field watching and learning from his sales force. He realized soon enough that the company sales were at anall time low because among other things, they had saturated their market with the existing product line they offered.
Farooq carefully scrutinized the geographical map of the areas they served and realized that a huge proportion of land was being overlooked because it was waterlogged and saline and hence deemed unfit for cultivation. He expanded the product line to include waterlogging/salinity solutions and appropriate crop seeds for these areas. Together with increased incentives and targets, tougher field checks on the sales force and a universe or market size that had expanded by geometrical proportions, the company was able to make a huge impact within a relatively short span of time.
There was very little cost cutting, no layoffs, in fact increased incentives for the sales staff for achieving targets and perks in general. In addition, there was a sense of fulfillment from not only achieving profitability but also helping to cultivate barren lands and bring prosperity to the farming community living on the fringes.
In both the examples quoted, the game plan presented to the leaders was fraught with challenges and limitations. However, by engaging the situation with an intent to serve from within the game plan, scarcity was changed into abundance.
This way of working yourself up from scarcity to abundance, applies equally well to leaders as well as individuals, the home and the society. The key ingredient on the path is the intent or the resolve to give phenomenally more to others than what one takes for one’s own self-interest.