A few years ago, I became particularly interested in local civic engagement. I had read Eric Klinenberg’s Palaces for the People and became convinced that the road to healthier and more resilient communities was paved by social infrastructure: parks, libraries, and other “third places” where people from different backgrounds and with diverse perspectives could share physical space, interact casually, get to know each other over time, and perhaps even collaborate on a shared interest. Investments in social infrastructure – the argument goes – are investments in community-building that result in increased social trust, social capital, and ultimately more tangible metrics such as improved community health outcomes. I was sold. I first joined my local citizens associations’ Environment & Recreation committee, which discusses and debates issues related to social infrastructure, and frequently drafts resolutions to influence our local elected officials. Later, I was appointed to sit on my district’s Parks Public Input Committee, a smaller group of community members who were particularly interested in optimizing our parkland, recreation facilities, and programming. I quickly learned, however, that neither committee was particularly that passionate about building social infrastructure. The role of the local citizens associations, it seems, is to stand in opposition to building…anything. They tend to have a fairly myopic view of nearly all development as bad and destructive to community character and property values. The Parks Public Input Committee was at least interested in securing, preserving, and brainstorming creative uses for parkland to benefit local residents. But whenever anyone raised what I would consider a worthwhile idea, it was quickly met with the myriad reasons why it could never happen – environmental reviews, regulatory compliance, lack of funding, neighborhood association opposition. You name it; I heard it.
This experience opened my eyes to a deeper, more pervasive issue in how we work, lead, and build across sectors: the scarcity mindset. Rather than address the challenges in our communities, nations, or world by collaborating on creative solutions and building more of what we need, the scarcity mindset encourages us to lower our ambitions and hoard resources in a misguided attempt to preserve the status quo.
The antidote to scarcity is Abundance, which is the topic and title of the new book by renowned journalists and podcasters Ezra Klein and Derek Thompson. They frame the concept as “a simple idea: to have the future we want, we need to build and invent more of what we need.” “For years, we accepted homelessness and poverty and untreated disease and declining life expectancy. For years, we knew what we needed to build to alleviate the scarcities so many faced and create the opportunities so many wanted, and we simply didn’t build it. For years, we failed to invent and implement technology that would make the world cleaner, healthier, and richer. For years, we constrained our ability to solve the most important problems.”
In summary, they argue:
- We don’t lack ideas — we lack the capacity to implement at scale
- Scarcity (in housing, energy, care, infrastructure) is often policy- or institution-imposed
- The future depends not on austerity, but on building more of what matters, faster and more equitably
Klein and Thompson address what they view as the excesses of well intentioned environmentalism, NIMBYism, and a lack of public investment that slow and prevent “good” development along with the bad. They argue that psychologically and politically, people simply won’t accept the results of degrowth policies. Therefore, for example, we need to focus on generating more clean energy at scale rather than persuading people to dramatically reduce their energy consumption. A good amount of the book addresses enablers of innovation to support this positive vision for the future. For example, the U.S. Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency (DARPA) has produced innovations such as the internet and GPS with a comparatively small budget because it “empowers program managers to recruit and fund networks of researchers without bureaucratic constraints. They're not subject to peer review, can make bold bets, and aren't punished for failure.” This autonomy creates a culture of cross-disciplinary collaboration that has led to historic breakthroughs.
Klein and Thompson cite the following conditions for successful innovation that translate across sectors:
- Bring people together (e.g. in cities) to create “engines of innovation”
- Hire smart people, give them latitude in their work, and encourage them to collaborate
- Create an environment that embraces risk-taking and accepts more failures
- Understand that breakthrough innovations are not “Eureka” moments, but rather the result of tinkering, building systems and infrastructure to support the core concept, and scaling
- Solve the problem of demand uncertainty through “pull funding” such as Advance Market Commitments
- Have one clear goal that everyone on the team understands and is working toward
In support of this last crucial point, the authors quote Paul Mango, deputy chief of staff for policy at the Department of Health and Human Services during the COVID-19 vaccine development program Operation Warp Speed:
“On the Warp Speed team, you could have asked anyone what the project's goal was, from the generals and leaders, down to the lowest-ranking officials, and they would all give the same answer: deliver at least one safe and effective vaccine, manufactured at scale, before the end of the year. Every decision we made was based on those constraints.”
While many of the institutional levers Klein and Thompson describe are outside the average employee’s direct sphere of control, that doesn’t mean we are powerless. In fact, culture is built — or rebuilt — through the choices individuals make every day. Here are a few ways you can begin to lead with an abundance mindset, no matter your role:
- Default to “yes, if…” rather than “no, because.” Just because something has been tried and failed before, doesn’t mean it won’t succeed the next time with a change in context and infrastructure.
- Celebrate well-intentioned failure. The road to abundance runs through experimentation and iteration.
- Invite more and diverse voices early. Innovation is more likely when problems are viewed and considered across disciplines.
- Frame constraints as challenges, not ceilings. Progress is never made by assuming every proposed solution is impossible.
- Articulate the purpose clearly and often. People perform best when they understand how they are meaningfully contributing to a shared goal.
An abundance mindset doesn’t require a title or a budget. It requires a posture of curiosity, openness, and the belief that better is possible.
When I joined my local civic organizations, I thought I was stepping into a community committed to building. Instead, I encountered an entrenched culture of “no.” But I haven’t given up. Reading Abundance has reignited the belief that inspired me to get involved in the first place. I still believe in parks. I still believe in people. And I still believe that what we build together can be bigger and better than what we inherited.
