Normally, I blog about learning, training, knowledge management, etc. But in the current climate of business doldrums and fear of further decline, I hope you’ll indulge me as I wander into the mentality of poverty for a while. Bear with me. It will take four blog posts to get to the point of my ponderings.

I had the privilege of attending and speaking at a small women’s conference in Africa. The topic was poverty eradication. This is not only not my area of expertise, I felt totally unworthy talking to these women who are struggling with gargantuan determination to rise above millennia of poverty in their tribal region. I began to look at poverty as a human problem, not a localized problem. Not a problem of wealth or lack of it, but of how we handle fear. My topic was to be the “mentality of poverty.” As I prepared, a story from my childhood came to mind. It was the story of Stone Soup. This is a folktale told in many cultures and in many variations.

I’ll retell the story briefly (as memory serves me, forgive me if your version is slightly different) to set the context for “Lessons from Stone Soup.”

One day, in a country ravaged by drought and famine, two travelers were headed towards a village. The villagers, seeing the travelers coming down the road went into their homes and shut their doors. The travelers saw the flurry of activity but when the dust settled, the village seemed deserted. Knocking on a door, they got no answer. At the next door, no answer. Perhaps there was a town meeting. They headed to the center of the village. It was totally empty. The wise travelers understood; the village had shut them out in hopes they would go away.

One of the travelers began to build a fire and the other pulled a blackened pot out of his pack and placed a large stone in it. “We could make the best soup ever, if only we had a bit of water.” From one of the nearby windows came a voice, “There’s a well down the road four houses.” So the traveler took the pot and got water from the well. By the time he returned, the villager who knew about water had opened his door and come to see what the travelers were making.

Putting the pot on the fire, the older traveler said loudly to himself, “This is a good stone soup, but it would be even better if we had a couple potatoes to put in it.” Through another window they heard an ancient, quavering voice, “I have a few potatoes.” Soon the door to a hut opened and a bent and gnarled old women limped over to the pot carrying potatoes in her apron. The potatoes were peeled and placed in the soup.

Again the wise traveler stirred the soup and said in a loud voice, “Now we have the heartiest stone soup we’ve ever made, but it would taste much richer if we just had an onion or two for a bit of flavor.” A door creaked open and a little girl came out, “We have three onions but my mommy was afraid to come out. Here they are,” and pulled the onions from her pockets. Into the soup went the onions. The fragrance traveled on the breeze through the windows of the huts and houses in the village.

The wise traveler looked at the growing group around him and said, “What a marvelous stone soup. If we had carrots….” You get the gist of the story. Carrots, peas, beans, barley, a chicken, and other vegetables were contributed to the soup as the villagers began to open their doors and hearts and share the little they had. More pots had to be brought, more water carried. By the time the soup was ready, the entire village had gathered around the soup and everyone ate their fill, laughing and dancing long into the night.

Next post, I’ll share the lessons I’ve learned from this folk tale (you can find it told on the internet, many versions, most told better than I can). Perhaps you can be thinking it over too and after the next post we can begin to share epiphanies and ideas.

(2) Starvation by Fear

Thinking about the story of Stone Soup, I realize that the villagers’ reaction to the travelers is probably a natural human reaction. The scenario goes like this: We perceive that we have very little. We fear someone will take what little we have, so, we go into our home and close the door. What we have is surely not enough to help anyway, we rationalize. And we need it for ourselves. So we close the door of our mind, our heart, our possessions, our lives believing this is what we must do to survive.

What if this is a lie? Let’s look at what happens when we perceive we have very little and close the door to others for fear we will lose it. When we close the door to the “outside,” what do we shut out? We shut out opportunity. We shut out human interaction. We shut out other perspectives. We shut out the ability to add to the little we have. We shut out growth. (What else can you think of that we shut out?)

This is isolation and the result is starvation. We may starve physically since we have only the provisions locked behind the door with us. We will starve emotionally, locked into the vacuum of only our own thoughts, imagination and fears. We starve for relationships – “me, myself, and I” – is not a fulfilling relationship. We starve financially, because we cannot thrive in the black hole of fear.

How does this look in a business setting? Perhaps we see it as the business community struggles to let go of the fear that we will lose what we have and in the struggle, refuses to invest in the future, in growth or innovation because it seems it will take all our capital to tread water. Perhaps we see it when businesses hold all their funds aside waiting for someone else to take the risk of stepping out of inertia and moving forward. Perhaps we see it when businesses that once collaborated now are cutting off communication for fear they are now fishing in the same pool.

Some businesses are not living with their doors closed and their organization in a survival lockdown. What do they look like? Are they making stone soup? How do we break the inertia of fear in order to move forward? How can we join forces with other businesses, even competitors, to pursue the possibility that if we each contribute the little we have in the places where it is needed the most, eventually (and before we starve), the sum of all our contributions will be so much greater than the whole that all will have enough. Wouldn’t that be a grand experiment?

What do you think? I don’t have answers. But am committed to trying to keep my doors open – heart, mind, home, finances, skills, to give from my strengths, and to enjoy seeing what happens.

(3) When Fear Blinds Us to Our Benefactors

Fear is such an interesting, powerful, frustrating state of being. Sometimes it is an emotion. Sometimes it is a perception. And sometimes it is a way of life. Sometimes fear is even healthy. It’s good to be afraid of putting a fork in an electrical outlet. It’s good to be afraid of walking in the fast lane on the freeway. But for this post, let’s think about fear in the realm of a way of seeing things that permeates our whole being at times. I fall into this category easily, especially if the news is pounding dire predictions into my brain day in and day out. Or if I am looking at a dwindling bank account with nothing showing on the horizon that might plump the account up again. Or …well really, it’s when things seem out of my control.

Looking back to the Stone Soup story, the villagers saw the travelers coming down the road and were afraid. Their fears may have varied. Grandma might have thought, “I bet they are coming to rob me.” The mayor may have thought, “They are going to take over our town. I bet they have a gang waiting behind the hill.” The housewife might have worried, “They’re going to ask me for food, and I don’t even have enough for my children.” Whatever they feared, they never gave the travelers a chance. They simply shut them out.

But the travelers were actually simply people like themselves. That’s all. And eventually, they became their benefactors.

In the last post, I pondered the idea of throwing our door open in crisis and making a contribution rather than shutting the door in order to save what little we have. When you read that, did you think, “Well, she has no idea how it really works. There are bad apples out there that will take advantage of that kind of approach and rob us blind”? Even as I was writing it, I was hearing myself think the same thing! Perhaps it’s just a natural fear we must learn to put aside.

When we throw open the door, what we expect to find on the other side makes all the difference in what happens next. There will always be villains. But they are not as common as we may think. Most people and/or organizations to which we throw open our doors and attempt to make a contribution of our time, skills, etc. are simply like ourselves. We begin to discover that when we pool our resources, we can accomplish great things. It was easy to do this in an “up” economy when, if we took a risk, there was another opportunity around the corner to help us recoup our losses. But in a “down” economy, we can worry that every opportunity is our last and we’d better not blow it. That’s fear speaking and it results not in wisdom, but in paralysis and eventually starvation.

What would happen if we expect to see partners, collaborators, friends, when we throw open the door? What if we choose to simply expect to make a contribution and work toward all involved having enough?

I’m just thinking out loud. Just pondering why it should be any different in a down economy than in an up one. Do we really need to pull in as most businesses have? Or do we need to reach out? I’m not saying be fiscally irresponsible, only that we may have more than we think, especially if we work together.

What do you think? I’m hoping for this to be a discussion, not a monologue, because I’m not claiming answers. I’m exploring possibilities and your thoughts and ideas are key to painting the picture of what could be.

(4) “Group Think” to Re-think

In the story Stone Soup the villagers, as one, go into their homes, shut their doors, and hide from their visitors. This might fit the definition of “group think,” which, to me, means checking logical thought processes at the door when caught up in the power, energy or fear of a group of our peers (or above). Fear motivates the villagers. “Don’t let them take the little we have!”

At first, it’s easy for me to disdain these folks. Weren’t they weak to follow the group and hide in fear? But then I realized how hard it is to break the hold of fear-directed decisions. It’s truly natural to go with the group a when fear takes hold. And when the group says “Hide!” It’s natural to…comply! No shame in that. The challenge is to rethink!

When we find ourselves hiding behind our locked doors, simply hoping to survive (like everyone else), that’s a good time to rethink our position. Take stock and decide…is the group right? Is this the way I want to live my life, run my business, treat needy strangers, make a difference in the world?

What am I driving at? Personally, I am working with this “rethinking” process on many levels. But for this venue, let’s just look at it in a business sense. Last fall our economic world came to a grinding halt and several crashing sounds were heard. What we had diminished or disappeared almost overnight and the affluent, burgeoning world economy seemed lost.

News on the TV, internet, newspapers (yes, some of us still read the print version), books, blogs and talk shows shouted doom and gloom. Businesses pulled in the welcome mat, shut the door and hid. Investors put their money back in their pockets and kept it there. The entire “recession” is not only because of greed and mishandling of finance at the top levels of our financial system. Another contributing factor is fear!

Perhaps it is time to rethink our choice to pull in and close off. Perhaps it’s time to shake loose just a little of what we are saving “for the worst” and begin innovating again. Perhaps we can listen to the voices outside the window saying “If we only had…” and take stock, do we have what’s needed in the moment. Most of us have something to contribute if we are listening for the need, the opportunity, the wistful words.

Such opportunities are out there if we peek our head back out the door. Green living, green energy, green business, green employment (just coined that phrase, but I have ideas), a whole world of possibilities opens up. Micro-business, so successful in helping villagers in third world countries…what about here? I am just starting the rethinking process because I realize I had closed up in fear and surrendered to “group think.” I can hear the needs and opportunities “out there” if I am willing to risk opening the door and re-engage.

Here are some questions I’m asking myself in the rethinking process:

How did I wind up stuck in here behind this closed door?
What unrealistic expectations did I hold?
How can I change both my expectations and my outlook?
How much is enough? (There is an answer. )
What “if only I had”s am I hearing that I might be able to provide an innovative solution for?
How much fun can I have putting my skills, connections, ideas to work making new opportunities?

Where’s the door handle? Time to open it up.

My biggest lesson from Stone Soup has been: Once the first reaction – fear- has been experienced, step beyond to engage again with family, community, business, humanity and keep growing.