Money Stories
Financial distortions at work
Most of us have narratives about money. Often they’re not helpful. Articles, books and podcasts offer financial advice meant to help reduce debt, save more, invest effectively.
But fewer discuss how our self-defeating or limiting narratives about money impact us at work. We think of our individual or domestic financial situations first, not about how we can build skills when we’re spending or managing money that belongs to our organization or client.
I was listening to an episode of the podcast Hidden Brain called “Rewrite Your Money Story” where host Shankar Vedantam interviews the psychologist Brad Klonz about what Klonz calls “money scripts” – common narratives about money that are carried down through generations. For example, there’s money avoidance, where people steer clear of anything to do with finances. I did this in my 20s, as a broke single mother, letting my bills pile up on a table, not even opening the envelopes. Even when I had money in my account to pay them, I was so entrenched in the avoidant script that I wouldn’t open bills until they had that red lettering indicating they were being sent into collections.
What narratives about money do you have? How might they impact you at work? Are people in leadership at your organization reading off of destructive scripts of their own?
I’ve certainly seen plenty of bosses and leaders make bad decisions about money. Really bad. And often the bad decisions they made at work were reflected in their personal financial situation, or at least what I could glimpse of it.
There was the boss who had to have a very new and very expensive car every year or two. He spent profligately on new business pitches, even ones we had little chance of winning. If there was a new hire or creative talent he wanted, he paid top dollar to get that person.
I never visited his home, but there were frequent discussions about extensive remodels and home projects. He wasn’t a good manager of money; this wasn’t a situation where he was investing wisely and getting a return on his investment. He was operating from what Klonz calls a “money status” script, spending on things that he believed would increase his status, from his custom auto paint job to the extensive and expensive pitch theater to win a new client. This was one of the guys who decided to drive to Vegas from Southern California to gamble all night before a huge pitch. Which, not surprisingly, we lost.
The show-off spenders often do big splashy remodels of their office space or the organization’s space. They travel first class, often, and take advantage of every luxury on business trips. I remember being at a meeting at Microsoft, years ago, and realizing that the women I was meeting with spent more on her outfit than I spent on three months of rent. And that was just a Tuesday. I’ve heard stories of managers who hire staff they don’t need, just so their group is bigger on an org chart than the groups of other managers.
I’ve met lots of creatives who are money avoidant. They act as if they can’t be bothered to consider the implications of filthy lucre. As a result, they will go way over on a production budget or give something away to clients that they should be charging for, or avoid doing necessary due diligence on purchases or contracts.
Understanding your personal money script is even more important if you get and handle the money. And this isn’t just for the accounting folks. It’s also for sales and business development professionals, or anyone connected with fundraising in the non-profit space. There’s a story, perhaps apocryphal, about a middle-aged couple who were spurned when they showed up in out of style clothes offering to donate money to Harvard. Rebuffed, Mr. and Mrs. Leland Stanford decided to start their own university, with their substantial riches.
I come from narrative of scarcity, so it took me years in my sales career to learn that there were deals it was better to walk away from, to understand small clients took up as much as if not more time and energy than larger clients. Being money avoidant, I had to really force myself to lean into the minutiae of statements of work, contract and payment terms and learn what was positive and negative for my company.
Misers are just as difficult to manage in a professional space as they are in the personal arena. I’m not talking about people who are careful to live within their budgets, personally or professionally. I’m talking about individuals who have the resources but refuse to spend what they have, even where investment is called for, like not spending on needed software or systems so everyone has to waste hours every week doing something manually or ineffectively. Refusing raises or investment in training or benefits even in when the company is profitable because of the work and IP generated by the individuals who are being denied raises or compensated below market is nonsensical.
What can you do? Well, if you’re the one making the decisions about money consider looking at your personal narratives and behaviors with your individual finances and see if any of your weak spots are also appearing at your job.
Compensate for your weak spots by getting help from others. If you’re a money avoidant creative, then make sure to have someone in your org who isn’t, and listen to them. If you’re prone to spend lots of money on showy displays of wealth, make sure you have a more fiscally conservative CFO or bookkeeper and follow their advice.
Where you aren’t in charge and are watching from afar as a leader brings their unskillful money scripts into the workplace, there isn’t much you can do. You can get curious about what money scripts might be operating for your unskillful boss and see if that helps. I learned with the fancy car guy that he liked showy demonstrations in new business, but didn’t know or care if they were, in reality, expensive, as long as they looked expensive.
Watch out for the iceberg. One of the things about narratives is that they can look like reality and people don’t see the danger until too late. More than once, I have worked for men who were bringing their money crazy to work. They didn’t think it was crazy, they thought it would work out. But I saw the iceberg looming ahead in the financial waters, ready to scupper our little skiff, and I jumped ship. Or was pushed out for pointing out the iceberg. Without fail, those companies foundered, sank, because of that same unskillful financial behavior.
I understand that for many of us, thinking about money, past financial insecurity or loss, fear of being broke, can be very uncomfortable. But to be really skillful managing money, building client business and revenue or fundraising, you need to do that homework. It’s a very worthwhile investment.