The Organisational Gardener

Running an organisation requires the counting of pennies and nickels, whether for salaries, field expenses, office operations, contributions to local projects, promoting our work, etc. The peculiar thing is that talking about money is difficult.

“Money is a necessary evil” to do the work we want to do. This is how a series of negative projections (generally in the not-for-profit sector) towards money begin.

Money is a resource that facilitates the exchange of products and services, but it seems to have a different value or meaning for every person. Each of us attributes a different definition to it, expressing a different history towards it. This history, or histories, is inherited from our cultural context, and above all, from how our family related to money.

Talking about money is talking about our personal relationship with money. Money is not just something physical or electronic; it is emotional. There is a psychology of money. This relationship positively or negatively affects how we manage our personal and organisational finances. Improving our organisation’s finances starts with improving our personal relationship with money.

When I hear that an initiative’s mission or purpose is diluted by the urgent, and important, need for money, I know something is not right with our institutional relationship with money.

You can just read this article or do some exercises along the way. The first one I suggest is to explore your definitions of money by completing the following phrases:

• Money is…
• With money I can…
• Without money I cannot…

Projections towards Money

A projection, as in cinema, is “to temporarily fix an image onto a flat surface by means of a light source.” In cinema, it’s temporary, two or three hours, but in life, we project our desires, hopes, wishes, shadows, and vices onto other people and money for years (and sometimes a lifetime).

In the case of money, if you did the suggested exercise (completing the phrases “money is…” “with money I can…” “without money I cannot…”), you will have generated a list of various descriptors of what money is for you. I have been in in-person and virtual workshops where the responses are as varied as the number of people present in the room. Why does it mean so many different things to each of us?

Because each person projects different things (histories) onto money. Money is a screen, and you are the light projector that fixes these stories, temporarily or permanently.

When making your list of descriptors of what money is (or what you can do) with money, you will notice that some words have a positive connotation and others a negative one for you. Observe that I end the statement with the words “for you,” because for you the word “ambition” may be positive, but for someone else, it is negative. Projections and words in this context are totally subjective.

So the second exercise is to finish your list and classify the words into those that are positive and those that are negative for you.

Money Work

Understanding that one projects values, pains, lights, and shadows onto money is the first step in the #moneywork process. Above, you explored these projections you have. The next step is to explore what it says about ourselves, then we will see how to reintegrate them to address identity issues.

“Accurately naming these unconscious parts and integrating them back into our identity makes us more complete and frees us to do what we want in life. This new freedom will show in our relationship with money, with our work, with our clients, and in our definition of prosperity. The insights resulting from money work are often surprising, sometimes amusing, and always of great emotional depth.” (Source: CU*Money)

In this podcast episode “You are not a Frog” Agnes Otzelberger describes (in English) a little more about what the Money Work process is about; in which I am guiding you with your example this week.

Now you have two lists:

1. Positive Projections: descriptors of money that have a positive connotation for you. For example: freedom, power, flexibility, enabler, etc.
2. Negative Projections: descriptors of money that have a negative connotation for you. For example: dirty, ambition, injustice, etc.

Here is the key next step. Translate these descriptions into identity statements. Before taking the next step, I invite you to be very present and aware of how this will make you feel (in your mind and body). Ready?

As you do the next step, mark with an asterisk the phrases that are hardest for you or that generate a more visceral reaction in you.

Take your phrase and change the word “money” to the word “I”:

• Money is freedom — I am freedom
• Money is an enabler — I am an enabler
• Money is dirty — I am dirty*
• Money is injustice — I am unjust*

Keep doing the translation and marking with an asterisk. Say the translations out loud so the body receives them more clearly and you detect where to put that asterisk.

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I highly recommend the CU*Money programme by Nadjeschda Taranczewski. I did it in 2021, and it was a turning point in my relationship with money and with myself.

Metaphors for working with Projections towards Money

The projections you have been working on this week, which you have classified as positive and negative, and then translated into identity statements (about you), have a polarity. In other words, the coin (you) has two sides, and if on one side you are an “enabler,” on the other (in my case) you are an “obstructer.”

Imagine a 70s disco ball full of small mirrors reflecting light. One small mirror has its counterpart exactly on the other side of the sphere. These two mirrors are polarities of a spectrum. What is on one side, is found on the other side; only one small mirror is a “positive” projection and the other is “negative.” The sphere is you, and the small mirrors are all the identities that constitute you. You are the WHOLE sphere, even if you prefer to highlight some small mirrors over others.

I heard the second metaphor from Nadjeschda Taranczewski, who says that when we are born, we have a HUGE mansion (you can think of a big castle, building, garden, or whatever you want as long as it has many rooms or spaces). A mansion with many rooms, but throughout our lives, we stop going to certain rooms (because they are not acceptable), we close them (because it is not right to access them), and we even shut them down and never go back to them (because it hurts us). On the other hand, there are other rooms that we go to all the time, decorate, and invite other people to enter. The problem is that the mansion is now a small flat with only two rooms, a small living-dining room, a bathroom, and a small kitchen. Very nice rooms, but it is no longer the grand mansion you had. It is not that the mansion is no longer there, but you only use a small part of it.

The projections you have made of money, especially the positive ones, are the rooms you access and use all the time. They are your identities that you resort to all the time. On the other hand, all the negative projections (and identities) are the rooms you no longer want to go to, you don’t like, you don’t feel comfortable, it is not correct to enter. You are not that person (obstructer, dirty, unjust, etc.) and therefore you do not access that room.

What would happen if you recognised your polarities? If you took a step back and saw the whole sphere. What would happen if you started walking down that corridor that has so many closed rooms and you entered them to open the windows to let in the air and light? My answer: lightness and wholeness.

The #MoneyWork is a process that uses money as a pretext and a means to explore all your identities. It is a “fast-track” personal development process that goes to the centre (the base, the heart) of what liberates or stops us. Because by working on identity, it becomes easier to change behaviours, habits, patterns, and “errors” that we tend to fall into again and again. Both with money and with many other things in our lives.

Now explore what the polarities of your list of personal descriptors are. What is the opposite, positive or negative, of your projections listed in the last post for you?

What’s next?

In so many personal and professional relationships, talking about money is “inappropriate” or “uncomfortable.” It is an emotional topic. It is a complicated topic. In organisations and businesses, it is generally a secret. So, what do you do when you want to explore a new compensation system? You have to create the conditions for having these conversations. What does that mean? How do you do it?

If not talking about money is the norm, then you have to lay the groundwork so that when we talk about money, which is very emotional, we do it from a place of greater awareness of the things that move us (mentally and physically). My recommendations are very simple but take time:

• Step 1: Play with money. I have already mentioned the Money Game facilitated by GreaterThan. Invite your collaborators or colleagues to an in-person or virtual Money Game. This 3-hour exercise is easy, light, but at the same time leads to deep reflections. It depends on each person’s histories, but whenever I have played or facilitated it, I encounter a group open to continuing the conversation about what their realisations mean in their day-to-day lives.
• Step 2: Work on your projections with money. Do it in an individual exercise with a coach or in a collective process like the one offered by CU*Money. The #MoneyWork process that I have shared with you this week is one of the most powerful tools I have found in recent years.
• Step 3: Reflect on the organisation’s principles and values that underpin the culture. What are the basic pillars that are important to us and sustain what we do and how we interact? Your new compensation system must be aligned with these fundamental elements. I recommend reading the book “Scale Up Compensation” to explore its guiding principles.
• Step 4: Have the conversations. This is the time to talk about the mechanism, schemes, bonuses, and the details of the complete compensation package that your organisation can offer, but you have already prepared the ground to be able to sow and grow seeds. Not before. I have been in processes that have not done this preparation and they go slower than expected.

Natural Invitation

This article explores the complex and often unconscious relationship that organisations and their members have with money, proposing that organisational financial health begins with personal introspection. It argues that money is more than a physical resource; it is emotional and loaded with projections, inherited from cultural and family contexts. The Money Work process is presented as a powerful tool to identify and reintegrate these projections (both positive and negative), transforming money descriptors into personal identity statements (example: “Money is freedom” to “I am freedom”). Recognising these polarities and “visiting all the rooms of the mansion” of our identity, including those we have shut down, leads to greater lightness, wholeness, and the ability to change limiting patterns.

The article concludes by offering practical steps to address the issue of money in organisations: playing with tools like the “Money Game”, undertaking the Money Work process individually or collectively, and establishing solid organisational principles and values before discussing compensation schemes.

The invitation is clear: if you want to improve your organisation’s finances and have transparent conversations about compensation, you must first do the internal, personal, and institutional work to heal your relationship and the projections you have towards money.

Start exploring your own definitions and opening those closed rooms today!