For all but the simplest initiatives, money is a seemingly inescapable ingredient. Whether it be through investment, donations, debt, or buying, selling and paying people, money shows up as a significant part of how most initiatives come to life. Money flows in, out, and around our initiatives – we hope in service of realising the vision and in ways that meet the needs of everyone involved.

Money problems are blamed for the failure of many endeavours, yet money itself is never the root cause of success or failure. But it’s absolutely true that how we work with money can have a huge part to play in creating the conditions where a meaningful vision can flow well into life.

New principles for better money flows

In modern culture, many of our assumptions about what money is and how we should work with it are unquestioned, yet deeply limiting beliefs. They are steeped in the logic of the colonial and industrial age in which they developed.

The opportunity is to transcend these assumptions with a new set of values that can guide us towards designing new, life-giving, and fit-for-purpose ways of working with money flows.

The first four principles emerged from the seminal Money & Business Partnership Conference series hosted by Peter Koenig that began in the late 1990s. In conversation with Peter, I have added a fifth.

Principle 1: Awareness, not assumptions

Money is a product of human consciousness, and is governed by our minds individually and collectively, not by the laws of physics. So we must use conscious awareness to find fitting solutions, not work on autopilot with our conditioned assumptions about money.

Whenever there is the possibility of some kind of exchange or distribution of money, we can create awareness about what is bubbling up within us. An embodied feeling of ease or tension is a clue that we’re on the right track or that we’re missing something important. Paying attention to these sensations keeps us from settling for unsatisfactory solutions and is an invitation into a deeper inner work process.

Principle 2: Values, not fairness

People tend to agree that money should flow in a way that is “fair”. Yet dig a little deeper and there is surprisingly little agreement on what “fairness” actually means in the context of money since we are all heavily influenced by cultural, political, religious and family narratives. This makes it close to useless as a guide for making decisions or designing systems.

Instead, fairness is most usefully seen as an umbrella term sheltering a range of subjective value judgements. In the context of money, fairness can mean a number of things, such as equality, equitability, consistency, meritocracy, moderation, or kindness.

If we continually clarify the authentic values of the people involved, we can check that energy is flowing into these values, and design money flows and money systems consciously to embody them. It creates a feeling of positive energy as money flows both towards and away from each of us without any need to resist the flow.

Principle 3: Facilitation, not necessity

In many contexts money has become a barrier to creativity. Politicians say there isn’t enough money to make the changes society needs; entrepreneurs feel blocked until they raise investment; and those in non-profits believe money is the ultimate power that will allow them to further their causes. We feel like money is a fundamental necessity which inevitably leads to frustration.

Instead, we must reactivate the historical principle that money can be used as a facility (from the Latin facilis, which means easy) that may be used to further various human endeavours. We can then make sure that money doesn’t become the driving force – the ultimate enabler or blocker – and instead makes things easier and supports in advancing the vision.

Principle 4: Friendship, not transactions

The word company comes from the 12th-century Old French compagnie, meaning “society, friendship, intimacy”. Yet in modern-day companies, and even non-profits, this foundation of friendship is often lost, reduced to the transactional. What a huge missed opportunity to collaborate with people we really care about! Humans have a deep, innate need to belong to groups that does not go away simply because the context is work or business. Friendship is central to this. It is far more productive and fulfilling to view our collaborators as friends.

Being friends does not mean we have to enjoy social activities with all of our collaborators. Nor does it mean we must see them as family. Instead, we can return to the Old English definition of freond: “one attached to another by feelings of personal regard and preference”.

We can place money and friendship hand in hand, expressing our friendships by working with money with the goal of strengthening friendships, and using the power of friendship to design more creative solutions to getting money flowing.

Principle 5: Flexibility, not efficiency

Many groups tend to reduce how they work with money to standardised and functional formulae, such as calculating how much everybody is paid for their work or selling services based on crude hourly rates. It makes things more efficient and consistent – which of course is the aim of most Industrial Age systems! – yet these standardisations cause us to fail to realise a far greater potential.

The true nature of money is completely subjective and therefore has a capacity for infinite creativity. Reducing money flows to standard formulae limits the potential money has to be used creatively to further a vision and to support the first four principles. So when we work with money, including setting prices and rewards, we can prioritise creativity and flexibility, even at the expense of some efficiency. It’s a hugely worthwhile trade-off.

So those are our five principles: Awareness, values, facilitation, friendship, and flexibility. How might they inspire you the next time you need to figure out a money flow?

This article is based on a section from my book Work with Source: Realise big ideas, organise for emergence and work artfully with money. Thank you Nadja Taranczewski for the editing help in this version.