HIT Piece 2.16.2016

Here’s an update…

I listen to a lot of podcasts. A LOT.

One of the better ones out there for entrepreneurs, thougth leaders, and others that isn’t filled with Silicon Valley hype, or “unicorn” nonsense is the Stanford Entrepreneurial Podcast series. This podcast allows real entrepreneurs to advance their ideas, and increasingly has been a platform for venture capitalists and others to come to Stanford.

Mitch Joel continues to care about his industry, marketing, the changing nature of work, and innovation. His Six Pixels of Separation podcast is beyond interesting and it drops every Sunday. Oh, and he just had his 500^th episode. Talk about longevity in the podcast medium…

The Corporation for Public Broadcasting is actually trying some revolutionary things with their branded content in the podcasting space. From Science Fridays to Stuff You Oughta Know, they have managed to brand their sound, their host approach and interview style, and even the types of questions that they ask. Public radio may be on the decline in cars, but it will survive (in one form or another) on the Internet. The podcast I listen to—and am consistently fascinated by—is Death, Sex, and Money. Hosted by Anna Sale, the podcast cuts to the heart of things left out of polite conversations.

Adam Carolla is building a pirate ship. All that means is if you don’t like his podcast, then it’s not for you. This is the best possible approach to building content with the tools that the Internet provides, particularly if you don’t want to be beholden to corporate sponsors, the whims of mercurial audiences, and the dictates of “good” taste. Listen to the Adam Carolla Show and find out what I’m talking about.

Podcasting is a medium of relationships, engagement, collaboration, and a place to build a brand, drip by drip. Thank you to all who are out there putting out their craft.

-Peace Be With You All-

Jesan Sorrells, MA
Principal Conflict Engagement Consultant
Human Services Consulting and Training (HSCT)
Email HSCT: jsorrells@hsconsultingandtraining.com
Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/HSConsultingandTraining
Twitter: https://www.twitter.com/Sorrells79
LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/jesansorrells/

[Opinion] The Great Sorting

On President’s Day, it’s useful to remember that meaning and mattering matter more now than ever before.

This is reflected in the shift from important impersonal interactions at scale to important personal interactions between individuals. Meaning has always come from relationships and the community and family has always been the first incubator for the rules and traditions of relationships.

But the family incubator is breaking and changing—and has been for some time now.

This breaking and transforming leads to conflicts, disagreements, and disputes that loom beneath larger relationships with their power, their virulence, and their ability to last. Mattering generated through disagreement—what we are against as opposed to what we are for—is the great sorting, occurring as societies and cultures shift from a post-Industrial Revolution landscape to whatever comes after that.

When meaning and mattering only come from the narrative of conflict, the pure function of dysfunction becomes the call of the day, and the larger narrative shatters into a thousand pieces of glass.

What are we to do?

Relationships between people are still going to be the key to overcoming the dysfunction of the broken incubator of family, tribe, and community. Relationships, no matter the overall structure behind them, still matter more than the gossamer of tradition, economics, location, or history.

Narratives between relationships are going to become more strained and less collaborative because the difference between your tribe’s meaning and my tribe’s meaning matters more than the similarities we may share across tribes.

Meaning and mattering will become more elusive to attain, and harder to maintain, as the bonds that used to hold—tradition, family, religion, even the nation state itself—fray from the edges to the center, and those in authority (presidents, politicians, prime ministers) lose their power (but not their authority).

People seek meaning above all else, whether through conflicts, or through relationships. Joining across artificial boundaries pushes this meaning through conflict and relationship to a whole new frontier for humanity.

-Peace Be With You All-

[Advice] Work + Job = Labor

68.5% of employees in American workplaces are either actively disengaged or not engaged with the work that they are doing at all.

This is due to many issues and factors, including the absence of support from other people in doing the labor that matters most. Managers, supervisors, and business leaders, don’t often think that emotional labor has much value because it’s not easily measureable, quantifiable, or knowable.

The other factor that causes employees to either actively disengage or just not engage, is a lack of understanding about the difference between work, a job, and labor. For far too long we have confused those three terms. So let’s get some clarity:

Work is passion. It’s the thing that lights up an engaged employee in the morning. Some employees are engaged by tracking numbers on spread sheets, and some employees are engaged by dealing with difficult people. The vast majority of employees are disengaged with work that they didn’t start being passionate about in the morning, and will forget the second they get home.

A job is series of tasks for which employees get paid. But then again, maybe not. Employee’s jobs are often confused with the term work. However, tasks rarely get employees engaged in the workplace due to gaming of the internal organizational reward and promotion system, strong at the workplace social sanctioning, and continual conflicts between extrinsic and intrinsic motivations for accomplishing tasks.

Labor is the combination of work (passion) plus a series of tasks (job) that spool out across the overall life of an employee. The term “labor” is often only used in the economic sense to describe a series of discreet outputs. But, for the not engaged or actively disengaged employee, labor is a continual drudgery, full of disappointment, stress, conflict, and confusion. Labor is something to be abandoned as soon as the workday ends, and dreaded as soon as the weekend closes, to be put down with relief at retirement.

Managers, supervisors, and business leaders, as well as organizations on the whole, have a social responsibility that goes beyond sharing profits, engaging in wage transparency, or working collaboratively within a local, national, or international context. They have the responsibility to their current and future employees, to create opportunities for engaging in work that will dovetail with individual passions, in the pursuit of a lifetime of long-term emotional labor.

Otherwise, social conflict, organizational collapses, and fewer and fewer outsized rewards accruing to an ever shrinking pool of employees, is one of many possible, conflict-filled futures.

-Peace Be With You All-

[Strategy] Different Mediums

The medium is not the message.

Or so it is said.

And if the most important thing is sending a message, what do you do when no one is using the same medium that you are, in order to hear the message, you want to send in the first place?

This is the trouble that leads to polarization in modern communication scenarios, as well as increases rates of conflicts, and escalations in the course of conflicts. It’s not about everybody speaking the same language (which we often think is the solution, either through training or codifying language in general); it’s about everybody communicating using different mediums.

And when my medium of choice for delivering (or receiving) a message of choice, is not your medium of choice for receiving (or delivering) a message you think that I need to hear, then conflicts, confusion, and escalation are bound to increase, not decrease.

-Peace Be With You All-

[Podcast] Earbud_U, Season Three, Episode #3 – Gianna Putrino

[Podcast] Earbud_U, Season Three, Episode #3 – Gianna Putrino, Fine Artist, Emerging Artist, Energetic Advocate of the Artistic Process

[powerpress]

As I’ve said before, I am driven by artists, the art making process, and the connection between getting paid and getting to do what you love.

I go to art shows sometimes. Last summer I attended an art show that featured the art of our guest today, Gianna Putrino. Now, Gianna is a contemporary artist, which means she draws large scale work. But her work is figurative, not abstract.

Now, I’m not saying that abstract pieces aren’t artwork or artistic, but I am saying that I am tied philosophically to the figurative tradition in the fine arts. I can’t tell you the struggles that I had in art school at college.

Well…there are a few people who can.

Nick Jackson who we interviewed last season could definitely tell you about it…

Gianna is as well, and her drawings led me to immediately going up to her, and asking her to come on the show.

And then, life happened for both of us…

She’ll tell you her entire story and lay out her compelling artistic journey, but suffice it to say, the world has opened up in many ways for this talented young woman and, much like Emperor Palpatine in the Phantom Menace (which, in light of Star Wars VII no one even THINKS about anymore—thanks J.J. Abrams), I look forward to seeing all that she will produce in the upcoming years.

So, let’s all go over and become Jedis—or Siths—or whatever and listen to what Gianna has to say…

Check out all the ways below to connect with Gianna today:

Gianna’s E-Interview: http://ragazine.cc/2015/08/gianna-putrinoemerging-artist/

Gianna’s LinkedIn Profile: https://www.linkedin.com/in/gianna-putrino-a6733568

Gianna’s Art Profile: https://giannaputrino.com/portfolio-2/

Gianna’s Broome County Arts Council Profile: http://www.broomearts.org/gianna-putrino/

Gianna’s Instagram Profile: https://www.instagram.com/gputrino/

HIT Piece 2.09.2016

There used to be a time when it used to be ok to be…just…well…OK….

That time has passed.

We are now in an era where being “the best in the world” is not an unattainable goal. “The best in the world” doesn’t mean the best in the whole global world, with a name, a product, a process, or a service on every lip, or at the top of every mind. “The best in the world” means the best in YOUR world.

YOUR world of 2000 daily blog readers.

YOUR world of 1500 unique downloaders per month of your podcast.

YOUR world of 10000 views on your YouTube Channel every time you post a video.

YOUR world of 500 buyers of your book that you self-published.

…drip…

All that effort–that “drip,” “drip”–is where mediocre, average, and just “ok” wind up dying. I wrote a couple of weeks ago that the work is the thing that matters. And if the work to gain an audience of under 15,000 people who will pay for what I do is the same as the work to gain 10 times that number, what do I have to gain by being just “ok.”?

The real rub is for those people for whom ok—or even average—is maybe the tip of their talent, drive, or engagement level.

-Peace Be With You All-

[Opinion] A Common Confusion

Competency is often confused with expertise.

This is an issue common in management settings, where assumptions about people’s skills are often made in lieu of continued education and consistent means-testing against real world scenarios.

Competency in creating resolutions to conflicts is rare. Expertise in creating conflicts and letting them grow to the point of needing to be resolved by outside forces, is not rare.

In the workplace, there exists the assumption that employees will attain competencies in many areas, and that these competencies will reveal themselves as expertise “just-in-time.” The only problem with that thinking when it comes to conflicts in the workplace, is that “just-in-time” expertise arrives often too late, when there should have been more focus on following up and developing competency in peace making.

-Peace Be With You All-

[Contributor] Convenient Culture

Contributor – Alexander Gault
Follow Alex on Twitter @AlexanderBGault

Is convenience going to be the downfall of self-sufficiency?

Perhaps this question is getting a little old, but it warrants a great deal of conversation.

The loudest dialogue in pop culture that I clearly remember, that touched on what is most likely to happen, was around the time of the release of the Pixar film, Wall-E. Despite touching on environmental issues and the dangers of unlimited consumerism, Wall-E touched on the topic of technology overtaking humanities ability to do things for itself. Some might say that The Matrix was an earlier example of this in popular film culture, but while in The Matrix, humanity was enslaved against their will, in Wall-E, humanity accepted their condition, and actively entrenched themselves in it.

The future of convenience is starting now, with innovations like the Amazon Prime button and services that will deliver food from non-delivery restaurants for a nominal fee, and those are just what has made it into the market so far. Before 2010, Toyota Motors began developing a “transforming all-electric vehicle”, called the i-Real. The concept was similar to an electric wheelchair, but the device could transform into a high-speed, possibly street-legal vehicle with the press of a button. If that doesn’t remind you of Wall-E then you should probably watch the movie again.

With the possibility of a chair that can go from the grocery store to the living room without you ever getting out of it, the possibilities for human laziness compound astronomically. While it indisputably would be a great boon to those of us who cannot physically walk, that wouldn’t be the only group of consumers.

While its unlikely something like the i-Real will reach shelves or show-rooms in the near-future, there are products that are out there already: The Amazon Prime button, food delivery services for rib-eye steaks, streaming services. All these services and devices, while convenient, have definitely served to make humans lazier. Now, when you run out of dish detergent or toilet paper, you simply press a button, rather than drive to the store. When you want to watch the latest movie, rather than going to the Blockbuster as you would have in the past, you open your laptop, or even more simply, tap a few points on your phone to stream it to your wide-screen television.

Not only is leisure getting lazier, work is to. Most office workers today can work, for at least a portion of their job, from home. And that trend is only going to increase. Wired suggested in 2013 that 43% of the US workforce would be working out of the office by this year. As the Internet simplifies how humans engage, from human interaction to commerce, the overarching result will be that more people will be spending time in their homes, instead of in the public sphere.

Alexander Gault-Plate is an aspiring journalist and writer, currently in the 12^th grade. He has worked with his schools newspapers and maintained a blog for his previous school.

In the future, he hopes to write for a new-media news company.

You can follow Alexander on Twitter here https://twitter.com/AlexanderBGault.

[Strategy] How to Be a Role Model

What I see I repeat.

What I repeat I believe.

What I believe I do.

These three statements reveal the power of role modeling. Role modeling begins when leaders think of themselves as role models.

A famous NBA player was exactly correct in the early 1990’s with his brash statement around role modeling versus parenting. But, the shirking of the responsibility and accountability around making a choice to role model in the first place, is an ethical leadership issue. It is not out of the way to point out that the majority of leadership failings in any organization, or with any individual, are moral failings, under-girded by the avoiding, accommodating, or the surrendering of ethical responsibility.

When followers see a leader ethically fail–even in small ways–they repeat that ethical failure unconsciously. When followers repeat those failings over and over again, they begin to believe those failings, which become a lived reality. When followers believe those failings as lived reality, they act out in ways that may seem small at the outset; but, eventually, become as corrosive to an organization and it’s leadership, as the gradual dripping of acid on metal.

Leaders are role models, whether they personally desire to be or not. The courage to build relationships that affect what followers repeat, believe, and do, is the only courage that matters.

-Peace Be With You All-

[Advice] The Difference Between Management and Leadership

Managing is a process—similar to conflict—of implementing, developing, and encouraging employees to accomplish predetermined goals. Much of managing in the modern world represents the fully realized theories of Frederick Winslow Taylor, and his ideas about productivity, efficiency, and effectiveness.

Leadership is a relationship—similar to engagement, resolution, and communication around conflict—between followers in an organization and their leaders. Much of leadership in modern organizations rests on the concepts of authority, transaction, charisma, or some other mystical, in-borne trait. Modern leadership also doesn’t examine the role of followers in an organization.

Management is not leadership. A competent manager knows the strengths and weaknesses of the overall work team and is diligent in learning strategies and techniques to take that team to the next level in production, efficiency, and effectiveness. And if some of the people following can’t get on board, there is always the option to fire people.

Leadership is not management. A competent leader strives to go beyond merely knowing the relative strengths and weaknesses of their overall work team, and instead seeks to discover—and grow—relationships between followers, as well as between the leaders and the followers. Leadership requires doing things that don’t scale (emotional labor), engaging with conflict (leaving a comfort zone), and initiating changes and innovation (not being afraid of failure).

Leadership requires grit and grows resiliency. It also demands that the person doing the leading avoid seeking assurance and reassurance from followers; but, instead that they be guided by their own internal principles and be able to articulate those to followers. Managing requires keen observation, willingness to follow direction, and the ability to articulate those observations and directions up and down a hierarchical chain.

Too often, too many organizations seek to impose leadership on people who should be managers. Employees look for leadership from people who have attained status, but not skills. And supervisors, and managers, become frustrated, overwhelmed, disheartened, and burnt-out, because they are asked that their reach exceed their grasp, without being asked if there capable of reaching that far anyway.

-Peace Be With You All-