[Strategy] Crossing the Chasm for the Peacebuilder

For the innovative peacebuilder, the truly important switch must happen in how thinking about products and services cross the chasm.

Most of the time, processes (such as mediation, negotiation, or dispute resolution) are confused with products.

A process is, in essence, a service.

Sure, there are sometimes opportunities to grow a process past a service and into a product, but this is rare.

The idea that content focused around “how-to” can be a product, is supported by the digital reality we live in now. With digital platforms, developing digital components for processes we already think of as services, should become second nature.

But for many it hasn’t.

At least not yet.

There are four ways to cross the chasm in thinking, from a strong consideration and focus on services, to a strong consideration and focus on products.

Deep listening requires surveying clients (formally and informally), compiling that data, and executing on the results of that listening. By the way, deep listening is beyond active listening, and is something that peacebuilders are increasingly seeing as a tactic for clients at the table.
Deep understanding is the corollary to deep listening. Deep understanding requires accepting that crossing the chasm is the only way to scale. Plus, it requires accepting that one-offs, workshops, seminars, and more of the traditional ways of engaging with audiences, clients, and scaling a “lifestyle” business, have changed irrevocably.
Deep advice requires accessing the wisdom contained in the organizations peacebuilders may already be working in. It also requires listening to, and reading, advice that comes from non-traditional places. Accessing, and considering deep advice is strategic and tactical. Deep advice not only comes from outside the box, but also it comes from looking in another box entirely.
Deep courage is the last way to cross the chasm. Execution is about courage, and many of the reasons that serve to “stall out” the crossings peacebuilders attempt, is less about not doing the other three things listed above, but is more about the lack of courage to pull the trigger and execute on a truly scary idea.

Philosophy first, tactics second, and courage always to change how peacebuilding happens in our digital world.

[Advice] Blogging for the Peace Builder

Blogging is still the easiest, lowest cost, way to build a business, establish a client base, become an influencer, or just to use a voice that matters.

It’s almost free marketing that is always on, always distributed, and always accessible.

There are great ADR professionals such as Cinnie Noble, Tammy Lenski, Victoria Pynchon and a few other high profile ADR practitioners, capitalizing on their blogging efforts. But for many ADR professionals, other than the contributors at Mediate.com (and here at ADRTimes.com), blogging is still viewed as a “one-off, one-time” thing.

There are many objections to blogging from the peace builder, but three are primary:

I don’t have time to blog.
I don’t know what to blog about.
I’m not a writer.

Let’s break those down:

I don’t have time to blog: ADR professionals lead busy lives. They mediate, negotiate and arbitrate complex issues that place psychological and emotional strain on them. Then, they return to homes where they may be confronted by more conflict (Ever hear the joke about the mediator who mediated their own divorce proceeding? I have. It’s depressing.) And, peace building professionals are exposed to more conflicts in social media feeds and from popular culture.

Then, there are children, partners, and responsibilities. By the time the end of the day comes, they are ready to do what their clients do: Go to bed and go to sleep. Then they get up and repeat it.

Who has time to blog?

Well, I’m writing this article in between just having fed my four-year old daughter and working on a client project. What I have found is that there are spaces in the day where thoughts worth blogging about can come flooding in. And, when we sit down at our seats in front of the computer, time becomes available, in spite of distractions, children, clients and other responsibilities.

I don’t know what to blog about: There is so much conflict in the world, at both an organizational and individual level, that I am often surprised by how many peace builders believe this. Peace builders witness disputes in line at their favorite coffee shop in the morning. Disputes occur at local school board meetings, attended the night before. There are disputes in our social media feeds, or even in the newspaper.

When I started blogging regularly, I worried about filling digital space with something meaningful. Then I had a revelation: The number of people consuming content in a digital space will always outweigh the number of people creating content in digital space.

The other piece to consider in this, is a thought that many peace builders have that goes “I don’t have anything to say (or write) so what could I possibly write about?” The fact of the matter is, we need more people who are involved in building peace to have the courage to lay out an argument, stake a claim to a position of truth, and then defend it vigorously and assertively. Courage has always been in short supply in the digital space (see the proliferation of Buzzfeed-like listicles and “Top 25” posts) and hiding away from the consequences of taking a position on topics such as neutrality, client-self-determination, or even the area of deep listening, does not negate the overwhelming need for online wisdom. The fact of the matter is, wisdom is also in short supply in a world where every piece of knowledge is a Google search away. We need more peace builder’s wisdom in the online space and the best place to get that wisdom across is through online, long-form, writing.

I’m not a writer: Many people stop writing regularly about the same time they put college (or high school) in the rearview mirror. Writing is hard, but for the peace builder, writing is the best way to explore and develop thoughts about process, procedure and practice and to grow the field. We need more writing, not less.

And, putting together a sentence or two is really all that it takes to begin. Once that happens, the real struggle becomes how to improve writing, rather than how to start.

One last point on all of this: Many peace builders want to begin writing, but fear that when they are vulnerable in the online space; when they take a position, raise their hand and say “this is me, this is what I’m making,” that there will be pushback from trolls, baiters, scammers, critics, and other bad actors (or actors with mixed motives) online. The thing to remember is that, at a practical level, the bad actors, spammers, and trolls are merely seeking negative attention and—even more perniciously—are seeking to place their shame on the person taking a stand.

At a practical level, the way around this for the peace builder to not accept comments on their blog. Or, to moderate them, or even to not read them. But, peace builders should never allow the bad actor to steal their voice, out of their own mouth, before it has even been used.

-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/

[Advice] Building a Subscription Model for Content

Being the last person standing is an underrated tactic in the world of online content creation.

But for the peace builder looking to create a subscription model for content, this may be the best strategy possible.

Three things are working in the peace builder’s favor:

the speed of the Internet and the ways in which content consumers access content is increasing, even as the cost of acquiring the tools is decreasing;
the rise of ad blocking is causing many organizations to either double down on advertising, or to simply eliminate it altogether as a driver for content;
the cost in time, emotional energy, and personal effort (number of “touches”) to acquire a paying customer online is about the same as it is to acquire a paying customer offline.

More content—written, audio, and particularly video—is being consumed by audiences via mobile applications, nested on mobile devices, and accessed via the cloud. This is being seen most visibly in the overlap between subscription based product services (i.e. Harry’s Razor, Dollar Shave Club, Birchbox (for men and women) Trunk Club, Casper Mattresses, etc., etc.), and the ways in which applications, URLs, and even QR Codes are being integrated into the content consumption experience around advertising those services. Peace builders must be aware of these trends to keep their content delivery systems current and updated to get in front of as many audience members in their long-tail as possible.

The rise of ad blocking as a driver for developing a subscription based business model for content development is a key point for peace builders to take in to consideration. Yes, putting content behind a paywall and encouraging people to either give an email address (or pay a fee) to access that content may knock the peace builder in a Google ranking. But if there is an abundance of previously “free” content (audio, written, or video) that can be nested behind a paywall, advertising and ad blocking become less worrisome, in spite of whatever changes Google attempts to make to its search algorithm.

The offline content acquisition experience and the online content acquisition experience are beginning to hew closer and closer together. In the past, both on and off line, there was tremendous friction between the consumer of content and the creator of content. Now, both online and increasingly offline, all of that friction is either being automated, “app”-ed, or otherwise disappearing from interactions. Content consumers in the peace builders’ long tail are still eating, sleeping, buying clothes, and purchasing content from a variety of both on and offline resources. Peace builders must be aware of this friction reduction and move to a world where the frivolous parts of the experience (i.e. signing up, giving an email, taking a payment, etc.), are becoming more friction less so that the actual engagement with the peace builder can happen.

The peace builders that understand these three trends and incorporate the reality of them into their content business model will be the last peace builders standing (and getting paid) even as others drift away.

-Peace Be With You All-

[Opinion] Marketing for the Peace Builder IV

There are three questions that the savvy peace builder should focus on when developing a marketing plan:

Whom do we serve?

This question can be answered with surveys and other formal and informal means. The question is not focused on the peace builder’s skill sets and where they’re comfortable. Instead the question focuses on the target audience for products, services, processes and philosophies. The question seems simple, but when the answer in the peace builder’s mind comes back as “everybody” there needs to be a deeper, more disciplined dive into the question from the target’s perspective.

Why do we serve them?

This question focuses on the four areas that many peace builders (and many entrepreneurs, business owners, and other self-starters) forget, because it is a question that delves into the culture of the marketing, the branding and the project that a peace builder wants to develop. The four areas are mission, vision, and goals. The mission describes what you want the project to accomplish, vision describes where you want the project to wind up, and goals describe the ways you will get there. The last area is the trickiest, because values—if only written down and not lived—can act as a boundary or act as rocket fuel. Either way, if they aren’t articulated, the peace builder may forget them and grab at whatever revenue generating idea comes along, in effect diluting their brand promise, distracting themselves, and ultimately going out of business.

How do we delight them?

This question really is the one that focuses on the savvy peace builder as a person who can delight, rather than as a widget (or a cog) in an industrialized, productized process. This is the question where the peace builder’s strengths, interests and passions can freely reign, to create a product, process, service or philosophy that the target market wants and that they can deliver successfully and generate revenues at the same time. Asking this question (and answering it well) can make all the difference between a peace builder who “burns out” after sustained people work, and the peace builder who stays engaged with learning and developing year-on-year.

Developing a marketing plan can seem like a waste of time, but answering these three questions places the core of the plan under the peace builder’s control and make the development process smoother. In addition, commitment, consistency and persistence become reinforced through an engaging plan for marketing peaceful solutions to conflicts.

-Peace Be With You All-

[Strategy] The Temptation at Mass

When you build a product, create a service or develop a process, the temptation (whether at scale or not) is to pursue the acceptance of the masses and be for everybody.

When building, (and planning to build) the discipline is to be targeted and to pursue the special and the narrow—the long tail in essence.

The primary drivers for pursuing the acceptance of the masses at scale are fear, desperation and greed:

For money
For prestige
For status
For power

The fact of the matter is, the myth of mass acceptance as being the “golden ticket” to profitability over the long-term has been exploded by the presence—and the influence—of the most dominate communication tool yes invented by man—the Internet. Sure, there will be blips of products, services, and process, that will appear to catch the masses attention, but in reality, the mass effect is dying a hard death. As audience attention becomes harder and harder to contain and obtain at mass, the benefits of a product, service or process being for “everybody” erodes under the weight of mediocrity, ineffectiveness and banality.

For the peace builder, if the processes, services, products, and philosophies that you provide are not for “everybody” in conflict, the real discipline is in developing your own emotional and psychological responses to what that means, and then methodically acting on them.

-Peace Be With You All-

[Strategy] Does Book Writing Still Matter?

Do books, and book writing, still matter?

In a world of free written content, indexed by Google and accessed by billions of people with Internet or mobile access, and a few keystrokes, what significance could writing a book possibly retain?

Let’s relate two stories that partially answer both questions:

I was at a conference earlier this summer at which I was the lunch keynote speaker. I had arrived early and was talking to the vendors who had lined up outside the hall to sell their products, services and processes to the attendees of the conference.

I stopped at several of the tables and eventually ended up engaging in a conversation with a sales representative from a company that specializes in engagement and recognition, two areas that I believe are critical to developing employees and keeping them at work.

In the course of the conversation, the person to whom I was talking mentioned that her organization had written a book about the core of their company’s focus and she wanted to give me a copy of the book.

Her assistant went to her car and 10 minutes later, I had the book (a hardcover) in my hands. I looked down at it and turned it over. Then I asked “How much do I owe you for this?” She looked at me and started laughing and said “Don’t worry, I’ve got an entire case of these books in the back of my car.”

The book—all that research, content, packaging, distributing, publishing and marketing—was $25.00.

In the second story, I was talking with a friend and colleague of mine in another industry. He and I were having lunch and discussing many topics, and in the course of our conversation, I brought up the fact that he recently had a book published. The topic of his book is on leadership and it represents his second book in several years.

He talked about how he was struggling to get attention for the book’s topic and how he had only sold one book at the time that we were talking (hopefully, by this point he’s sold a few more, but I haven’t followed up with him lately).

His book is around the same price point $25.00 as the hardcover book in the previous story, but he’s also offering workbooks, e-pamphlets and other “freebies” to sweeten the deal and make the price point more palatable. After all, there are hundreds of books on leadership published every year.

Do books, and book writing, still matter?

Some stats that show that it does. In the first half of 2014, books sales were up by 4.9% over 2013, accounting for $5,023,800 with adult nonfiction accounting for $3,310,600 of that total. [link here] In the business area, where leadership, engagement, employee motivation and entrepreneurship make their mark, there were 16, 604 [link here] books sold in 2014, up by 7% over the previous year.

In the year 1440, the printing press was invented and Johannes Gutenburg could barely monetize it, dying broke and forgotten until he was remembered almost 100 years later.

Why bring Gutenburg up?

History is littered with the bodies of failed inventors who were either too early with their innovations, too late with advocating for their work, or who got greedy, got in bed with the wrong people and died thinking of themselves as broken failures. That probably won’t happen to Jeff Bezos, Bill Gates, or Sergey Brin and Larry Page, but books matter, because, after 600 years, we have finally gotten the format, the feel and look of book right. We have figured out how to monetize it and the technology to make it, sell it, market it and distribute it has experienced global, explosive exponential growth.

Authors (and many potential authors) hold the internet, content creation, free online content, and e-commerce responsible for the overall reduction in the number of book sales. Our new technology and delivery systems are blamed for the difficulty that many authors (in unpopular or “boring” genres) have in marketing and selling their books to niche audiences. Finally, the development of the social web and digital distractions on a platform initially dominated by the presence of the written word, is credited for the loss of concentration and focus that audiences appear to have in an age where the greatest product of the printing press seems to be being supplanted.

Do books, and book writing, still matter?

The savvy conflict engagement professional should write, because content matters. But the kind of writing that is done for a blog (like this one) does not have to differ entirely from the kind of writing that would be in a book, or even an e-book. The frustration comes with the fact that the categories in which peacebuilding has its roots (psychology, business, sociology, legal), have never been “bestseller” categories for the general, book buying public. The other frustration for peacebuilders comes in the fact that we are, at a human level, transitioning from one technology (printing press) to another technology (the Internet) and the rules are not set, as they will be 600 years from now.

Book writing still matters for the peacebuilder, but there are three suggestions for moving forward:

Write for a narrow niche and deepen it through working with your network that you have built offline and online. Selling a few hundred copies of a book through connections and networks is possible in a world of fractured attention spans. However, without writing for a narrow niche, all the giveaways and sweeteners won’t move units.
Use the disciplines that you’ve developed through writing blog posts, engaging with social content, creating marketing efforts and connecting with people, to sell your book. This is the most daunting piece of the process. It is like having a small start-up inside the business you’re already developing.
Set your expectations for what “success” or “failure” looks like for you. The savvy peacebuilder is savvy because they set their expectations around outcomes at a level that matches the length of their network reach. If you have worked for 4 years to build a network of 1300 people on Twitter, and you know that only 40 of those people are in the market for your book, Twitter may not be the tool to use to promote your book. However, if you only want to sell 40 books, those 40 followers may be your best customers.

Do books, and book writing, still matter?

Yes. Now more than ever.

-Peace Be With You All-

Jesan Sorrells, MA
Principle 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] Marketing for the Peace Builder III

There are three ways to connect with clients, customers, fans and audiences.

And in the world of digital communication, there is one basic principle that underlies all of these connections that the peacebuilder must keep in mind.

Original content creation starts with the blogging, but then moves to image creation (uploads to Slideshare), video (both live streaming and staged), audio (podcasts), webinars and more. Original content creation requires consistency, sweat equity and massive amounts of focus to get right.

Content curation starts with looking at what the Web already has as content out there, being produced by others, and then distributing that content to others in your network. Content curation requires and understanding of deep linking, mobile phone use, SEO rankings, keywords (yes, they still matter) and SEM (that’s Search Engine Management). Content curation requires an intuitive and analytic driven understanding of which platforms are just bullhorns, and which ones are targets for getting your audience’s attention, trust, and giving them value.

Content distribution starts at the intersection of content curation and content creation and requires understanding how those two intersect—and how they bisect. The fact of the matter is that many content creators are really good at distribution vial one platform (email, social, TV, direct mail, etc.) and really mediocre at many others. This is due to the fact that each distribution channel has its own rules, quirks and dramas that affect how an audience gets engaged and why, how long that audience stays engaged, and why that audience leaves.

The one basic principle the peacebuilder must keep in mind, is that creation, curation and distribution are the only ways that scale occurs in the digital realm. And when the persistent thought in a peacebuilder’s mind is “Is this doing any good?” the persistent answer, after developing in all three areas with strengths in creation, is…

“Yes.”

-Peace Be With You All-

[Strategy] 0 to 1 for the Peacebuilder

In every industry, there are zeros and there are ones.

Zeros have the advantage, because they understand something fundamental that all of the ones who follow them do not: Innovative thinking, processes, relationships and much more, lead to dominance in the marketplace of ideas, products, processes and services. Peter Thiel, the venture capitalist, wrote about this phenomenon in his book [link here] Zero to One.

Don’t believe us?

Well, there were a lot of car companies before Henry Ford took the assembly line process apart, and re-engineered it, piece by piece. That was his “zero” innovation.

There were a lot of search engines before Google came along and developed an algorithm so that a consumer could search the Internet like a dictionary and that businesses could buy words and terms in auctions. That was Larry Page and Sergey Brin’s “zero” innovation.

There were a lot of (and there still are) gourmet chefs before Gordon Ramsey, Anthony Bourdain, and many others came along, each with their own innovative approaches (“zeros” all) and offerings for the marketplace.

In the field of peacebuilding, there are a few zeros, people who have innovated “outside of the box” in their approach and philosophy around building a peaceful world: Kenneth Cloke, Christopher Moore, Bernard Mayer and a few others, such as William Ury and Roger Fischer.

The next zero in the world of peacebuilding will be the innovator who accepts and integrates the digital landscape into peacebuilding, from content creation to platform building to gaining client’s trust through the use of data gathering and implementation tools, the field of peacebuilding—conflict resolution, mediation, arbitration, negotiation, diplomacy—must move forward in the digital world.

There are people—pioneers really—who are making the jump, from Colin Rule to Jim Melamed and even Giuseppe Leone and David Liddle. But it’s not enough.

The distance between the first mover, the zero, in the marketplace and the one, the first follower, is huge. For an example of how huge, remember that Yahoo existed well before Google and now, in both market share and influence, it is light years behind Google.

In the field of peacebuilding, the zero who innovates first to the marketplace on the building of a more peaceful world, will be light years ahead of whoever follows them, or whomever they overtake who believed that they had first mover advantage initially.

Want to find out more about the process behind being becoming a first mover in the peacebuilding marketplace?

Then download the FREE eBook from Human Services Consulting and Training (HSCT), The Savvy Peace Builder by clicking the link here.

-Peace Be With You All-

[Opinion] Marketing for the Peace Builder II

Peacebuilders spend a lot of time in the non-digital world, at the conflict resolution table, making connections, reframing ideas, challenging the status quo and creating the space for resolution between parties in conflict.

There are tools out there right now, blogging, podcasting, video creation, content curation tools, and many more that make it easy for the peacebuilder to do all of these things in public, in real time, creating change right now.

The issue is not the tools, or even serving the clients through using the tools.

The issue is shifting the field based mindset, philosophy and thought processes around personal/brand self-promotion, client self-determination, putting an idea “out there” and standing up for it.

Even if the client, the audience, or the peers disagree.

The issue is fear.

The issue is courage.

The issue is in the self, rather than in the tools.

Digital = fearless.

Who’s ready to be fearless today?

-Peace Be With You All-

[Opinion] Marketing for the Peace Builder

Peace builder’s have to be willing to get vulnerable in their marketing.

In a professional field, dominated by people familiar with—and comfortable with—the way that the world worked under Industrial Revolution rules, this can be a difficult transition.

Peace builders of all kinds—conflict resolution professionals, mediators, trainers, attorneys, social workers, and on and on—are facing world where permission is no longer granted, and where technology gives anyone the tools to change the rules.

It is important to note, however, that perfection, exactitude and quality are thought of in different ways now. A woman at a conference last week asked us a question: “How can you write a blog post that’s ‘just good enough’ when that is out there and it could show the quality of your work to a potential client?”

Good question.

The answer is three fold:

The line from “good enough” to “perfect” has nothing to do with a potential client’s perception of the work. It has to do with the author’s perception of what they have written or created. Your “good enough” and our “perfect” are going to have different meanings. And thus draw different clients, with different motives.
In a world of endless noise and multiple information options, the higher work is not to be bound to a mythical idea of “quality” based on rules that no longer apply. Instead, quality is now defined as “being out there in a world full of noise with commitment, consistency and persistence.”
The audience decides or the audience doesn’t, but the audience has expanded by multiple factors. No longer are peace builders bound to the television, billboards, editorials, word-of-mouth referrals, and praying that the next client will come in. Now peace builders have an expanded audience to whom they can appeal (see the Long Tail for more of this idea) and with 6.5 billion people on the planet, the audience is global, not local.

Before doing any of this, before writing one blog post, or making one video, peace builders have to be willing to throw away fear, the need for assurances and their preconceived expectations, and dance with vulnerability, to market effectively.

We’ve got an e-book describing our journey through this minefield. Download it by following the link here. And it’s free.

-Peace Be With You All-