Where the Hammer Will Fall the Hardest

The courage to make the decision to act in the first place is the thing that is lacking the most.

The courage to raise our hands, take responsibility, and to engage with accountability (rather than assigning blame or taking credit) is the work that your children will eventually be paid for.

But not handsomely.

It’s also the work that you’re not getting paid for now, but that your boss, team leader, supervisor, or coach really wants you to lean into.

The people who understand these two principles, that are now coming online as fundamentals of development, engagement, and interaction between people, will “win” the future.

In case you’re thinking “Well what if I don’t want to be responsible beyond my own desire to be? What’s the future look like for me and my children?”

The top three areas of growth, innovation, and development (which will translate to wealth making and value creation in the future) will be in the following areas if the current trajectory of education, work, organizations, and society, doesn’t change significantly:

Making something so “new,” no one has ever thought of it.

Working for the person who made the “new” thing.

Selling the “new” thing.

But since “new” things only come along once in a great while (i.e. the car, the I-phone, the Internet, etc.) the chances of being able to survive as a visionary as the first one are slim.

Which means that in the next two areas, working for someone who’s innovating, or selling the innovation, education, work, organizations, and society need more individual people to behave courageously, engage where it’s uncomfortable, and do the things that are hard now in the present-day, which will resemble a game of patty cake later.

Courage (the lack of it, the abundance of it, or just enough of it) is where the hammer of the unknown in the future will fall the hardest.

Are your children ready?

Are you?

Human to Business Sales

Selling to people in businesses is hard for three important reasons:

There are very few (or no) champions of your product or service offering because no one knows how good your product or service offering is inside the organization you’re selling to.
There are no direct ways to influence the people who can make the decision to buy from you—today.
There has been a massive shift in consumer behavior, but not a massive shift how businesses purchase from you based in the reality of shifting consumer behavior.

These are big problems and they’re getting bigger because the practice of creating buyer personas still dominates in a big way in almost every piece of advice available around advising organizations on how to sell to organizations.

While buyer personas are a fine shorthand for figuring out the profile in your head as a seller to businesses, the downfall of them is that they neglect each of the three areas above. In addition, they depersonalize the act of buying (or purchasing or procurement) and attempt to reduce it to a series of formulaic and discreet steps.

Which, of course, makes the three reasons above more problematic, not less.

Here are three ideas that may help when you’re selling (peace, consulting, freelance solutions, or even you’re next “gee-whiz” product to a skeptical procurement buyer):

Champions are easy to get (and even easier to lose), but require engaging with personality, care, and empathy.

Most of the people who are going to become your champions are the ones who have the power to say “no” but no power to say “yes.”

There are still gatekeepers in many organizations, and going where they are (in-person, online, emotionally, rationally, etc.) will go a long way toward engaging with them.

You must determine if buying today is all that matters, or if arbitraging the time to build a relationship today against the dollars that you are going to get tomorrow, matters more in the long run.

The short run will take care of itself.

Does your selling strategy include a 1,000-year long plan?

The reality of consumer behavior means that buyer personas are dead as predictors of selling success in the B2B space.

It also means that running after every social platform for sales is also dead.

This is a good thing.

In principle, this means that consumer behavior in business to business sales is the same behavior in business to consumer sales, but the volume of the connection is lower.

In practice, this means that targeted videos on a YouTube channel, embedded in an email campaign, direct to a buyer, matter more than the number of Facebook likes you happen to be cultivating that aren’t converting to sales.

In practice, this also means that providing value to the small number of businesses you work with as a selling organization, trumps the number of actual businesses that you work with.

Or that you think you should work with.

Champions, behavior, targeted engagement, and long-term strategy matter more for business success than just closing the sale and moving on to the next client.

[Podcast] Earbud_U, Season Five, Episode #3 – Katie Vaz

[Podcast] Earbud_U, Season Five, Episode #2 – Katie Vaz, Illustrator, Graphic Designer, and Author of “Don’t Worry, Eat Cake”

[powerpress]

Love is a many splendor thing.

…maybe that’s splendid…

Or so it is said.

When you get to do what you love every day, it doesn’t seem like work. But the thing is, many people don’t do what they love every day.

Many people, for a variety of reasons, do what they have to do, what they are required to do, or what they are told to do.

Our guest today, Katie Vaz, a graphic designer and illustrator, and author of Don’t Worry, Eat Cake, is living the life that she wants to live, doing what she wants to do, and creating a voice and an oeuvre of work that shows what can happen when you march to the beat of your own drummer.

And now, a word about coloring books:

There’s a growing movement of providing coloring books for adults, and Katie’s book is about tapping into this phenomenon.

I personally have never colored (with the exception of finger painting and whatever I did in college art classes for my major), but I understand the sentiment behind the idea in a world where love is the hardest thing to attain.

What the world needs now, is love, sweet love.

That, and coloring books.

And cake.

Definitely cake….

Connect with Katie in all the ways that you can below:

Etsy Store (Use code EARBUD20 for 20% off orders for Valentine’s Day): https://www.etsy.com/shop/katievaz

Website: http://katievaz.com/

Blog: http://katievaz.com/blog/

Book: https://www.amazon.com/Dont-Worry-Eat-Cake-Everything/dp/1449478123

LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/katievaz

Twitter: https://twitter.com/katievaz

Katie Vaz Design on Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/KatieVazDesign

[Opinion] Show MBA’s the Way

MBA’s have a responsibility to save the world.

But they can only do that if the door is opened to them to believe that they can save the world.

For that door to open, someone must show them the way.

And then, when the way is shown, the door opens and the long process of saving our organizations begins.

Don’t believe me?

Well, this fall I had the honor of teaching Conflict Management Strategies for the Corporate World to a cohort of MBA students at Binghamton University in Binghamton, NY. While it wasn’t always comfortable, for the 34 students who attended the class, their lives (and perspectives) around conflict, peace, and strategy were change.

This is feedback in their own words:

“This class has taught me a lot of content that I would have not been able to learn in other classes especially the art of negotiation and how to properly apply it. I never would have imagined a class like conflict management would allow me to gain a new perspective of the kind of person I am and how I can apply myself in the business world.

I was actually able to apply some things I learned in class to my friends who were in a toxic environment at work and showed them videos that were part of this course.

To further elaborate on this story, my friend eventually was motivated enough to leave the company and landed an offer at a better company with a flat culture and a director that has an external locus of control as compared to his old manager. The structure of this class gave the students the opportunity to engage with each other and grown to be comfortable enough to speak and discuss different topics openly. In addition, the interactive simulations such as, the quarter negotiation and the Chestnut village, were exercises completely different from the traditional learning style. Not only was I learning how to negotiate, but how to better communicate with others and read non-verbals. The readings were informative and were further elaborated in class lectures.

I would highly recommend this class. This class is a great mix of lectures and interactive simulations. It has definitely brought me out of my comfort zone and allowed me to better understand the person I am in terms of conflict management culture. I now understand the significance of conflict culture in a firm and how that may affect my future decisions in my career path. I just wish I had the opportunity to take this class earlier. In addition, this class is about becoming agents of change for the generations to come and break the barriers of the norm.”

“This class was very interesting and very informative for me. I took Negotiations last semester with [professor name redacted] and when I switched into this class I was afraid there would be a lot of overlap in the class content, but there honestly has been little to no overlap. The biggest similarity was our Chestnut Village negotiation, obviously. I learned SO much more from you about negotiations, conflict, etc than I did from my previous class, so I am very happy I decided to take this course.

Everything about the class content was beneficial and was designed to make me think. Your teaching style makes the class extremely comfortable. I think that the class structure was great. I really enjoyed the open forum feel, where everyone was building on each others ideas and opinions and although there were clearly some tensions between the students, the structure allowed for everyone to still put forth their opinions.

The content was delivered really well and even though you are not requiring us to take long tests based on memorization, everyone is always ferociously writing, which shows that we want to know what you are saying and internalize it.

I really enjoyed the negotiation, but I think it would be great if you also required us to partake in a conflict type simulation. It would take on the same format, but would require us to respond with how we would handle the situation- it might be cool to provide a conflict to us on the first day and then provide that same one to us on the last day and see how the answers change. It would be interesting for us, but I also think you would really enjoy seeing how much of an impact you have had on our way of thinking.

I would 100% recommend this class to someone else in SOM. I personally think it is the first class that critically made me think about the way I handle every situation in my life. I am also taking a leadership class and I learned and absorbed close to nothing in that class, whereas in your course I have become more self-aware and understand why I act the way I do in the workplace. I really feel as though this should be a required course for everyone before they graduate, whether it is undergrad or grad.”

“Literally everything worked for me in this class. I usually prefer to just go to class and not participate because most classes are boring and quite useless, however this class is the complete opposite. Content, structure, direction; the class is set up perfectly to engage students and force discussion, although I don’t feel discussion was forced as multiple students in the class actually were interested and learned a great deal (including me).

My friend [student name redacted], who literally hates class and school, has said on multiple occasions that this is the best class he has ever taken, and I agree. If you got him to come to class and be engaged, you are doing something right.

Definitely best class I have taken, useful, intellectual, meaningful. Also I think papers are the best way to go about grading this class and the group discussion quizzes really took out the stress factor and enabled people to think critically and share ideas.

Other students might complain about having to participate, the simulations, etc. but I would take the criticisms with a grain of salt. This class is great and I feel the only criticisms are going to come from students who don’t see the value in what you are saying and how incredibly intelligent the discussions we have are.

We just had to register for classes for next semester and I recommended this class to every person who was talking about registration, not realizing that the class was not being offered here next semester :(. A couple of them texted me on registration day asking where the class was and I then realized I had gotten their hopes up for an awesome elective. But yes, I certainly would recommend this class as an elective. The School of Management should be begging you to teach this class every semester; it should actually be a required class in the graduate curriculum.

Best class I have taken at Binghamton [University] by far.”

Show the MBA’s the way to save the world, and they will run with it.

[Podcast] Earbud_U, Season Four, Episode # 10 – David J. Smith

[Podcast] Earbud_U, Season Four, Episode # 10 – David J. Smith, Peace Builder, Consultant, Speaker, Educator and Author

[powerpress]

Some things, ideas, and even spaces are hiding in plain sight. Like the idea of walking in peace. Or building a career in helping people walk in peace.

The big question is (to paraphrase from the film The Prestige): Are you paying any attention?

Our guest today, David J. Smith is the author of many books on teaching peace. He most recently wrote the book Peace Jobs: A Student’s Guide to Starting a Career Working for Peace.

And he has come on at no better time than now, to talk about what really matters.

Look, I asked a podcast guest recently, “Why aren’t peacebuilders paid more?” and she gave that question an honest and thought provoking answer which you’ll have the pleasure of hearing next season.

I assert that the reason peacebuilder’s struggle to get appropriate compensation for the emotionally draining work that they do, is because we live in a conflict comfortable and peace skeptical society and culture.

David answers the question in another way on the podcast today.

Look, this is the last episode of our penultimate 4^th season of the podcast, and I for one, could not be more grateful and appreciative of your ears, your attention and your focus this year.

Your feedback, as always, has been tremendous for a podcast that runs no advertising other than mine, and where I don’t come on the mike and ask you to donate to my Patreon page, or to rank me in ITunes, Stitcher or on Google Play.

Though the Earbud_U Podcast is available for download and rating on all those platforms.

Thank you for all your support in this self-funded effort, and we’ll be back in January 2017 with a new year, a new slate of guests, and even a new opening I’ve been working on.

Connect with David J. Smith in all the ways you can below:

Website: https://davidjsmithconsulting.com/

Peace Jobs Book Link: http://www.infoagepub.com/products/Peace-Jobs

Facebook (For Peace Jobs): https://www.facebook.com/PeaceJobs1/

Facebook (to Connect with David): https://www.facebook.com/david.j.smith.54584

Twitter: https://twitter.com/davidjsmith2013

[Podcast] Earbud_U, Season Four, Episode #9 – Jason Dykstra

[Podcast] Earbud_U, Season Four, Episode # 9 – Jason Dykstra, Storyteller, Marketer, Conflict Management Specialist

podcast-earbud_u-season-four-episode-9-jason-dykstra

[powerpress]

Sometimes the host screws up.

He misses the date, misses the appointment, misses the guest entirely. And then he’s gotta say he’s sorry, get the process back on track, and make no excuses.

I had to apologize to our guest today, Jason Dykstra. And while he’s an amenable guy, and things happen (as the bumper sticker points out) the way to run an organization is to almost never make a mistake.

But when you make that mistake, the thing to do is to take responsibility, stand up and say “I screwed this up. There’s no excuses. Please forgive me.”

That gives the other party the option to say no, say yes, or ignores you completely. It also gives them the option to look at your vulnerability, determine your credibility, and to make a decision about you.

Now, if mistakes keep happening, then there’s a pattern of behavior. But a one off, an “almost never happens,” a “rare but not damaging miscalculation” these are forgivable.

What’s not forgivable are mistakes that reveal an ethical, moral, or even spiritual failings.

These are the Jimmy Swaggart level mistakes.

Or more recently, the VW emissions scandals.

Or even the Wells-Fargo “clawback” issues mistakes.

And no amount of apologizing will help sweep away that stain.

Some mistakes, as an old supervisor of mine liked to point out, you can’t come back from.

What does this have to do with mediators building their businesses?

Well, there are mistakes a mediator can come back from.

There are mistakes that reveal a mediators’ patterns of behavior. But when mediators are putting themselves “out there” the possibility for mistakes explodes ten-fold.

And many well-meaning mediators market poorly (or not at all) because of fear of making a mistake.

But, as a mediator who practices what he preaches, Jason will help us walk through all of this today, and more.

Connect with Jason in all the ways you can below:

Website: http://www.jasondyk.com/

Facebook (The L3 Group): https://www.facebook.com/L3GroupTC/

Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/jasondyk

LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/jasondyk

Twitter: https://twitter.com/jasondyk

Twitter (The L3 Group): https://www.twitter.com/thel3group

[Strategy] Why So Few Self-Aware Organizations?

Organizations, founders, managers, and employees who are self-aware do better than those who aren’t.

This should come as no surprise, but in an economic, social, and even political climate where “knowing thyself” is as mysterious as “knowing thy customers,” it becomes incumbent upon an organization–and the people employed by it–to be self-aware.

Here are a few questions to get you started:

What does our organization do here in the world?
- Why are we doing it?
- Is what we’re doing useful, not to the market or to our customers, but also to the overall economy?
Does our company care?
Are we just here to satisfy our shareholders?
If our employees don’t care (or do care) why do they care and how do we grow what they care about?
What do other people (i.e. the market (fans, customers, clients, shareholders)) think that we do?
- If there’s a chasm between those two perceptions, how do we cross it, if we want to, or how do we live with it, if we don’t?
Are we recruiting, interviewing, and hiring people that are self-aware about why they want to be here?
- And if we aren’t, how do we get them to leave in a way that honors them and makes space for the kind of people we want to be here?

Answering all (or any) of these questions honestly and clearly, requires the courage to speak up, be in the room, stay engaged, and be open to self-critique.

And in case you’re wondering if this all actually works, well here’s a little something to watch…

[Opinion] We Get More of What We Reward

When the emotional labor of addressing a dispute with a customer, a client, a co-worker, or a boss, is the work we don’t want to do, we revert to doing the work that makes us the most comfortable.

This is usually the task that we were hired to do in the first place.

A graphic designer, instead of confronting her client with what she knows about design, graphics, colors, and what is appealing to the human eye in practice, rather than in theory, will instead revert to the statement “Well, it’s what the client asked for.” And then do the bare minimum on the project.

A human services professional, instead of respectfully establishing boundaries with a client who has engaged in bad/poor behavior in the past, will allow that client to continue to run roughshod over him. He will revert to the statement “Well, I hope that the client changes this time.” And then he will do the maximum to ensure that the client follows the same rules and policies that didn’t change the client’s behavior before.

A factory worker, instead of confronting co-workers about shoddy work, or not showing up on time, will allow that co-worker to continue the behavior unabated. The worker will shrug her shoulders sagely and think “The boss should do something. After all, it’s not my problem.” And then the worker will start to come in a little bit later, and a little bit later, and a little bit later, until her arrival time matches that of her tardy co-worker.

A manager, instead of engaging in radical self-awareness work and self-confrontation about how they can improve as a leader and manager, will engage in radical “doubling-down” on driving the team forward to accomplish a seemingly unattainable goal. The manager will firmly think “That’s why they’re here. To work and get a paycheck. I have enough responsibilities without babysitting them as well.” And then the manager will make excuses as various members of the team quit, transfer to other parts of the organization, or gradually become “C” players, committed radically to performing just at the average.

The ironclad law of life is that we get more of what we subsidize and we get less of what we tax. When we subsidize laziness, disrespect, cynicism, disappointment, ignorance, appeals to “the rules,” or “the policies” we get more of the same types of behavioral responses in the organizations we seek to lead. When we tax emotional labor, self-awareness, leadership, insight, and open conversation, we get less of the behavioral responses that will raise up our organizations.

And yet, human intuition is to avoid, prevaricate, be selfish, be lazy and ultimately, to do the bare minimum at scale. This is the work—hidden behind the cover of our job/task descriptions—that we think we are hired to do, from founders and managers to employees and interns.

But, what if we’ve intuited the wrong thing?

What if the work that we should be subsidizing is the work that negates the effects of what we think is “natural” and “just the way that it is”?

What if we not only thought differently, but acted differently?

[Podcast] Earbud_U, Season Four, Episode # 8 – Jaimee Dorris, Web Personality, Creative, Entrepreneur

[Podcast] Earbud_U, Season Four, Episode # 8 – Jaimee Dorris, Web Personality, Creative, Entrepreneur

[powerpress]

Living out loud in the American South.

Incongruity. Building for the future. Making a plan and executing. Pivoting into something else. Building a brand that lasts.

Our guest today, Jaimee Dorris, wants everybody on the Mississippi Gulf Coast to know her name. And she’ll get there. By building a stage, one audience member at a time.

The idea of “build it and they will come” is as old as—well—advertising itself. But it doesn’t happen overnight. And that’s where the personality of an entrepreneur really has to kick in. To double-down, not on failure, but on success. And to turn seeming “dead-ends” into profitable streets that link engaged audience members to a much larger story.

This is not a political podcast, and you all don’t really care about what my personal political positions are, but…

In light of recent electoral events in United States, this interview stands as both a beacon of hope for those who are looking for hope and it stands as a refutation of realities for others.

And in a political world where it appears that the fundamentals under girding the process were changed…well…fundamentally this year, our interview is a reminder that all has not quite changed just yet.

What has happened is that, as my grandmother would say, things have become sharpened— that is, further revealed—and in that process of revelation, we must all look at ourselves closer than we ever have before.

We must examine our motives, our thoughts, our inner drives, and our outer limits, in order to build the best, most worthy, selves that we can in this challenging—and changing—new world.

That revelation should bring us all the hope we need.

Alright. Well that’s it…. Let’s get into it!

Connect with Jaimee in all the ways you can below:

Website (Home of the MS Congeniality Show!): http://www.jaimeedorris.com/

Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/mrsjaimeed

YouTube: https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCHxKWvXbQeWaTyKMZjHBbKw

LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/jaimee-dorris-63064914

Twitter: https://twitter.com/mrsjaimeed

Network Leap

The deep revelation of the revolution called the Internet, is that it continues to demonstrate that networks are the most valuable resource that an individual, a corporation, or a government possesses in order to leverage innovation, change, and advancement.

Of course, during the height of the Industrial Revolution last century, no one understood how to measure the revenue generated by any kind of network (personal or professional), but everyone knew somebody who had gotten hired via a referral, or who had made a purchase from strong word-of-mouth.

The Internet shows the power of such networks virtually (have you bought an online course lately?) even as it erodes the networks between people in the “real” world.

This is a particularly troubling realization for organizations built at scale, i.e. “real world” companies, from old line manufacturers (Ford) to healthcare companies (name your national hospital conglomerate of choice here).

The fact that a network matters more than physical size, monetary resources, access, etc., on the Internet is the main reason why corporate mergers (i.e. AT&T + Every Other Media Company You Can Name on the Planet) won’t do much to increase the overall market share of individual eyeballs and mass audience attention. The mass approach doesn’t work (because of the network impact of the Long Tail) and such mergers are the flailing attempts of declining industries to remain relevant in the face of the only thing that scales from individual to individual.

The web of the network.

Some sectors are provincially beginning to understand the impact of the presence of the network in the physical world, with the growing talk around the Internet-of-Things. But this is just the beginning.

The fact that the presence of the network matters more than the size of the network, is why Google will eventually get out of the search business altogether (probably around the middle of this century or so) and be the first Internet based company to burst from your computer or mobile phone application, out into the physical world.

Search matters less and less when the network matters more and more to accomplishing revenue, connection and growth goals at scale. Sure, Facebook may “win” the networking wars against search in their own little walled garden, but Google is planning on escaping to larger territories in the physical world where the presence of a network generates more revenues, because of the inability and myopia of Industrial Revolution based organizations to appreciate the impact of a network at scale.

These larger territories where networks aren’t as valued (yet) include the physical connectivity infrastructure of a city (Google Fiber), the physical place where individuals spend time commuting to work (Google Car) and the place where individuals spend the time connecting with others physically AND virtually (Google A.I. projects).

The fact that the network matters more than the technology facilitating the development of the network, is why virtual reality companies (Oculus Rift) and augmented reality games (Pokemon Go!) will be on the edges of individuals’ and companies’ radars for some time to come. The real “killer” app for both virtual reality and augmented reality technology will be the one that brings connectivity and an already established network into the new technology. And then pivots to connect that network to a larger, physical world.

For companies that can’t envision the leap to network based thinking (but who have executives and others on their cell phones texting, emailing, messaging, and otherwise building their virtual network constantly) here are a few suggestions:

Build the physical network between schools, industry, and government in your local town, or municipality. There is nothing less sexy or interesting than sitting at a table talking about how things were better economically in the middle of the Industrial Revolution, but that lament must be part of a larger discussion of expanding the web and the network using the same thinking and acting that individuals are doing virtually daily.

Realize that money is no object. Money is a story. Fear of change and resistance to the present reality and the future possibility are the objects. Recently the question came up in a workshop with an organization in transition “How do ‘crack’ the Resistance?” One way is to build trust. The other way is to change the thinking of the organization around what constitutes a “revenue generating” activity, and what does not.

Realize that there isn’t power in hoarding knowledge, access, or a carefully constructed network anymore. There isn’t power in hoarding money anymore (no matter how much cash on the balance sheets the Fortune 500 is hoarding). There isn’t even power in hoarding connections to politicians, power-brokers, or personalities anymore. The power is in sharing, reciprocity and building trust across boundaries, rather than busily building moats.

Or walls.

The full power of the Internet—in its ability to shape how humans build, how humans communicate, and how humans create network value—has yet to be fully explored.

We are at the beginning of a revolution.