Three Places to Thrash

When faced with a project there are three places to thrash:

Early—before the project begins.

Middle—as the project is proceeding.

Late—as the project ends.

When you (or your team) thrashes early, brainstorming becomes a way to develop new ideas. Speed and immediacy become the primary goals of early thrashing: Speed to actionable ideas and immediacy to the implementation of action, moving toward accomplishing end-of-project goals.

When you (or your team) thrashes in the middle of a project, brainstorming becomes a place to hide. Hiding emotionally, “getting to know your team,” or struggling to decide about the efficacy or practicality of an idea, become the unstated, primary goals. Speed becomes less important than looking good to peers, and groupthink really kicks in at this point, bogging down the implementation process.

When you (or your team) thrashes at the end of a project, brainstorming becomes a place of panic, anxiety, and on some teams (or with you) a place of abject fear. The combination of pressure to ship something out the door encourages a mindset and attitude focused around speed (but for negative reasons) and impatience with people and processes. The implementation process recedes in the face of the attitude of “just get it done.”

Thrashing—that is brainstorming a direction, deciding on an approach, planning a process, managing opinions and conflicts, and implementing a plan for action—should be done early, rather than late if you’re really interested (or your team is really interested) in shipping a product, idea, or service out the door and direct to the market.

The Privacy of Memory

We lose a little of ourselves when we outsource our memory to Google.

But not in the obvious way that we think of.

What we lose in the privacy (some would say inaccuracy) of memory is the ability to forget.

And to be forgotten.

The privacy of memory and the palaces that we build in our minds of truths, facts, lies and stories is more valuable than we know to preserving the best parts of our fragile humanity.

In the rush to electronically preserve the truth in non-debatable, and factual ways, we are losing the pleasure (and the privilege) of the privacy of choosing what we want to remember—and what we have the grace, forgiveness and ability to forget.

When we can call out each other using facts we like that work for us (and avoid or dismiss the facts that don’t), our social media communications and interactions become about expressing the rawest of emotions with immediacy, in the face of overwhelming facts that are preserved as eminent, and indisputable truth.

Google can’t help us here. Neither can artificial intelligence. Neither can another social communication platform.

Only human beings can preserve the privacy of memory in relationship with other human beings.

Loyalty is not a Byproduct of Trust

Loyalty is not a byproduct of trust.

We fundamentally miss this fact in human interactions.

Trust occurs because a relationship builds over time into a state whereby transactional withdrawals can be made from the invisible account of engagement.

Loyalty occurs when people choose to engage with each other out of habit in an unthinking, uncritical way. This fact makes loyalty a particularly pernicious state because when the fundamentals underlying the engagement change—but the thinking about the fundamentals remains habitual and uncritical—the parties are forced into a place where they must shift their focus.

Media interactions, brand interactions, organizational interactions, and even some individual interactions rely on the posture that loyalty = trust or that trust = loyalty, but the fact is, most interactions are based on neither trust, nor loyalty, but instead are based in authority, ambivalence, storytelling, habit, and other factors.

When the bonds of loyalty are broken, without a commensurate rethinking of the bonds in the first place, situations and conflicts arise that lack the drivers of ethical clarity and moral fiber. And then, anarchy reigns, trust erodes, and loyalty becomes a relic of a naïve past.

Work on trust first.

Worry about loyalty not at all.

[Strategy] The Wisdom of Solomon Matters

There was once two women, who both claimed ownership of one child.

In an attempt to determine to whom, the baby actually belonged, (or who was the biological mother) the king decided to physically threaten the child in the presence of the two women through proposing to bisect the child.

The women who was the child’s mother protested. The other women kept silent and the baby was returned to its biological mother.

This story is ancient and hails from a time before lie detectors, biometric scans, and even neurolinguistics; which is why, it cuts to the heart of two human truths:

The women who claimed ownership of the children were both driven by ineluctable inner needs.
Threatening to bisect the baby focused the women’s attention on those things that matter.

Both of these truths are self-evident in a negotiation scenario. But here’s the thing: Sometime, it’s okay to let the baby be bisected.

Sometimes, parties need to experience the shock and trauma of loss, but not on their terms, in order to return to the table and negotiate for a better outcome.

When dealing with human lives (and “baby splitting” happens all the time in preparations for warfare) parties often count the cost and then decide to go ahead with a disastrous action. And out of that disaster comes new opportunities to focus parties on what matters, rather than getting trapped in the weeds of irrelevancies that may have previously dominated the conversation.

Parties in conflict can be lazy, deceptive, self-serving, myopic, and greedy. Clarity of purpose, drive, focus on attaining tangible outcomes that matter, and developing a relationship with the other party often stall in the real world.

And it’s in the real world, outside of the theories of how human beings should and ought to work, that the wisdom of a mediator matters the most.

[Advice] Packaging Your Workshop

Think for a moment about product packaging:

Everything that we buy, from dish soap to artesian water, comes in some type of package. Being the rational consumers that we are, we often tell ourselves that the shape of the container, the way that the container is delivered to us, or even the design and colors on the outside of the package doesn’t influence our decision to purchase.

The more honest, irrational consumer, however, will admit that all those factors influenced their purchasing decision, but they won’t admit it in a way that can be quantified, researched and measured in a way that will produce repeatable results.

Instead, they’ll just say “I liked the bottle.” Or even “The wine tastes different in this glass versus that glass.”

In the fields of marketing, advertising, and sales, the psychology of influence has been used for years to design packaging that has sold millions of units of products over decades. Proctor and Gamble doesn’t just exist because of fancy investments.

The peace builder who wants to sell a workshop, seminar, or coaching, should examine closely the impact of influence in three areas, if they want to have a successful sales career selling solutions to conflicts to a conflict comfortable, and peace process skeptical, public:

When selling an intangible product (peace, health, stress relief) or service (legal help, social work, therapy) it’s important to remember that rationality ceases to be a driver of the decision making process to buy: Potential clients may claim that rationality drove their decision to pursue peacemaking as a process, but typically what drove their decison making was the rise of their emotions around their conflict, that encouraged them toward your workshop, seminar, or coaching offer.

The same emotional content that drives conflict escalation (and encourages de-escalation) drives product (peace, health, stress relief) or service (legal help, social work, therapy) purchases: This fact makes it hard for the peace builder to sell, which is why their marketing efforts must be robust, always on, and always human.

No one remembers what you told them, but potential clients will remember how you made them feel: This statement sometimes reads as facile, but the fact of the matter is, potential clients are searching for a feeling—of trust, professionalism, confidence, security, competency, etc.—before they even see your marketing materials or hear your sales pitch online. This is why the rise of video (and live streaming) for the peace builder is such a critical tool for driving and converting sales. All of the emotional content comes through in a personal appeal via video.

Packaging a product (peace, health, stress relief) or service (legal help, social work, therapy) is more a matter of determining the “emotional tone” a peace builder would like to strike with the market, and then championing that tone to close sales.

And all without being unethical.

-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] New Triggers

Emotions then judgment then language.

The old advice no longer holds in addressing the language of conflict. The new advice can best be articulated as “Sticks and stones may break my bones, and words will really hurt me.”

We often focus on the language of conflict, to avoid addressing the structures of emotions that actually drive the language.

Focusing on the language allows us to hide effectively and to avoid doing the courageous work of addressing conflicts at their root.

Focusing on the language allows us to anchor people to positions, using the language of principles, without ever addressing people’s expressed needs.

Focusing on language allows us to continue to rest comfortably on our assumptions, prejudices, biases, and pre-conceived notions about the other party (or parties) without ever doing the hard work of addressing the impact of their needs on us.

Focusing on language allows us to render quick judgment, maintain the shorthand of conflict, and to continue to allow our own emotions to go unexamined, without self-awareness or change.

Make no mistake, words have meanings, they tell stories, set the table for conflict, and can be used as weapons to create problems.

But if we’re going to be successful in a future less and less defined by equanimity and peace, then we’d better get really good at overcoming our thin-slicing, our first impressions, and our reactions to language—and the words ensconced within them.

Otherwise, we face a conflict fueled future of escalation around eggshell sensitivities and trigger warnings.

-Peace Be With You All-

[Advice] What to Do After You Thin-Slice

Thin slicing happens when the human mind shifts quickly through first impressions, intuition based on past experiences, and current information, and makes a judgment about a message, a person, or an idea.

Thin slicing is at the root of snap judgments, continuing conflicts, nagging disagreements, and fights that never seem to go away; it is near to the root of our “fight,” “flight,” and “fear” reactions.
Thin slicing is at the bottom of the contempt that we have for people and ideas without knowing why we feel that; it is at the bottom of the disgust response; it is at the bottom of most divorces, and other traumatic relational breaks.
Thin slicing is at the core of the old saying “You don’t get a second chance to make a first impression.”

The moment after you make a judgment—and mostly snap judgments are the first judgments made—is the most important moment, because without training and constant vigilance, thin slicing and snap judgments are often not examined, second-guessed, or unpacked.

The training, constant vigilance, and self-awareness to examine your own thin-slicing process, opens you up to feelings of empathy, understanding, and to the uncomfortable feeling of being consciously incompetent.

Particularly as you wrestle mentally, emotionally, and spiritually with a challenging idea, a person who was raised differently than you were, or to current information that supersedes past information you believed was right.

The media likes to ask the “gotcha” question of electoral candidates and celebrities, “Do you have any regrets about ‘x’ decision?” Many political candidates, and celebrities, when asked that question, tend to respond historically with words which reveal a lack of training, a lack of constant self-questioning and minimal mental, emotional, and spiritual vigilance.

Yet, here’s the challenge: If you can’t even handle being challenged on your thin-slicing tendencies on a daily basis, then expecting that a candidate running for office, a celebrity, or some other person to do what you cannot, is a childish expectation.

In a world where the penalties for making the “wrong” decision, are higher and higher, it is incumbent upon you, me, and everyone else, to start being more vigilant after we’re done thin slicing our world.

-Peace Be With You All-

[Strategy] Open A.I. Disagreements

In a world with responsive, predictive artificial intelligence, operating behind the veneer of the world in which humans operate, a philosophical question arises:

Will the very human tendency toward conflicts increase or decrease in a world where the frictions between us and the objects we have created is reduced?

From the Open A.I project to research being done at MIT, Google, and Facebook, the race is on to set the table for the technology of world of one hundred years from now.

As with all great advances in human development (and the development of artificial intelligence capabilities would rival going to the Moon) the applications of artificial intelligence at first will be bent towards satisfying our basest desires and human appetites and then move up the hierarchy of needs.

But a lot of this research and development is being done by scientists, developers, entrepreneurs, and others (technologists all) who—at least in their public pronouncements—seem to view people and our emotions, thoughts, feelings and tendencies toward irrationality and conflict, as a hindrance rather than as a partner.

Or, to put it in “computer speak”: In the brave new world of artificial intelligence research, humanity’s contributions–and decision making–is too often viewed as a bug, rather than as a feature.

However, design thinking demands that humans—and their messy irrational problems and conflicts—be placed at the center of such thinking rather than relegated to the boundaries and the edges. Even as humans create machines that can learn deeply, perform complex mathematics, created logical algorithms, and generate better solutions to complex future problems than the human who created the problems and conflicts in the first place.

Eventually, humans will create intelligence that will mimic our responses so closely that it will be hard to tell whether those responses are “live” or merely “Memorex.”

But until that day comes, mediators, arbitrators, litigators, social workers, therapists, psychologists, anthropologists, philosophers, poets, and writers, need to get into the research rooms, the think tanks and onto the boards of the foundations and the stages at the conferences, with the technologists to remind them that there is more to the future than mere mathematics.

Or else, the implications for the consequences of future conflicts (human vs. human and even machine vs. human) could be staggering.

-Peace Be With You All-

[Advice] The Productivity of White Space

The human eye is a powerful bundle of tissues, nerves and liquid.

As the most complicated mechanism (short of the brain) in the human body, the human eye can see, take in information and transmit that information for interpretation in the brain.

One of the first things that a practicing artist must learn while still a student, is the value of white space: Those places in the piece of art where there is “nothing,” instead of “something.” The artist must dismiss her natural tendecy to trust what her eyes—that confuse the crowded appearance of the world, with meaning—see is “there,” and search diligently for what is not.

There are a lot articles on the Internet, which fall into the genre of the “new self-help.” These articles focus around “hacking” your life to become more “productive.” Some of them offer valuable information in the form of listicles, without much explanatory content, research based findings, or even a really good argument about how to implement all of the tips at a practical level. This species of article has become so rampant in parts of the Internet, that they are approaching the level of pornography in their ubiquity.

But what do the human eye, seeing, art production, and the “new self-help” all have in common?

The lack of—or the crowding out of—white space in the world.

The human mind has a limited attention span.

And the messages from various signal bearers (i.e. family members, neighbors, co-workers, etc.) tend to “crowd into” the human mind, creating distractions that cause a loss of focus, a loss of clarity, and sometimes, a loss of personal purpose. The solution to this limited attention span problem (or limited bandwidth problem) is not to read another productivity hack article on the Internet and then to vainly attempt to apply its proscriptions.

The solution is to focus ruthlessly on carving out more white space.

More absence of messages that don’t matter, in order to catch the signal of messages that do matter. In principle, this just reads like another “new self-help” proscription with no basis in practical fact, so here are three initial questions to ask yourself before carving out more white space in your personal interactions, your personal productivity, and even in your personal perspective on the world:

Is this action I’m taking right now (or think about taking later) going to give me the highest value beyond just this moment (or the next)?

Am I providing value to someone else by having this interaction with them, or am I not?

Am I playing the long game, the short game, or not playing a “game” at all by having/not having this interaction, taking on this task, or engaging with this person?

Through discipline and with an understanding of the power of absence, your human attention span can focus on the things that matter, and be more productive.

-Peace Be With You All-

[ICYMI] Top 5 Workplace Conflict Stories

There are 5 workplace conflict stories that we tell ourselves.

They are based on the five typical stories that people have always told themselves, whether camped around a fire in the woods, or in the dark watching a Hollywood blockbuster.

Except that these stories have different acts, because…well…they happen at work.

The Quest story typically describes a hero’s pursuit of an unattainable goal. At work, the words that begin this story are “I worked really hard on this project and now…”
The Love story at work typically describes the process of falling in love with an organization, a project or an ideal. At work, the words that begin this story typically are “I really want to get along with everybody, but…”
The Revenge story is the one story at work that is typically mixed up with a lot of other stories. And that’s typical because this story tends to permeate most workplace conflicts. At work the words that begin this story are “I know that I was right and here’s why…”
The Stranger-In-A-Strange Land story is the hardest to identify at work because this story may hide a passive aggressive Revenge story. Sometimes, the words that begin this story are “I don’t know what anyone else is doing here, but I think…”
Finally, the Rags-To-Riches Story (or Riches-To-Rags, take your pick) is the story that comes from entry level and new people in an organization, but to other, more seasoned employees, it can come off as annoying. It typically begins with “I know I just showed up here, but at my last job this happened…”

Thinking about those five stories, how many have you related to yourself (or to others) in order to justify conflict situations and responses in your workplace?

-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/