[Opinion] What We Subsidize…

What a society taxes it gets less of, and what a society subsidizes it gets more of.

For various social, economic, psychological, emotional, and other reasons, societies around the world, throughout history, have taxed peace, while subsidizing war.

This is not a statement of judgment, just one of objective observation.

We honor dead soldiers, and only occasionally talk about dead peacemakers.

We have thousands of anonymous soldiers who go out and make war, as we have thousands of anonymous peacemakers, who go out and make peace every day. But only one group has a flame burning eternally for them at Arlington Cemetery in the US.

We honor the dead soldier, because we (and by ‘we’ I mean humanity as whole) value valor, honor, respect, dignity, and the ideals of revenge and justice, far more than we revere those same values at the peacemaking table. This dichotomy is the most obvious at scale, where there are holidays honoring the sacrifice of life of the soldier, but no parades in your town for the generations of deceased divorce mediators.

These are not a statements of judgment, just ones of factual observation.

When we do choose to honor the diplomat, or the statesman, who brought us peace, we tend to honor the ones most vociferously who also guided us through war. Churchill is lauded far more than Chamberlain.

Unfortunately, as was pointed out years ago by the band Pink Floyd, the statesmen turned diplomats are the very same ones who sat in the rear of the line (or sat in an office back at home) and commanded “Go forward!” even as the soldiers in front, out on the line, died by the thousands.

Young men have always died valiantly fighting old men’s wars.

The fact is, we will always have more people willing to make war, than we will have people willing to make peace. This is a sad fact of the fallen state of humanity.

This is not a statement of judgment, just one of spiritual observation.

On this Memorial Day, let us take a moment to remember those who made the peace, as well as honor those who fell in the war, because, if humanity is to move forward in any kind of meaningful way, we need to subsidize the peace, and place a higher tax on the war.

-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] On Winning at Nuclear Poker

Nuclear weapons are a touchy subject in geopolitical negotiations.

Almost everyone involved in the negotiations around nuclear weapons knows what the outcomes of launching them against another country could be, which is why, following the collapse of the former Soviet Union, regionalism in arms races became a geopolitical concern.

But in reality, the issue with nuclear weapons is not really the weapons themselves. In reality, the issues around negotiating with developers of nuclear weapons is the attitudes, motivations, and psychological desires of the people who run the governments that are either developing nuclear weapons (North Korea, Iran, etc.) or who already have them (Russia, the US, China, etc.)

This is similar to negotiations that go on around issues that are less geopolitical and more commonplace. When you are negotiating with your wife about where to go to dinner, her mindset, attitude, body language, motivations, and your previous history with her, matter more to the outcome of that negotiation, than where you eat.

In our individual and corporate lives there are many nuclear weapons that we hide inside of our interactions. Some of them take years to build and only a minute to deploy and to wreck destruction.

We often don’t talk about our tendency to build up resentment, unforgiveness, anger, bitterness, and hatreds, until they are primed and ready to launch. Exploding on another party. Usually, not the party that we want to have them explode upon.

That person (a parent, a child, a former spouse, a family member, a neighbor, a politician) is usually either too far away emotionally, or too distant physically, for us to actually launch our carefully curated and developed personal stockpile of nukes upon them.

Mob behavior, direct democracy, these are both example of personal nuclear behavior writ large, at scale, and just as destructive as at the personal level. Nuclear poker is played at this level as well: by politicians, pundits, professional prognosticators and others. But here’s the thing, from the geopolitical level all the way to your individual level of your individual world:

Nobody knows how anybody else is going to respond to a nuclear strike—either personal or global.
The appearance of being crazy, or dysfunctional, enough to destroy everything can sometimes act as a deterrent to people actually going ahead and pushing the button to destroy everything—either personally or globally.

The personal (and global) question in any negotiation where the threat of nuclear destruction is on the table, is: How crazy do you want to be to ‘win’ at nuclear poker?

-Peace Be With You All-

[Strategy] Chessboxing Motivation and Morale

Motivation is about individual effort and achievement.

It’s about having internal drive that gets you personally engaged with something (a situation, a person, an interest, or an idea) that animates you. Motivation can be driven from a place of positivity, or it can be driven from a place of negativity, but either way, it’s from inside of you.

Motivation to act can be sparked by other people, but much of the time, motivation has to be driven by what people think about themselves and their place in the world. A lot this is driven by where individuals believe that their control comes from. Some people believe that other people and situations control them. Some people believe that they make their own decisions and that other people and situations have little to no impact on them.

Morale is about team efforts and team achievement.

It’s about having multiple motivations working together and “clicking” with each other. Teams go through cycles of forming, storming, norming, performing, and adjourning. Morale is about how all their motivations work together. This is where conflicts arise. This is where friction happens when one person’s locus of control (and personal focus) doesn’t match another person’s locus of control (and their personal focus) on the team.

Morale is something that exists—or it doesn’t. We use terms such as “cultural fit” or “alignment” to describe the pursuit of morale. We often focus so much on the tactics and hacks to shortcut the only true way to build morale: Building relationships.

But building relationships is not sexy. It’s not tactical, or strategic. Building relationships is about focusing on one-person at a time, discovering their deep motivations, and leveraging those motivations for the good of overall team morale. Building relationships is about knowing when to increase tension, when to put in some slack, and when to let go.

If you are looking for the next big idea to build morale on your team, or in your organization, start with asking three questions:

What do we do here? Not what do we produce here, or what do think we do here, or what does the market say that we do here. But what is it that we actually do here? This core question will take you months to get the answer to.
Why should what we do here be important to anybody else, other than us? This question is not answered by the typical bromides of “we are for everyone.” No organization, no product, no personality, no philosophy, no idea, no service is for “everyone.” If you can answer this question honestly then you can go about the painful—but revelatory—process of architecting who’s on your team—and who isn’t.
Who do we want on our team? Too many organizations (from start-ups to established Fortune 1,000 Companies) begin with this question, get stuck on the second one, and never ask the first. Trying to architect backward from this question to build a team is like trying to unbirth a baby. It doesn’t work. This is the least interesting and relevant question, because if you answer the first two honestly, then this last one becomes almost an afterthought.

Conflicts, disagreements, and “differences of opinion” will happen between passionate people. However, there is no reason to consider those realities in the box of “poor” or “low” morale. The morale comes after the motivation, which comes after the architecting.

-Peace Be With You All-

[Strategy] Burnout Over The Pacific

When you talk with divorce and family lawyers about divorces, separations, or even “conscious uncouplings” a statement they always make in the course of the conversation focuses around their amazement that couple choose to go through a litigation based process.

In particular, their statement tends to focus on the fact that litigation takes time and is more emotionally draining than mediation, and yet many couples would prefer to go through that process than another, more collaborative one.

There are many points to consider from this observation, but there are three immediate ones that could be instructive and strategic for your conflict situation—even if you’re not getting a divorce, experiencing a separation, or have decided to “consciously uncouple”:

A desire to see “justice done” is really a desire to see our will done unto the other person who hurt us. Which really means, when we go to a third party (whether a lawyer or a judge—and sometimes even a mediator) we aren’t looking to grow collaboratively with the other party out of a difficult relationship. We’re really looking for revenge and a reckoning.
Collaboration is not about “being friends again” or even forgiving the other party. Collaboration is simultaneously a selfish and selfless act of growing with that other person (who sometimes you have a deeply personal relationship with) so that the relationship can end in a way that benefits both of you. Mediation is a collaborative process. Litigation is always a competitive process.
Litigating not to “lose” is not the same as not collaborating to “win.” The fact of the matter is, “winning” and “losing” are black and white concepts that have little to nothing to do with the facts of the dispute, the relationships involved, the values on the table, the positions and interests of the parties involved, or the outcome in question. But parties in a dispute often view not “losing” (or outright “winning”) as the only satisfactory strategy that can justify emotional decisions made in all of those areas. Which is why litigated disputes always end up feeling emotionally hollow and are often decided—in hindsight—to have been a waste of both time and energy.

Many people in disputes, conflicts, disagreements, and who are having “differences of opinion” with other parties, experience a sense of burnout throughout the processes of both litigation and mediation. But the question on the table is “Do you prefer your burnout slow and steady, or quick and dirty?”

Answering that question, individually and corporately, with honesty, self-awareness, and insight into the other party, can lead to picking the best process for managing your particular conflict.

-Peace Be With You All-

[Opinion] 3 Thoughts That May (Or May Not) Intersect…

Three thoughts that may (or may not) intersect with each other:

Thought #1: There’s a lot of high profile, persistent, whining going on in the space of web publishing, content creation, and even in the scrappy world of podcasting. This phenomenon of whining is also extending into commentary around entrepreneurship as the venture capital money that has been floating big bets for years begins to dry up. The thing is though, if you are a web publisher, or a podcaster, or a content creator, or a struggling entrepreneur, the whining has got to stop. The landscape of the Internet is infinite, no matter what the big digital brands are telling you through their marketing.

Thought #2: Attention and awareness are the coin of the realm right now in any digital space, and all you need to be successful (whatever that means) is 1,000 people willing to bet on your reputation, have a relationship with you, then give you revenue, and make a referral for your service or product. The idea that the digital system can be gamified through creating fake followers, fake awareness, and false hype is dying as fast as the money dries up.

Thought #3: In the digital space, and in our off line, real life interactions lately, the substance of truth is seen to not be as marketable as the illusion of symbolism. But this is a false paradigm. Substance based in truth has always grow more followers, attracted more awareness, and generated more revenues (in trust first and money last) for more people that anything else tried ever.

The problem comes when many people—from celebrities to the average man on the street—buy into the frothy hype of the short-term gain at the expense of the long-term relationship. As the bubbles pop all over the place and as web publishers, content creators, entrepreneurs, and others have to get back to the substance of building products, let’s hope they focus on communicating the truth—no matter how scary it is.

-Peace Be With You All-

[Strategy] The Law of Compound Interest

The fact of the matter is no one can truly penetrate another person’s conflict experience.

We have fooled ourselves into thinking that, with all the social proofing via digital tools, and the peacock-like social media displays that we all put on every day, that we know other people’s inner lives.

But we don’t.

This is why we’re often surprised when a person casts aside the carefully constructed false mask of their digital life and shows the warts and all. We become fascinated, not with the honesty and truth, not even with the vulnerability; we become fascinated with the act of being honest and vulnerable. But we shy away from interacting with that person on a deeper level.

Conflicts, disagreements, “differences of opinion,” frustrations, expose this dichotomy in a person-to-person, face-to-face interaction. We want the other person to change (I had a person in a workshop recently ask me “Why shouldn’t the other person see that I’m angry!? Why shouldn’t they see that they’ve pissed me off!?”) because we want an outcome that benefits us in the short-term.

Without really unwinding the gossamer of strands that got us into that situation with that person in the first place.

The law of compound interest is particularly instructive when thinking about this. The law basically states that interest—over time—compounds slowly and inexorably, a quarter point or so at a time. Until, when the party who owes finally takes an interest in paying back the loaned amount of money, the interest has built up to such a point that they can’t. The law of compound interest is what led many in the ancient world to despise money-lenders (religious prohibitions against usury), or on the opposite scale, to lend money out at outrageous terms and then when the amount plus interest could not be paid back, to frame the lack of payment in moral terms and throw the borrower (and even their families) out of a community (debtors’ prisons).

The law of compound interest applies just as keenly when thinking about how the responses and reactions to conflicts, disagreements, “differences of opinion,” and frustrations build up over time, until the reaction from both parties is to explode in anger—or shut-down into passivity. There is no resolution from such cycles of build-up, explosion, retreat, build-up, because every new cycle builds up new strands of complication as surely as compound interest builds on the loan principle of the the conflict. Until it’s so big and heavy that banishment from a community—or a situation, or a relationship—seems like the only answer.

Engaging with conflict in this mental and emotional framework seems scary and requires a person to be as vulnerable as they would have to be if they ceased to perform for a digital audience of “friends” and began to get honest and vulnerable. Resolving the conflict in this mental and emotional framework seems easy because resolution implies a release of the tension, compounded over time, from the uncomfortable friction of “dealing with this person.”

But all the tactics and strategies; all the tools and the verbal jujitsu; all the “hacks” and improvements; all the surface engagement and “easy” resolution; all of these things are just methods to avoid vulnerability, to indulge in the satisfaction of releasing our anger as a weapon rather than as a tool, and in the end only compound the problem, one quarter point at a time.

-Peace Be With You All-

[Advice] We Are Surrounded By The Remains Of Average…

Have you looked at a factory building lately?

If you walk around your town (either America or globally) you can see the remains of burned out factory buildings, corporate office complexes, and even industrial parks that lie empty, vandalized, or half occupied by struggling commodity businesses.

If you walk around your town (mostly in America) you can see the remains of a K-12 education system that used to be the model of the world. Inside many school buildings, there remain students that sit in rows, raise their hands obediently, only speak when they are called upon, are taught to pass the test, and when they don’t or can’t perform in those ways, they are labeled and sometimes forgotten.

If you walk around your town (mostly in the formerly Western World) you can see the remains of churches. Sure, the seats are full in some buildings, but increasingly, buildings are emptying and churches are closing. And more and more there is the trumpeting of people who claim irreligiousness (or disbelief) and in response more and more churches are coasting on the past Spirit (both financial and otherwise) that used to there, and hoping that a positive change (that resembles past glories) will come.

What do the physical buildings, the educational system, and the church all have in common in your town? Or mine?

They are the remains of a time when being just average was “ok.” They are the remains of the third greatest revolution in human history, the Industrial Revolution. They are all that remains of a promise that was over engineered, over sold, and over bought: The consumer (or employee) can just show up at work, do average work just a little better year on year, and then retire and be “ok.” In addition, the consumer (or employees) children will be educated to a standard that will be just a little better each year, and the family will get a little safer each year, in a neighborhood that will be a little better each year, and everything will be “ok.” And, of course, the church will require just a little more (usually money) from the consumer every year, and this will be “ok.”

We are surrounded by the remains of “ok” in a time when “ok” is no longer good enough. And when the disconnect between “ok” and reality reaches a breaking point, we get demagogues, marketers, con men, flim-flam men, and others selling us a bill of goods about a return to a glorious past, rather than the hard truth about the realistic future:

Here’s the hard truth:

“Ok” was never good enough. And doing “just a little better” than last year isn’t going to get the same outcome financially, morally, ethically, or materially anymore–if it ever really did in the first place. The greatest psychological block of our time for people to overcome (at least in America) is this idea that average work, average effort, and average outcomes are still “ok”—even as everything we see economically, spiritually, and materially at the start of the fourth greatest worldwide revolution proves otherwise.

From our physical infrastructure to our internal responses to conflicts, meaning, and mattering, we’ve got to stop walking around our towns (either physically or metaphorically) trying to recapture “ok” and instead shift to inspiring people at every level to consistently pursue better than “ok” to get to best.

-Peace Be With You All-

[Advice] Broadcasting, Sharing, and Interacting

There are subtle differences between broadcasting, sharing, and interacting in any conflict scenario.

Broadcasting is what live streaming and most posting on social media is about. Broadcasting is an act that—by itself without more thought behind it—is deeply selfish and desirous of attention for its mere existence. Broadcasting a suicide attempt, or broadcasting a cat video, fall into this same category.

Sharing is what much of blogging, email newsletter creation, and some social posting is about. Sharing is an act that—by itself without more thought behind it—begins a collaborative communication process between a creator and their audience. The audience can be a Dunbar’s Number of close friends, or it can be an audience of a few thousand “followers” but sharing is about skimming the top of a building a collaborative relationship.

Interacting is what broadcasting, plus sharing, plus intentionality, is about. Interacting involves going past merely acting to prove the existence of a product, service, philosophy, or process, and goes directly to creating for an audience and their desires. Interacting means engaging actively with everyone in the audience (even those people we’d rather not engage with) and is the penultimate act of courage.

In a conflict, broadcasting is the equivalent of telling a story about your conflict repeatedly, in order to create separation between “us” and “them.”

In a conflict, sharing is the equivalent of attending training and hoping that you remember one thing that you can apply afterward.

In a conflict, interacting is the equivalent of going beyond telling your story and attending training, and taking the time and effort to personally engage with personal development around your responses and reactions to conflicts in your life.

Broadcasting, sharing and interacting are happening at all levels in our society; and, our digital tools have provided us with the ease of communicating faster and faster. But this also means that our responses to conflicts in our lives become more shallow and immediate, even as the reactions cut us emotionally at a deeper and deeper level.

[Advice] The Law of Average

It used to be ok to be, well, “ok.”

It used to be “ok” to do good enough work at home with your kids, in the neighborhood with your community, and in your church with your time.

It used to be “ok” to just show up, do what you’re told, don’t ask too many questions, and be the nail that hammered itself down.

It used to be “ok” to not do the little extras, to not give a little more, to care only at the level you were comfortable caring at and to devote little or no time to thinking about why that was ok.

And in this time, when things used to be “ok,” political world leaders still were elected and assassinated with regularity, wars still were started and ended, products were still invented and sold, television programs, the newspapers, and other forms of communication tools still worked to get you information. And people still lived and died, marketing still worked, and scandals still intrigued the masses.

So what happened?

The Law of Averages says that in a sample of any kind, from neighborhoods, to marketing campaigns, the statistical distribution of outcomes among members of a small sample must reflect the distribution of outcomes across the population as a whole.

The law has always been a fallacy, based on observed, personalized experiences that are then transposed to a much larger (or sometimes different) population sample. And the rules that the industrialists, the marketers, the politicians, and the policy makers created in the 20^th century (and that they are mightily trying to recreate in the 21^st century) are responsible for the massive belief in the law of averages.

But, wishful thinking is not reality. And the reality is, it was never good enough to just be “ok”: whether at your job, at communicating in conflict situations, or at creating a project, or taking a risk. And now, because of technological shifts that have been long remarked upon and analyzed, the fallacy is being exposed at mass, for what it is.

It’s not good enough to be average at communicating in a conflict scenario.

It’s not good enough to just show up at home, at church, in your community, or at work.

It’s not good enough to not go the extra mile, do the extra thing, and take the extra time, even if you don’t get paid for it. Especially if you don’t get paid for it.

It’s not good enough to disengage from what’s going on in someone else’s political, economic, spiritual, or financial reality because “that doesn’t impact me over here.”

Wishful thinking that “it will all be ‘ok’” doesn’t work anymore (and never really did), because it won’t be “ok.” The cultural, social, political, and financial machine that used to guarantee that “ok” would be good enough, is breaking down.

Its only individuals (not the masses at scale) who can choose to do the hard work that moves humanity collectively from merely “ok” in our emotional, spiritual, and material interactions with each other, and moves us to better, and finally to best (or most remarkable) in the world: meaning the world individuals inhabit on a daily, weekly, yearly basis, not the whole wide world.

Navigating the tension between the desire to passively slip into the anonymity of “ok” and the need to actively move from “ok” to better to best, is the place where engagement—personal and meaningful—must happen in the 21^st century if humanity is to become the best version of humanity it can be.

-Peace Be With You All-

[Opinion] Haters

The critic who has never produced anything…other than criticism.

The dilettante who has never done the hard work of going deeper…except in going deeper into dabbling.

The professional noticer who only notices the negatives…and begrudgingly gives space to the positives.

The Internet troll or commenter who takes perverse pleasure in commenting negatively…but who’s own personal life is in shambles.

There have always been critics, dilettantes, gossips, trolls, and commenters whose only job in the tribe is to maintain the status quo by determining who’s “in” who’s “out” and whether it makes a difference or not. And in a world where the masses mattered and the opinions of a few people could make or break the launch of your product, this function served a golden purpose: separating the wheat from the chaff.

The world has moved on though (as it always does) and the role of the critic, the dilettante, the professional noticer, the troll, the gossip, and the commenter, have to shift from curating for the masses, to curating for the small group. The function of social curation is never going to stop, but the audience that used to applaud public curation has moved on (as it also always does). This is reflected in the increasing ubiquity of trolling and the decline of constructive criticism.

And when the performer is conducting a show, the professional noticer, and the impolite troll are lumped into the general category of “haters.”

In a new communications world, in the midst of the fourth mightiest revolution in human history, the artist, the impresario, the performer putting on the show, has the power to shun the haters and their attempts to culturally curate through shaming. This is a hugely unremarked upon power shift, that has implications beyond communication in the digital realm:

What if it didn’t matter what the person in the other cubicle over thinks of you when you resolve that conflict?

What if it didn’t matter if you showed your humanity at work by treating people like people rather than like objects?

What if it didn’t matter how much revenue you made in dollars, but instead it mattered how much goodwill you could engender in the people who matter?

What if laboring emotionally was rewarded financially rather than looked upon as an outlier, or a spillover effect?

What if the statements and pronouncements of the critic, the dilettante, the professional noticer, the troll, the gossip, and the commenter couldn’t hurt your business because it’s really not for them, never has been for them, and never will be for them—and that was ok?

What if not scaling because you don’t have to please everyone at mass anymore, just a few hundred thousand people, really was the way to create engines of economic, cultural, and social growth?

What if the critic, the dilettante, the professional noticer, the troll, the gossip, and the commenter had to add something to the world and be vulnerable themselves, instead of trying to recapture an element of lost power that was an illusion in the first place?

What if you could hug your “haters,” but shun their shame, and grow from that emotionally, spiritually, and financially?

What if in every communication scenario, we started calling people’s bluffs, and having them really stand up, take responsibility and accountability, and encourage creativity from the challenge of saying “this is who I am, this is what I’m making” and let the work be on the line, rather than letting their inner selves be on the line?

-Peace Be With You All-