Strategy is a Skill

It is important to note that strategy in managing people in conflicts is still considered by many to be a talent, rather than an attainable skill.

In a conflict, thinking about how to manage it effectively requires exercising all the same planning and engagement that engaging in the conflict in and of itself does.

However, the pushback against this type of thinking most often comes in the form of the complaints that “strategy is too hard” or that “people are unpredictable.”

Individual people may be unpredictable, but general human behavior is predictable, and outcomes from such behavior are even more predictable depending upon which conflict management behavior it is that a party chooses.

Good, effective strategy, that produces satisfactory outcomes requires intentionality.

To plan strategically, understanding three points intuitively begins the process:

  1. Know what you can manage in a conflict around stress, anger, fear, and failure. Without knowing yourself, knowing the other party becomes that harder.
  2. Have the courage to care and be curious. The number one reason negotiations around conflicts fail, is due to genuine lack of curiosity by one party, about the other party’s motives, opinions, and desires for resolution—or management—of a conflict scenario.
  3. Realize that the conflict process is messy and, unlike a chess game, if you plan one step ahead of the other party (rather than two—or seven) your conflict goals toward management and resolution have a greater chance of success.

There is strategy involved in attaining the skills of humility, self-awareness, responsibility, and even empathy.

Almost as much strategy as is involved in letting things “just go,” not paying attention, focusing on issues in the conflict that don’t matter, and not understanding the nature of the conflict (and the other party) that you’re in the arena with.

Strategy to manage and resolve conflicts is a skill that can be learned. Almost in the same way—and at the same level—that extending and not resolving conflict is a skill that is learned.

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.

[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

HIT Piece 2.7.2017

On any curve of distribution, at the beginning of the curve and at the end of the curve are outliers.

At the beginning, these outliers are known as “pioneers.”

At the end, these outliers are known as “laggards.”

And in the middle of the curve (where the bulge is) this space is a cluster known as “the masses,” or the “average” or the “median.”

This truth of distribution stands for anything that can be mathematically measured, from the number of tall people in a room all the way to the number of CDs that people own who you may stop on the street.

This truth of distribution applies to my words (and the words of any other blog writer) as well.

On one end (at the beginning of the distribution curve) I’ve written blog posts with 50 to 100 words.

On the other end (at the end of the distribution curve), I’ve written blog posts with 1000 to 2500 words.

And in the middle, on average, I’ve written posts with 300 to 500 words.

Some math before I make my larger point: In the last four years, I’ve published 848 blog posts. If on average I’ve written 500 words per post, which comes to 424,000 words I’ve published in total since starting in 2013. And it might even be a little higher than that, due to posts not published.

424,000 words.

In all that time, I haven’t collected as many email subscribers as I would like.

I also haven’t collected as many engaged readers as I would like.

And this is the trouble with the Internet in general and blog writing in particular.

It begs the questions:

  • Why write on a blog you own, everyday if no one (or very few) are reading and engaging with you on your own platform and instead are continuing to read and respond on other platforms (i.e. Facebook or Medium)?
  • Why continue to build on land that you own when you’re the only one in the house?

I’ve been thinking about these two corollary questions a lot lately, because people often get excited when I talk about the blog, but then, when I point out that it requires you to be engaged with me, in order for it to work at the emotional and psychological level, I get…

…well, I get the responses that you would think I would get.

I’ve been thinking about these questions as I’ve been watching shared, walled, social media gardens devolve into spaces of short-form thinking, and long-form hubris.

I’ve been thinking about these questions as I build a platform that may not be for everyone–but that just might be for YOU.

424,000 words.

Responses, engagement, critical thinking, emotional intelligence: These are the things that matter, and whether writing, teaching, video making, or podcast recording, I hope that you will stay in the meaty part of the distributions curve of listening, engaging and responding.

Can We Have Civility

Can we have civility when we don’t agree on what’s true and what’s not?

When we hold on to our worldviews, and when they become more than merely window dressing, and they become integrated into our overall identities, we can find it incredibly difficult to engage with others civilly.

So, we resort to not talking, talking about mere banalities, or talking about distractions that mean nothing at all.

When we are unwilling to hear different perspectives on the facts that we hold dear, we lose the ability to be flexible when the fundamentals that underlie those facts change.

As fundamentals always do.

When we are unwilling to acknowledge that there might be different outcomes to difficulties, conflicts, and competitions that might just be as good for just as many people as the outcomes that we favor, then we become concretely encased in the pursuit of outcomes.

And everything else be damned.

Can we have civility if we are unable, unwilling, and incapable, of going outside of our worldviews, perspectives, and preferred outcomes toward what another person may value?

When we are wedded tighter to the secure arrogance that theater, spectacle, and display inevitably provide, rather than being wedded inexorably to humility, grace, and forgiveness, we will be constantly surprised by what outcome “wins” and what outcome “loses.”

And we will allow our capacity to engage in civility to erode.

When we are more concerned with the freedom to be expressive, rather than the responsibility of soberly and judiciously informing another party of the truth, then we will allow ourselves to fall into incivility.

And our communication culture will erode into communication anarchy.

Can we have civility in the process of moving toward communication anarchy?

Conflicts—based in values, identities, worldviews, and emotions—are sure to become more damaging and deleterious when we cannot separate far enough from people whose values, identities, worldviews, and emotions, (and maybe even existence) we find to be odious above all else.

Network Leap 3

Most people don’t see it.

Confusing the primacy of what we can see, touch, taste, and feel, closes our human perceptions to the potential financial and monetary value of what we cannot measure and codify with our five senses.

This is evident in the primacy of the use of relationship networks in every aspect of our lives.

We cannot touch connection, though we can experience a story with other people.

We cannot see engagement, though we can engage in active listening and experience the positive effects of someone listening to us intently, and the negative effects of someone ignoring us.

We cannot see the value in a relationship, but we can feel with our hands and our emotions the ways in which people grow in relationship transactionally with us.

We cannot see the cruft, bad feelings, negative emotions, and life experiences where the relationship didn’t “work out” as transactionally as we would like, which often creates in us a sense of caution at getting back into relationships and connections.

We have all observed the causal outcomes of the impact of things we can’t see (relationships) and have experienced the power in maintaining and growing connections (networks) to people who may—or may not—be able to “help” us advance in the world.

We all know someone who has gotten a cake job, attained a plum position, or moved up the ladder of an organization, not through technical skills, but through the value of human connection.

Most people don’t see it.

We cannot directly observe the functions of the Internet.

We cannot directly observe how information spreads through bits and bytes and is translated into images, text, and videos.

We cannot directly observe how those videos, texts, and images impact the mind and change the perceptions of the receiver of those messages, but we all accept the reality of these changes happening.

We cannot see how searching for information on the Internet, using a tool such as Google, unites us as disparate people in a communal desire to connect, engage, and to grow our interests, our curiosities, our agreements, and our arguments.

Most people don’t see it.

But Google does.

Think about it: Google as a search engine tool proves—in a form monetized at enormous scale—that the networks of connections matter more for making money, making more connections, making products, making ideas, and making services than anything else tried in human history up to this point.

But there’s an upper limit to that knowledge.

Trapped by the confines of the box in your pocket (i.e. your mobile phone) or the box in your house (i.e. your TV or desktop computer) or the box in your briefcase (i.e. your tablet), there’s a hardware limit to a software solution.

There might not be a software solution to the problems that people have, but in the 21st century, Google (now Alphabet) is going to do its level best to break out of the boxes it is currently trapped in, and prove that networks between people in the physical world, can be scaled and monetized just as easily as they were through a search function.

Google sees it.

Do you?

The Hook

You’re not off the hook.

You’re not off the hook for finding a metaphorical hook to hang onto.

You’re not off the hook in resolving a conflict.

You’re not off the hook for managing other people in conflict.

You’re not off the hook for connecting with people and for hearing their stories.

But there are some places where you are off the hook.

You’re off the hook in blaming other people for the situation rather than seeking to resolve it.

You’re off the hook in putting yourself in physical danger, because interpersonal violence is not a fact of life.

You’re off the hook in taking on responsibility for outcomes that the other party is responsible for.

You’re off the hook for making sure that people stay at the negotiation table.

You’re off the hook for seeking consensus rather than doing the hard work of launching a product.

Don’t worry, there are plenty of hooks around that no one wants to hang onto.

You won’t run out of hooks to hang your reputation onto in your lifetime.

I’ve Got Half a Mind To…

I’ve got half a mind to…

…do something that no one thinks is possible because it hasn’t been done before.

…educate people who want to listen rather than spending time chasing the attention of the masses.

…take a risk and do work that matters.

…engage with conflict rather than seeking to avoid or minimize it, not because avoidance and minimization are wrong, but because the outcomes of such actions are no longer optimal.

…believe the best about people rather than the worst.

…go to a meeting and do the hard work of engaging with my community even though tiredness, disinterest, and fear have blocked participation in the past.

…address the truth to power.

…build a project, write a book, create a podcast, make an online course, rather than merely consuming more content that other people have created.

…be generous even though there will be little coming back in return.

…turn off the TV, and read a book.

…turn off the Internet and read a book.

…negotiate for what is the best, rather than accepting merely the “good enough.”

…mediate between two people in conflict rather than walking away.

…decide to sit in silence and listen rather than giving that other party a ‘piece of my mind.’

…use my whole mind.

Wisdom is a Skill

Wisdom is a skill.

In our modern era, that values speed over taking time, and that values the new over the old, wisdom is viewed, not as a skill, but as something unattainable.

This intellectual and cultural state of affairs has not always been the case.

As a matter of fact, when information moved slower (although from an individual’s perception, information has always moved faster than comprehension) wisdom was valued both as a skill and as an intellectual, emotional, and spiritual state.

Getting wisdom is more than about getting knowledge (which we can get from Google) or about debating about the “owning” of facts (which we now battle over publicly) or even about truth claims (which continue to be divisive); getting wisdom is about having the skill to know when to talk, and when to listen.

Be slow to speak.

Be quick to listen.

Be mindful of the power of knowledge.

Be engaged with things that are difficult.

Be a source of memory.

Wisdom is a skill, and the massively existential struggle of modernity is the tension between accepting the immediately available knowledge of the now, and the seemingly obscure wisdom of the past.

In that tension, there are a few critical questions we have to answer:

  • Do we ignore the past and barrel toward the future?
  • Do we engage with the skill of attaining wisdom, or do we continue to chase knowledge?
  • Do we search for meaning in our conflicts and communications, or do we channel our energy into forgetting, seeking closure, and “moving on”?
  • Do we look to the wisdom of the past without a critical spirit based in destruction, pride, anger, and arrogance, or do we abandon the pursuit?
  • Do we pass along the hard lessons to our current generations (sometimes in hard ways through hard conflicts) or do we allow them to sit in pretend ease?

The strategy is leveraging past wisdom to determine the answers to these questions.

And it’s not a strategy that we can outsource to our technological tools anytime soon.

Finding Your Tribe

Social tools allow us to connect with other people now more than ever before through three important ways:

Education.

Entertainment.

Edification.

Finding the people who believe in your message, who desire to be educated, or who want to be entertained, is easier now more than ever.

Of course, it’s easier now more than ever, for the noise of a thousand million voices to drown out—not the finding of others who want to communicate with you—but to drown out the ability to connect in a meaningful way with others who need the connection.

Organizations have always sought to use communication connection tools to push agendas, send messages, and to ensure conformity.

But it’s easier now more than ever, for those organizations—governments, churches, political organizations, bureaucracies—to be circumscribed by the individual in search of connection rather than spectacle.

The hardest things during this 4th revolution in human communication are not going to be finding your tribe, or cutting through the noise, or battling against the forces of conformity.

The hardest things are going to be as follows:

Starting.

Continuing.

Ending.

And every system that we have set up from our last revolution (the Industrial one) that remains in this one, was designed to squelch, manipulate, or channel in “socially appropriate ways” starting, continuing, and ending.

So, get to finding your tribe.

Go start.