HSCT Retreats From Repealing Conflict Question

“How many people in this room have a conflict in their lives?”

We ask this question as part of our 30 second elevator speech describing who we are, what we do and what our approach to conflict is here at HSCT, every time we stand up at a networking event.

From rooms as small as four people to rooms with as many as one hundred people, no one yet has raised their hands.

We’ll keep asking, but, we recall that, even back into Biblical times, conflict existed.

James, Jesus’ brother pointed out in his gospel (4:1-3) that wars and fightings occur among people because of the desires (in the original King James version, the word used is “lusts”) that do battle inside of us.

And yet, no one ever raises their hand.

Poor—or no—communication leads to conflict.
Differences in priorities, values, goals, talents and opinions lead to conflict.
Competition over perceived limited resources leads to conflict.
And,of course, knowing what to do, and doing the opposite, leads to conflict. In the Bible, this is called “sin.”

Sometimes the worst types of conflicts, such as—well—wars and fightings, come about because of sinful actions, desires and behaviors.

So why are so many people unwilling to answer the question we pose honestly?

Well, it’s hard to admit that conflict exists, particularly if the person admitting to it doesn’t perceive there to be a conflict.

It’s also hard if the other party refuses to acknowledge that there is even a problem in the first place.

Finally, admitting to having a conflict requires us to be vulnerable, and there is no place we’d rather not be vulnerable, than in front of our peers at a networking event.

So, we’ll ask at the end of this blog post:

“How many people in this room have a conflict in their lives?”

[Thanks to Ken Sande. Check out his book here.]

-Peace Be With You All-

Jesan Sorrells, MA
Principal Conflict Engagement Consultant
Human Services Consulting and Training (HSCT)
Email HSCT: hsconsultingandtraining@gmail.com
Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/HSConsultingandTraining
Twitter: http://www.twitter.com/Sorrells79
LinkedIn: http://www.linkedin.com/in/jesansorrells/
HSCT’s website: http://www.hsconsultingandtraining.com

[Advice] The Realities of Bootstrapping

Here’s what the eponymous “they” don’t tell the massive, faceless “you” about bootstrapping a project.

The most stressful part of bootstrapping is that the creditors call all the time:

They call about the mortgage payment that’s late.
They call about the credit card bill you haven’t paid yet.
They call about the 10,000 other little bills that pile up in a life because you “needed” that thing, that one time.

Or your kids did.

Or your neighbor needed to see that you had it.

One of the most telling examples from a film that parallels a bootstrappers’ existence, was from The Company Men, starring Ben Affleck (yeah…we know) and a few other actors.

Ben plays a guy who got laid off from a nice cushy, corporate job, and won’t take a step down in lifestyle, so he keeps driving the luxury vehicle, even as his much clearer wife sells everything around him to make the mortgage payment.

And then, they sell the house and wind up sleeping in his parent’s basement.

That’s the reality of bootstrapping. Except with a lot more “I-Told-You-So’s” from your relatives in who’s basement you may be eating ramen.

There is a growing amount of attention being paid to entrepreneurs who commit suicide. Or die early. Or get divorced. Or have substance abuse problems.

Bootstrapping means that you get the creditor phone calls, but you also get:

The looks from your wife as you try to explain that spending money on this piece of equipment was worth missing a meal
The experience of deciding that your kids need to eat this month, and so liability insurance can wait another month—hopefully no one sues you and takes the house
The moment when you’re at a networking event and you’re eyeing the salad bar closer than you’re eyeing the potential client in front of you because you haven’t eaten today—and might not eat tomorrow.

And no one cares. Not your creditors. Not the bank. Not your kids. Not your parents. And we won’t even get into your own grinding self-doubt about your own level of responsibility for all of this.

This isn’t the stuff that makes it into the business books.

This is the face of bootstrapping.

And after you’ve started down the road to building a project, your pride, ego and a stubborn, bull headed belief in your project is the only thing that allows you to ignore the ringing phone, put the ear buds back in, and go back to grinding out another product

Or sales call
Or mini-project
Or marketing strategy

-Peace Be With You All-

Masculinity in Conflict-#ElliotRodger’s Edition

Another day, another mass shooting by a disaffected, young Caucasian male, and another day of the aftermath.

Not to be flip, but we have blogged about the importance of work, the damaging effects of envy and the nature of male violence before.

Because, unfortunately, this has happened before.

Now, we don’t know the killer’s mental health history, or deep family history, or life history, but a few things are clear:

He was sexually frustrated
He was envious of those around him
He was 22 years old

Conflict occurs when there is a deep disagreement between two sides of an issue about something that matters.

Conflict continues when there is no resolution—or reconciliation—for that disagreement and thus no opportunity for catharsis.

We have blogged before about the solution to all of this, and its men.

Not changing the culture.
Not blaming the use of guns.
Not tearing down our already limited, mental health system.
Not taking to Twitter.

Because, as necessary as all of those conversations may be, it is no substitute for grown, adult, emotionally literate, responsible men taking responsibility for their lives, their wives, their children and their communities.

And men must step up and do this, if conflicts (which begin internally and explode externally) such as the one that Eliot Rodger was clearly suffering from, will abate.

Because misogyny, anger, self-righteousness, envy, jealousy all start in the home.

-Peace Be With You All-

Jesan Sorrells, MA
Principal Conflict Engagement Consultant
Human Services Consulting and Training (HSCT)
Email HSCT: hsconsultingandtraining@gmail.com
Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/HSConsultingandTraining
Twitter: www.twitter.com/Sorrells79
LinkedIn: www.linkedin.com/in/jesansorrells/
HSCT’s website: http://www.hsconsultingandtraining.com

This Memorial Day…

The history of military service for humanity in general is based in three principles:

Having the courage to die in order to accomplish a hard thing
Having the obedience to follow orders that may make no sense
Having the innocence to be willing to die for the resolution of the arguments of old men.

Memorial Day is more than just a three day weekend to get in your car and go on vacation.

It’s about honoring those who fell and died so that we could sit here at write these words in relative peace in this country.

And as an American who happens to have brown skin and thick lips, I will be forever grateful for the 750,000 men and women who laid down their lives on the altar of liberty to preserve the union.

This Memorial Day, go to a cemetery. Lay out some flowers. And thank veteran of any of the recent wars.

-Peace Be With You All-

Jesan Sorrells, MA
Principal Conflict Engagement Consultant
Human Services Consulting and Training (HSCT)
Email HSCT: hsconsultingandtraining@gmail.com
Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/HSConsultingandTraining
Twitter: www.twitter.com/Sorrells79
LinkedIn: www.linkedin.com/in/jesansorrells/
HSCT’s website: http://www.hsconsultingandtraining.com

[Opinion] Google’s Glass Problem is Your Problem Too

There’s currently no compelling reason for us to buy Google Glass.

There’s also no compelling reason (beyond the SEO game) for us to be involved in Google+.

There’s no compelling reason because the guys out at Mountain View haven’t given us one, other than the fact that they currently own all of Internet search worth talking about.

But, as the attention of the world shifts to mobile phone use, apps matter more than search, and Google will have one less compelling reason for us to be involved with them.

The utility of search, mobile, and even wearables is based upon the idea of resolving a need or a want that the customer has and then making the solution so attractive that we can’t help but use it.

However, as the web has matured, Google hasn’t and the utility of wearables really comes down to third party data gathering about users’ behaviors, antics and actions.

The much more compelling reason for us to buy Google Glass—or any other wearable—will be answered, not by Google, or Yahoo, or even Facebook, but by Big Data advocates and privacy hawks.

-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/

Dear Graduates of High School & College – 2014 –

Dear Graduates of High School & College-

You have been told a lot of things by a lot of well meaning individuals on the way to the end at which you find yourself. You have been told things by your parents, your teachers, your counselors, your professors and even your crazy Aunt Ida.

But now, I’m going to tell you something that none of them may have had either the wherewithal or the gumption to mention. I’m going to try to do it gently, but, as a famous man once said “The Truth isn’t mean, it’s just the Truth.”

So….here we go…

Life is hard. Your grades, those letters that you spent a lot of time, sweat and—in some cases—blood, to get don’t matter a hill of beans to anybody outside of this institution from which you find yourself escaping.

Those little letters (and numbers in some cases) actually serve to hobble you and handicap you in venues outside of here.

The attainment of them has twisted your thinking into believing that there is only one way of doing, thinking, and being, when, in actuality, there are an infinite number of ways of thinking, doing, and being and no one can tell you which one is the best.

This realization is the chief thing that makes life hard for the first five years after you leave here. There are right and wrong decisions, but there are no definite decisions.

Employers don’t care about how smart you are.

You are the smartest generation to ever graduate from educational institutions that haven’t changed their approach to education significantly since World War 2 (it was something that happened in between the end of the Great Depression and the end of Jim Crow. Google it.) and no one outside of these walls cares about your level of intellectual intelligence. Unless you’re a doctor or engineer.

Employers only care about you showing up, doing the work, not complaining or bad mouthing them either in person or online, and then taking their check and going home to your one-bedroom, badly light and poorly heated apartment.

They don’t care about your student loan debt.
They don’t care that you fed kids in Kenya last year.
They don’t care that you have an active Youtube.com channel with 30,000 hits.

Employers are really…really…really…narrowly focused.

They only care about how much your work adds to their bottom line. In business speak, this is called “added value.”

And most of your bosses, i.e. employers, supervisors, managers and others above you, who will hire you, are people that never graduated college and couldn’t wait to get away from high school, or who drank their way through college and ten years later made anywhere between $250,000 and $1,000,000.

And all your intellectual capacity won’t matter a hill of beans to them.

Develop something, anything that you own.

Look, social media is great for Snap Chatting to your friends, knocking other people on Twitter or getting all hot and bothered about the Ukraine or social justice on Facebook, but these platforms can also be used to build a project, an idea or—even a business—that YOU care about.

This road, the road through entrepreneurship—is hard, heartbreaking, long, and lonely and will not be materially fulfilling for the first ten years that you are doing it.

Almost everyone will tell you that you’re crazy.
Almost everyone will silently cheer for your failure.
Almost everyone will tell you about their half-baked ideas.

But if you can survive all of that, you can have something that no one in any previous generation has had for a very long time: Positional financial security.

Or, you’ll crash and burn and fail.

But, at least you won’t have another $150,000 of student loans in your life, chipping away at your financial, emotional, marital (some of you out here WILL get married) and psychological health.

I will not close with the maxim that many do to “follow your passion.” The reason I won’t is because the Greek root of the work passion really means to “work unceasing.”

I will close by encouraging you to work.

Work unceasingly.

So…go do that.

Go to work.

Thank you.

-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: www.twitter.com/Sorrells79
LinkedIn: www.linkedin.com/in/jesansorrells/

Wisdom in the Machine

When the astronaut Dave powers down the rebellious HAL 9000 computer in 2001: A Space Odyssey, and more recently in the 2013 film, Her, starring Joaquin Phoenix, we determine through pop culture, what machine “death” looks–and feels–like.

The fact of murder comes from the fact of life and ideas and philosophies that we have as individual humans–and collective societies–about what traits constitute life.

In the case of a machine, we here at HSCT take the position that a machine cannot overcome the limitations of its creator.

Life is defined, not only by self-sustaining processes (we were asked while writing this post, if it would be murder to power down a machine created by another machine) but also by wisdom that is attained through life experience.

The crux of wisdom lies at the intersection of common sense, insight and understanding.

HAL 9000 may have had one, or even two, of those things—such as insight and understanding—but “he” (see how we anthropomorphized an inanimate object there) lacked the third trait in spades: common sense.

Just like Skynet in Terminator or the machines and computer programming networks of The Matrix, HAL 9000 was unable to negotiate in good faith with his creator.

“He” made an “all or nothing” decision about Dave’s presence, Dave’s mission and Dave’s motives and then took extreme action.

The same way that the machines did in The Matrix and Terminator.

The ability to negotiate with others in good faith, and to honor those agreements, is a human trait based in knowledge, experience, common sense and insight, not just a happy byproduct of a conscious mind.

And until machines have the ability to negotiate with, not only their environments in the rudest sense of the term, but also with their creators, we should feel free to power them up—or down—at our will.

After all, our Creator does the same thing.

Right?

-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: www.twitter.com/Sorrells79
LinkedIn: www.linkedin.com/in/jesansorrells/

Take Me to the Other Side

Much ink has been spilled about the impact of Martin Luther King’s life and legacy.

As a conflict engagement specialist, though, I think of something else today.

Nonviolent resistance is the best way to expose the hypocrisy and unjustness of legalized policies and has been used from Jesus to Ghandi to MLK to Nelson Mandela to affect change in societies and cultures.

But what about those folks on the other side of the confrontation?

What about those folks in power in the American South who had instituted systems of privilege and power that oppressed people?

What about the British government in India or the Roman government in Judea?

What about the white minority population and government in South Africa?

Why didn’t they look at the resistance, stop what they were doing, lay down their arms, put away their power, and work collaboratively to come to a just and equitable resolution?

In conflicts and mediation situations, I often observe parties who are incapable of changing their patterns of behavior, their ingrained responses and their knee jerk reactions to external stimuli coming in the form of difficulty, confrontation and conflict.

If people as individuals cannot look at the resistance, stop what they are doing, lay down their (metaphorical) arms, put away their power, and work collaboratively to come to a just and equitable resolution in a personal or family conflict, then what hope do countries, cultures and peoples have?

The issue at that point becomes one of decisions, choices and the will to follow through on them.

Jesus and Ghandi had the will.

So did MLK and Mandela.

The will on the other side was weaker, the ability to “save face” was not as strong and the capacity for change was not as developed.

Mediators are the only ones with the training, expertise and desire to get all the parties to the table to even begin the talking process.

Yet, we still have volunteer mediators in this country.

Yet, we still think that mediation, collaboration and compromise are for the faint of heart.

Something to think about, today on January 20, 2014.

-Peace Be With You All-

Jesan Sorrells, MA
Principal Conflict Engagement Consultant
Human Services Consulting and Training (HSCT)
Email HSCT: hsconsultingandtraining@gmail.com
Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/HSConsultingandTraining
Twitter: www.twitter.com/Sorrells79
LinkedIn: www.linkedin.com/in/jesansorrells/

Santa’s Accountability Problem

Trust during the holiday season is freely given. It must be something about the charitable feeling and spirit around the month between the day after Thanksgiving and the day after Christmas.

Whatever the psychological, theological or emotional motive this feeling of trust springs from, the public is sure to hear stories in the news about organizations (the Salvation Army), corporations (any retail giant) and governments (yes, I’m looking at YOU Healthcare.gov) abusing this trust for nefarious means.

It kind of puts in perspective what was said here and here this week; but bear our indulgence on this point for just a moment:

Trust requires that the giver and the receiver engage in a dance of vulnerability and responsibility.

The giver must be willing to put down cynicism and suspicion and the receiver must be accountable and responsible.

The charities and organizations that are doing best—both now and in previous holiday seasons—are those that focus on the intersection between quality, accountability, transparency and relationship.

When trust happens between the giver and the receiver, a relationship is built up over time that neutralizes deceit, suspicion, obfuscation and irresponsibility.

And that’s a process that’s even more scalable than the industrial based processes that got us to where we are now.

Remember, it took us 100 years to get to this point…it will take at least that long to get us back to sanity.

Are you, and what you are building, up to the challenge?

-Peace Be With You All-

Jesan Sorrells, MA

Principal Conflict Engagement Consultant

Human Services Consulting and Training (HSCT)

Email HSCT: hsconsultingandtraining@gmail.com

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

Twitter: www.twitter.com/Sorrells79

LinkedIn: www.linkedin.com/in/jesansorrells/

Towards A More Thankful Union

We here at the HSCT Communication Blog are all thankful this day for many things:
The country where we live,
The family that we have,
The connections we are about to make,
The business that we are growing,
The tools that we have to explore the world,
The intellect and science behind them,
The religiousity that allowed people to develop ideas,
The advancements in the world that feed more people well,
The times that are a changin’,
The peace we have an opportunity to build,
The relationships we have had a chance to build,
The connections that we have made,
The critics, naysayers and disbelievers that we have,
The “no’s,”
The “yes’s,”
The “maybe laters,”
The incredulity,
The pain
…and the promise…

-Peace Be With You All-

Jesan Sorrells, MA

Principal Conflict Engagement Consultant

Human Services Consulting and Training (HSCT)

Email HSCT: hsconsultingandtraining@gmail.com

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

Twitter: www.twitter.com/Sorrells79

LinkedIn: www.linkedin.com/in/jesansorrells/