Social Youtility

So, here’s a story that will seem wild, but in the context of a shared, collaborative economic system, it’s really not.

We here at HSCT are staying on the cutting edge of the marketing evolution taking place right now in the world, and a huge part of that is hanging out, listening to podcasts, attending online webinars, and reading a lot of blogs.

A LOT of blogs.

And we could always, read, write and research more than what we do, but occasionally an opportunity comes along that allows for all of our talents and skills to coalesce.

That happened this last Wednesday at around 1pm EST. We were invited (via email) to attend a webinar hosted by Ion Interactive, where guest Jay Baer was talking about his latest concept, YOUtility.

Now, YOUtility is not new. As a matter of fact, it is the basis of everything that we do here at HSCT, and one of the key concepts behind YOUtility is the idea that brands should create content (video, blogs, podcasts, advertorials, advertisements, shows, etc.) that is so good that people can’t ignore, won’t want to and will want to pay to see more of it.

See why this appeals to us? It’s the Steve Martin concept writ large.

Anyway, we were on this webinar and were encouraged to live tweet questions into the host with the #IonWebinar. We did this almost incessantly for the entire hour as Jay was presenting the high points of YOUtility.

In the question and answer segment, we even got one of our questions answered almost directly. Something about getting the C-Suite on board.

As a result of about 45 minutes worth of work, we and five other live Tweeters were rewarded with a hardcover copy of Jay’s book, which you can find by clicking here.

Who says that social doesn’t work?

-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

The Psychology of Mobile Flow

There’s little talk about the flow involved in online and social media conflict communication practices through the use of applications.

Or, for that matter, the flow of communication via your mobile phone.

We have a thought.
We type it in.
We press send.

No thought involved in that process.

But search (think Google) often involves more steps. The flow is interrupted by the nature of the process.

We have a thought.

We type it in the search bar.

But then the questions start or a finger slips and a misspelling occurs.

“Did I really mean that?”
“Am I spelling that word right?”
“Is this even what I want right now?”

As the war between talent and virtue heats up in online conflict communication spaces, the social communication tools begin to resemble more and more the speed of instinctual thought (where considerations of bad/good fall away) and move further away from patience and deliberation.

Traits which might interrupt our collective social communication conflict flow.

-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] Who Will Hire The Bigots

In a world where talent and ability matter more than character and virtue, what is an old racist to do?

Donald Sterling, former owner of the LA Clippers behaved abhorrently in many ways over the years, which was well documented everywhere:

in court documents,
among close friends and business associates,
even by a fractured, distracted, ADD-ridden, news media.

But until his comments were recorded surreptitiously and then played back, not one iota of an issue was raised.

He was even given an award by the NAACP.

But now that the dust has settled on that unrepentant old racist, what are we to think of his sudden change in fortune?

In this current incarnation of American culture, talent and ability trump character.

And character and virtue seem to only matter as they publicly buttress innate talent and ability.

See Tiger Woods’ fall from grace as an example of this.

When culture giveth position, power, accolades and applause, culture can also taketh away.

Forgiveness and grace are gifts to be given out of a sense of compassion and empathy (are Sterling, Woods, former Mozilla Firefox CEO Brendan Eich not human? Do they not bleed?) But a desire for lockstep conformity prohibits this. And when character is linked exclusively to talent and ability forgiveness and grace are hard to come by.

Because everybody fails.

Particularly the envious.

-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/
HSCT’s website: http://www.hsconsultingandtraining.com

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-

A Question of Scaling

Does this idea scale?

It’s popular question around here lately at Human Services Consulting and Training as our efforts become more targeted toward our customers, fans, followers and others.

The question come from a series of assumptions that have very little to do with the work that we are doing—consulting, freelancing, “entrepreneur-ing” at the intersection of peace, education, problem solving and communication—and have a lot to do with how other organizations have “built out.”

Scaling up for peace is a tricky proposition, primarily because everyone—the fan, the customers, the followers—wants to own the victories; but at the same time, they want to minimize the defeats.

The only organizations that we have seen scale up for peace successfully have been churches. And we don’t know about you, but we’ve noticed that sometimes the world and the church don’t always see eye-to-eye.

We answered part of this question last week here, but the answer to “Does this idea scale?” can only be answered by you.

So…

Give us an answer by connecting with us on social media via the channels below our signature line, or by sending us an email, and, as usual,

-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