Utopia and Dystopia in the Present

A friend once pointed out that he doesn’t watch films that portray either a dystopic future (i.e. Children of Men or Blade Runner) or a utopian ideal (i.e. Avatar or Gattaca) because they tend to be less than realistic.

There is a lot of talk (and writing) going around about the importance of either 1984 by George Orwell or Brave New World by Aldous Huxley as a literary or cultural guideposts in a time of rampant civic uncertainty and fear.

There are several problems with articulating–and living out–a worldview based off works by English authors of the early to mid-20th century, but the biggest problem of all is the mindset behind thinking that authors of a dystopian (or utopian) future can possibly provide any actionable wisdom in the present day.

The specific problems are best articulated by others, but the general issues that face believers searching for truth in any conception of utopia (or dystopia) are three-fold:

Utopia (or dystopia) look different based upon your frame of reference. This is the main problem in applying the logic of utopia (or dystopia) to fleeting present-day political disputes and disagreements, rather than seeking longer term wisdom. The fact is, for every person who views a position as a dystopic one, there is a person who at the least views the position as not a problem. And for some, they view the position through the frame of utopian thinking.

The dystopia (or utopia) that a person is looking for (typically one represented in film or literature) is rarely exactly the one that manifests in the real world. The specific tent poles of culture, politics, and societal considerations are fluid and dynamic, not static and solid. There are elements of utopia (or dystopia) that manifest, but not all of them. Not exactly. And the fact is, when there isn’t exactitude in the manifestation of a prediction, the credibility of the predictor (and by extension the reputation of the prediction itself) seems to fail miserably.

How people think about what’s happening now influences how they mentally construct utopias (or dystopias), and then emotionally “buy-in” to them. This mental and emotional construction is more of an analysis about the nature of a present condition of conflict, rather than about genuinely deep conflict analysis. This is why films and literature aren’t good predictors of what will happen, what can happen, or even what should happen.

The fundamentals that underlie films and literature about dystopias or utopias are snapshots in time, representing a particular conflict mindset, and a particular set of perspectives on the world and events in it.

We would do well to be skeptical of attempts to glean too much understanding of current events from them, and would do better at managing and engaging with the conflicts we are currently in, by dealing bravely with the utopia (or dystopia) we’re creating right now.

The Hard Thing About The Hard Questions

The hard questions aren’t ones that you just need to think about harder, to get to a binary answer.

Binary answers.

“What the other party wants to hear” answers.

“Feel good” answers.

Wrong answers.

Right answers.

The compelling issue is not that the questions are hard, or that they are scary.

The issue is that the answers frighten you because of their implications around responsibility, accountability, safety, and security.

But the only way out of a conflict is to go further in.

Thinking harder about a binary answer isn’t the way to get to more resolution.

Neither is thinking about how to structure the answer to get the other party on your side.

Sometimes, answering the hard question really requires you to pick an answer, stand up, and courageously defend it.

If The Process Doesn’t Interest You Too Much…

If the process of resolving a conflict doesn’t interest you too much…

If you just want to “be done with it’ already…

If you “just don’t care how it stops” just that it’s over…

If you have “no dog in this fight”…

If you are “just a disinterested observer”…

Then in reality you are a spectator and your behavior of standing around (metaphorically) observing the conflict and its results, and not adding to either getting to resolution, reconciliation, or management of the conflict at hand, is causing more harm than good.

We don’t need more gawkers at car wrecks.

We’ve got enough of those already.

We need more people willing to stop by the side of the road of a conflict and help to get the parties to their best selves.

Or, at the least, be willing to dial 911 as they fly by on their way to other, more pressing issues.

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.

Human to Business Sales

Selling to people in businesses is hard for three important reasons:

  1. There are very few (or no) champions of your product or service offering because no one knows how good your product or service offering is inside the organization you’re selling to.
  2. There are no direct ways to influence the people who can make the decision to buy from you—today.
  3. There has been a massive shift in consumer behavior, but not a massive shift how businesses purchase from you based in the reality of shifting consumer behavior.

These are big problems and they’re getting bigger because the practice of creating buyer personas still dominates in a big way in almost every piece of advice available around advising organizations on how to sell to organizations.

While buyer personas are a fine shorthand for figuring out the profile in your head as a seller to businesses, the downfall of them is that they neglect each of the three areas above. In addition, they depersonalize the act of buying (or purchasing or procurement) and attempt to reduce it to a series of formulaic and discreet steps.

Which, of course, makes the three reasons above more problematic, not less.

Here are three ideas that may help when you’re selling (peace, consulting, freelance solutions, or even you’re next “gee-whiz” product to a skeptical procurement buyer):

Champions are easy to get (and even easier to lose), but require engaging with personality, care, and empathy.

Most of the people who are going to become your champions are the ones who have the power to say “no” but no power to say “yes.”

There are still gatekeepers in many organizations, and going where they are (in-person, online, emotionally, rationally, etc.) will go a long way toward engaging with them.

You must determine if buying today is all that matters, or if arbitraging the time to build a relationship today against the dollars that you are going to get tomorrow, matters more in the long run.

The short run will take care of itself.

Does your selling strategy include a 1,000-year long plan?

The reality of consumer behavior means that buyer personas are dead as predictors of selling success in the B2B space.

It also means that running after every social platform for sales is also dead.

This is a good thing.

In principle, this means that consumer behavior in business to business sales is the same behavior in business to consumer sales, but the volume of the connection is lower.

In practice, this means that targeted videos on a YouTube channel, embedded in an email campaign, direct to a buyer, matter more than the number of Facebook likes you happen to be cultivating that aren’t converting to sales.

In practice, this also means that providing value to the small number of businesses you work with as a selling organization, trumps the number of actual businesses that you work with.

Or that you think you should work with.

Champions, behavior, targeted engagement, and long-term strategy matter more for business success than just closing the sale and moving on to the next client.

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.

Where Do You Put the Work

If you don’t really know where you’re going, then it doesn’t matter which direction you go.

Not a bad point.

Here’s another one: Wherever you put your focus, that is where you will reap your greatest rewards.

Many people in a conflict focus on the conflict itself (the product) rather than the process that they took to get there in the first place. Focusing on the product seems to be the only way to resolve the issue. And besides, if we focused on the process, we may run out of time to focus on the product.

This is why negotiations (now we’re talking where the stakes are high and the process is more important 9or just as important) as the outcome) become time consuming. Time is the most valuable resource we have, and it’s the one resource that is totally and completely unsustainable. Expert negotiators, diplomats, and politicians know this fact more intimately than your neighbor does, than your kids do, or than even your co-workers do.

Time is on your side and it isn’t, but if you put your focus on regretting the time that it takes to resolve a conflict, rather than advancing and leveraging the time that it takes to get to a resolution, your focus will bear fruit.

When we focus on the conflict, the conflict grows larger and larger, dominating our scope of attention and awareness, seeming to develop a life all of its own. When we focus on the process, the conflict recedes and suddenly our focus shifts to the time that all of this resolution is taking.

But, if you don’t know where you’re going (or where your focus should be), then it doesn’t really matter in which direction you go (toward resolution or toward delay).

The choice is yours, in the same way, that it was Alice’s.

HIT Piece 1.17.2017

Being “on the bubble” is about how much value you add to the situation, the resolution, or the conflict before the bubble bursts, all over you and all over the other party.

Being “on the bubble” is about being in a place where you are neither advancing nor retreating, merely existing in the space that you’re in right now, regardless of status.

Being “on the bubble” is about not understanding the nature of the situation that you’re in, the nature of the other parties and their perspectives, and the nature of you—and what your deeper needs really are.

Being “on the bubble” does not always feel great, because it’s a spot full of trepidation and fear.

Being “on the bubble” sometimes is the only resolution we get with other people.

Being “on the bubble” might be the only place to be.