Scrooged Buying

What kind of guy was Ebenezer Scrooge?

The character, created by Charles Dickens, was a conglomeration of many things, but was perhaps originally intended as a critique against Adam Smith economic theory.
The ideas of poverty and lack put forth by Thomas Malthus may also have influenced Dickens’ creation of the character.
In essence, Scrooge is the perfect marketing character for molding buying habits around the holidays for the dawn, the life, and the death of the Industrial era.
His tale has translated well from the dime novel format to that relic of the Industrial era—television—and has been featured in, literally thousands, of shows, musicals, books, plays, and even audio productions.
Two questions occur then:
  • In an abundance economy, where selfishness, greed and individualism are eliminated, will there be any room for the Scrooge story of redemption through learning lessons about the Past, the Present and the Future?
  • Will the kids still listen and tell their kids the story digitally 80 years from now on whatever “gee-whiz” distribution gadget will be foisted upon us by the fine folks at Google?

 

Hmmmmm….

-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/

Tragedy of the Abundance Commons


In an abundance economy, built on trust, generosity and collaboration, the real tragedy of the commons is those who choose to participate selfishly, and in essence destroy the very thing that they are building in the first place.

http://hsconsultingandtrain.wix.com/hsct
Jasmine Starr’s recent issues in the blogging world are one example.
So is Marissa Mayer’s commentary about the photography world.
Many look at collaborative work in a social space as competing against the soiling of that same space by the presence of big brands with their ability to pay big money to clog your Facebook feed with advertisements.
However, the real tragedy, is allowing the collaborative possibilities to wither under the weight of fears and concerns over Edgerank, “what kind of content should I post,” and irrelevant speculation about an overabundance of noise and chatter.
Collaboration cuts through all of that to the bone of what abundance is at its heart: sharing.
Didn’t someone else bring this up about 2,000 years ago?
-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://hsconsultingandtrain.wix.com/hsct

Collaborative Values

The values of the abundance economy are as follows:

  • Honesty
  • Transparency
  • Clarity
  • Motivation
  • Courage
  • Self-Awareness
  • Focus
  • Discipline
How many of those are you in conflict with yourself over?
How many of those did you just read and think “I have trouble with that one, that one, that one?”
Or, did you think happy unicorn thoughts?
In a collaborative, abundant economy, where everyone has access and is giving everything away for free, where trust, generosity and collaboration matter more than scarcity, hoarding and a “Lone Ranger” attitude, those values aren’t that hard to exemplify.
There is nothing on this list that people from the Founding Fathers to Zig Ziglar didn’t talk about.
There is nothing on this list that leaders from Jesus to Mandela didn’t exhort their followers to have.
So, really, in an economy where the barriers of access keep getting lower and lower, what’s stopping you from collaborating with others using those values?
-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://hsconsultingandtrain.wix.com/hsct

Rousing Action


What is the difference between cooperating on a project and collaborating on an initiative?
Over the last two weeks, we’ve covered the first two legs of the abundance economy, built online, and of the future, for the purposes of understanding what our leverage points will be to accomplish entrepreneurial goals.
The first two legs of the stool are trustand generosity.  The third is collaboration.
Cooperation is working together to accomplish the same goal.
Collaboration is the act of working with someone to produce or create something.
Collaboration and cooperation are synonyms in the dictionary. However, in reality one is a passive act and the other is an active act. 
Both require teamwork in order to accomplish a goal and in a generous economy, based in an ethic of abundance; but, one asks of people to make a decision and to get involved.

The other asks people to come along for the ride.

Both require a certain value set.
But when one is active, versus one being passive, how do you choose which content to use to rouse your audience to action?
-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://hsconsultingandtrain.wix.com/hsct

[Opinion] Generous Polluters

In an abundance economy, there is one polluting element that is produced.

It’s more toxic than carbon dioxide and more damaging to the environment than the plastic bag island floating out somewhere in the Pacific.

It’s more damaging to the body politic than a disease epidemic. It corrodes and destroys as surely as acid does.
This pollution destroys access, ownership and privacy. It overrides the values that a connection economy is based upon, including honesty, transparency, clarity, motivation, courage, self-awareness, focus, discipline and empathy.
It turns adventure into obligation and has its own properties.
It is colorless, odorless and tasteless.
We’ve even written about it here in this space before.
Fear is the most abundant, most toxic, most polluting element generated in an abundance economy:
Conflicts arise in the abundance economy from a fear of a future that is likely (rather than preparation for the future that is desired), a perceived (or actual) scarcity of material resources and a lack of patience.

Mediators, lawyers, counselors, theologians, therapists and others in the helping professions are going to become more middle class (and in some cases, wealthier) in the developing connection economy, because fear is not disappearing. As a matter of a fact, fear is growing and expanding as the disruptions generated by the inexorable rise of an abundance based economy, become more and more acute.

The lizard brain has been with us too long.
However, there is one antidote—one environmental scrubber—for the pollutant of fear. Plus, it’s the final leg on the three-legged stool of the connection, abundance based economy of both now and the next 100 years:
Cooperation.
-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/

[Opinion] The 1%

Already acquired wealth generates abundance, right?

It follows then, that from wealth a person, organization–or, even an invention or an idea–can spread more quickly, and the people promoting it can decide to be generous or greedy, based upon market forces, government regulation and personal preference.

Right?

But, what if everybody (or, let’s say 60%) of “average people” (those who haven’t acquired wealth) had access to the same tools to disrupt the market, and create abundance, as the people who built the market in the first place?

What percentage of  that 60% would use those tools to dream—not just big, but gigantically—to build something world hacking and world changing?
15%?
10%?
5%?
We had a discussion the other day about this very topic—and the conflicts and tensions that such a question raises—and the point was made that if people are unemployed in, or left out of, an economic system that has shifted toward sharing and abundance, rather than staying in the stagnant model of scarcity and parceled out wealth, then those unemployed won’t get a new job…
…they won’t participate in a new economy…
…they won’t play the game.

And the enterprising few who do parlay the access and tools in the abundance economy will be the ones who will make up the upper 1% of a society.With the unemployed generating no revenue, because the jobs they have don’t exist anymore and the industries that they used to work in changed radically.

Ultimately, the unemployed will be left behind in an abundance economy.
This perspective and argument is representative of a “stuff” based mentality that operates on a scarcity principle.
The people who will be unemployed by the disruption of generosity have nothing to worry about.
Neither, as a matter of fact, do the people who will advocate for them, try to pass laws to protect them, or develop charities to feed and clothe them.
We think that the number of those who will be enterprising (or entrepreneurial) enough to take advantage of the tools of a disruptive, abundant economy will remain where they have always been (somewhere around 1%-5% of the overall population) for quite some time, because of one factor that overrides paying bills, feeding a family, paying for college or getting ahead.
Fear.

-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/

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/

A Suggested Donation

Placing trust and value in a process that is not fee based—instead is given away for free, a low cost or for a “suggested donation”—is the future in an abundant, connection based economy where, ultimately at the end of the day, everyone will be giving something away for nothing.

“Well, you know, we got what we paid for,” is the common lament expressed by many who have participated in a free process.
The two most common questions that people have who have little trust in a free, abundance based process are:

  • “When are you going to take all of this stuff that you are doing for free and make some money off of it?”
  • “When are you going to stop putting out ‘junk content’ and monetize it?”

The questions tend to come from individuals, corporations, organizations and others who are so wedded to the industrial based past, that they cannot understand that “free” creates an abundant, connection based future.
The reverse of these two questions are the ones that many (who are also wedded to the industrial based past) ask who are at the provider end, offering a service for “free” or in exchange for a “suggested donation.”

  • “Why can’t we get people to pay us to do this (insert name of humanitarian service here)?

Scarcity in an abundance economy is built around the cornerstone of trust: If payment is coming for something that is offered initially for free, then trust must be established and maintained that what is being paid for has even greater value than what was just received for free. 
Or, I have to trust that the organization or person requesting a “suggested donation” for a service that they just provided for free, will give me back something with even better consistency and quality.
Either way, the hard work for the provider, shifts from asking for a fee and hoping that one will come while toiling under budget constraints and doing mediocre, rote work, to instead providing the service for free and then creating a relationship with the end-user based on the idea that something else more awesome lies just behind the pay wall.
The newspaper business couldn’t figure this one out. 
Neither could the music industry. 
Both have collapsed.
And more collapses are coming, from the way cars are sold to the way that the United Way raises money.
-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://hsconsultingandtrain.wix.com/hsct

Quality is Job One

Trust is evident when a company, organization, association or individual promotes themselves, their ideas, their products or their services online, either via social media or via search.

Trust works in a social sense (again, both on and off line) because without a relationship, even if it’s a tangential one, connection cannot happen and then referrals cannot happen and cash—revenue—cannot change hands.

Trust is the only thing that works to facilitate this transaction.

Trust works when something—a product, service or idea—is given generously, and nothing is expected in return. This is something new in our industrial based, “let’s all make a better widget the next time around,” process that has dominated the Western world for the last 80 years.

Trust worked then as well, but it worked more as trust in an industrial based, quality driven process, rather than people.

Trust got us more stuff, because the corollary to trusting in the industrial process, was trusting that the industrial employer would provide a safe job, for life, with safe working conditions: Same thing with government promises based on social programs, social safety and social/business regulation, both local and national.

Process, quality and precision came first, safety, security and high pay came second, people, relationships and “giving it away for free” came third—if they made the list at all.

Remember the old Ford ad tagline from the 90’s: “Quality is job ONE.”

Even the Bible, in Psalm 115, the exhortation to trust is evident in verse 11 which states that you who fear the Lord (where “fear “means to stand in awe, to be afraid or to have reverence for a superior being) trust in the Lord, for He is their help and their shield.

Why belabor this point?

Well, there are 20,000 volunteer mediators working in dispute resolution centers, court rooms and law offices around the country right now. And if you are a mediator or a conflict professional, trying to make a living—or make a little revenue—doing this work, then you are in a tough bind.

This is because so many folks who could be your target market for trust, connection, referral and revenue are already knee deep in trusting that a non-fee based relationship will endlessly provide for all of their needs.

Mediation is about connection and relationship. Mostly, it’s also about trust: Trusting the mediator to get out of the way; trusting the other party to deal fairly; trusting the process of mediation to produce whatever outcomes are desired by the two parties in conflict.

How does an enterprising professional then, transform freely given trust into paying revenue?

Well, that’s the real question for this week, isn’t it?

-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