[Podcast] Earbud_U, Season Four, Episode #7 – Darren MacDonald

[Podcast] Earbud_U, Season Four, Episode # 7 – Darren MacDonald, Investor, Film/Movie Buff, World Traveler, Local Raconteur

podcast-earbud_u-season-four-episode-7-darren-macdonald[powerpress]

Movies are the stories of our lives.

Our guest today on the show, Darren MacDonald, is a local venture capital investor, film buff, and world traveler.  This is the follow-up to episode #6 featuring Darren’s unique, humorous and engaging point of view.

In this episode, Darren talks about the power of film to cut through to the heart of stories. We cover all the films that came out last year, and have a spirited discussion about who killed Han Solo.

Considering that for a moment, here’s an existential question:

If your child had gone over to the side of evil would you be able to stop them, or would the love that you feel for them—the parental bond you have—cause you to give your life for them?

Yeah. Like I said, film has the power to cut through the muck and ask—and answer—the questions that matter.

Connect with Darren through all the ways you can below:

Check out our first interview with Darren here: http://www.hsconsultingandtraining.com/blog/earbud_u/earbud_u-episode-1-darren-macdonald/

Follow Darren on Twitter: https://twitter.com/upwordz

Connect with Darren on LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/darrenmacdonald/

Connect with the Southern Tier Capital Fund: http://stcfny.com/

Connect with the Southern Tier Capital Fund on Twitter: https://twitter.com/stcapitalfund

[Opinion] The Listicle is Simple and Seductive

Three points need to be emphasized at the beginning of any training, workshop, or seminar.

Your way of thinking about conflict, communication, and persuasion must shift before anything else can happen.

Your way of consuming information, your attention span, and your level of caring about the content you are about to hear, must shift before any deep learning can happen.

Your way of listening to the delivered content must shift from passive to active, for without that shift, nothing else can happen.

The desire, of course, from some of the participants is for these three things to happen. And these points being made out loud makes those participants relieved.

But there are other desires in the room.

The desire to get the tools, get the skills, get the listicle version of the information, and then to leave.

The desire to get the lecture, get the knowledge, but to not engage in any deeper change. After all, such change is challenging, and if there’s no support in the environment from which you came for change that needs to happen, well then it’s easier to ignore the calls to change.

The desire to not care. This is reflected in the phrases, the questions, the statements, and the observations that spring forth from the participants. Typically framed by some participants as “I hope that you can keep me awake,” or “You kept me awake more than any other facilitator I’ve ever sat through.”

The desire for the listicle version, the shorthand, the summary, the 30-second point, is seductive. But ultimately, changing the philosophy about how we think, matters more than applying shortcut tactics to achieve an outcome we might not enjoy.

[Advice] Understanding is Disruptive

When you understand the nature of a thing, it becomes simple to predict an outcome.

When you understand the nature of a conflict, it becomes simple to manage it.

Simple, but not easy.

We confuse the simple with the easy because we desire to attain outcomes that “work” for us with a minimal amount of emotional effort expended on our part.

We confuse simple with easy because confrontation is hard, and increasingly, we communicate in a world that rewards avoidance in the face of increasingly seemingly intractable, conflict.

We confuse simple with easy, because understanding the nature of anything—from the science of managing conflict to the science of climate change—requires critical thinking, objective reasoning, and the emotional bandwidth to be surprised, be delighted, and to be wrong.

Predicting outcomes from human behavior is dicey at best. But since human beings seek to bring reason to a world that appears to be in chaos, the ordering of patterns and the innate desire for reason, combine to fool us into thinking that outcomes are predictable.

Once, of course, you understand the nature of the outcome you’re predicting.

When we don’t take the time to understand the nature of the conflict we’re in, because we don’t care about the outcome, we disagree with the other party, we think that we’re right and they’re wrong, or we don’t engage with critical thinking and reasoning, then we search and seek for the easy answer.

The simple solution, the jiu-jitsu, that will make all our conflicts, our problems, and the other party, either disappear or change to suit us.

When you understand the nature of a conflict that you’re in, it becomes simple to seek, not the quick and easy solution, but the patience to deal with the ambiguity of a long, and complicated solution, without getting angry, defensive, or disruptive.

HIT Piece 10.18.2016

Transparency means different things to different people.

Some people believe that transparency means establishing, maintaining, and growing connection to another person.

Some people believe that transparency means collaboration with another person or with a group of people.

Some people believe that transparency means authenticity, a species of “being real” or “keeping it real” in language, attitude, approach to an issues, tone or topic.

Some people believe that transparency means honesty and integrity—all of the time rather than some of the time.

Some people believe that transparency means refusing to “groom” a social appearance for the sake of other people, the crowd, or the audience.

Some people believe that transparency means being responsible and accountable—particularly when no one else in the group, the team, or the organization, will be.

Some people believe that transparency means acting with faith and hope in a future that could be, rather than complaining about the present that is.

The question on transparency is not one of who sees transparency through what lens, instead the question on transparency focuses around whether or not transparency matters—and in what context.

[Advice] The Edges

Consuming content and ideas passively, instead of creating content actively.

Reacting to an idea immediately, instead of responding with critical thinking.

Seeking assurance of safety and stability, instead of anchoring in ambiguity.

Collaborating without courage, instead of connecting in all the ways that make us uncomfortable.

Desiring information without wisdom, instead of demanding an exchange of clarity with conscience.

Passive-aggressive manipulation without candor, instead of active engagement with conflict.

These are the edges that people in all organizations, from government run organizations to private entities, need to make an active decision about whether or not they are pursuing.

Our societies, our culture, and our future depends on figuring out the edges.

Earbud_U, Season Four, Episode #6 – Darren MacDonald

[Podcast] Earbud_U, Season Four, Episode # 6 – Darren MacDonald, Investor, Film/Movie Buff, World Traveler, Local Raconteur

podcast-earbud_u-season-four-episode-6-darren-macdonald

 [powerpress]

Intercultural context, humility, and world travel.

Capitalism, expanding your worldview, entrepreneurship, one-way traffic, and the country of India.

Our guest today on the show, Darren MacDonald, is a local venture capital investor, film buff, and world traveler.  This interview stands out as a “call back” to our very first episode of the Earbud_U Podcast, where we debuted by featuring Darren’s unique, humorous and engaging point of view.

And we’re doing it again here.

In this episode, Darren talks about finding his way from the Taj Mahal to Mumbai, his travels in India, and how to expand capitalism into other areas and explore new ideas.

One idea that we talked about extensively in this conversation was about hope. Now, hope is not a strategy, but it does lie at the core of many questions, yet to be answered, in the world of entrepreneurship globally:

How do we get hope to people?

Hope to places from Mumbai, India to St. Louis, Missouri.

Hope to places where all hope–economic, social, and even spiritual–has left.

Hope is the eraser for despair. But before we get to hope, we’ve got to identify what the problems are, why they are important to solve, and who actually has the bandwidth to solve them.

This is the first part of a two-part conversation with Darren and it’s a lot of fun, while also being sobering, inspiring, and sometimes, just downright goofy.

And there’s nothing not hopeful about any of that.

Connect with Darren through all the ways you can below:

Check out our first interview with Darren here: http://www.hsconsultingandtraining.com/blog/earbud_u/earbud_u-episode-1-darren-macdonald/

Follow Darren on Twitter: https://twitter.com/upwordz

Connect with Darren on LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/darrenmacdonald/

Connect with the Southern Tier Capital Fund: http://stcfny.com/

Connect with the Southern Tier Capital Fund on Twitter: https://twitter.com/stcapitalfund

[Advice] The Fundamentals

When analyzing a problem to move forward towards a solution, there is a lot of emphasis placed on the fundamentals of the problem.

We place a lot of importance in understanding, revisiting, and honoring the fundamentals of a problem, because they come, not from conceived wisdom, or even perceived wisdom, but from received wisdom.

Of course, this wisdom is received from a past when the fundamentals weren’t fundamental, they were merely subjective reality, based upon the circumstances of that time and place.

Or, this received wisdom isn’t really wisdom at all, but merely regurgitated conventional wisdom, which has two marks against it before it even is spoken into existence—yet again.

In the now, when confronted by a problem that seems to resembles one we faced in the past, we hearken back to that received wisdom, and being trapped by hindsight bias, we demand that fundamentals be reinstituted.

But this is just a clever version of the idea of returning to a past when everybody got along, there was no strife, and the fundamentals were sound.

Here’s the thing:

Demanding a return to the fundamentals can be a callback to received wisdom, but only if the current problem resembles a past one in any kind of way. And problems involving people, rather than processes, are constantly in flux.

Creating a solution to a problem based in the fundamentals can be a foundation to work from. But they can also be the concrete that traps a person, a community, a society, or culture, in a species of cloudy nostalgia for a past that never really was. And once trapped by such nostalgia, those same people, communities, societies, and cultures, are inevitably surprised when an outlier comes along who fundamentally doesn’t care about the concrete of the fundamentals.

Advocating for fundamentals based in received wisdom can be biased, not only because they reflect the prejudices of our personal attributions to past events, our personal desire to minimize dissonance in the present, and our personal need for stability and security in the future, but also because our personal hindsight is always perfect. But in reality, getting to resolution and discovering what fundamental actually worked to solve which problem in the past, was always complicated, messy, mistake-prone, and not assured of success.

Making a rhetorical appeal to return to fundamentals is inherently flawed when the current circumstances don’t even remotely resemble previous circumstances.

And having the courage to throw the past fundamentals out and establish new ones, will always increase conflict, rather than decrease it.

[Opinion] Reading Tea Leaves

We like the prediction business because as human beings, we dislike uncertainty.

If we can know what’s going to happen next, we feel a sense of control.

If we know what’s going to happen next, then we put trust in our own ability and efficacy in order to “fix” whatever problems might arise.

If we know what’s going to happen next, then we feel as if there is a chance to gain safety and security in an insecure and chaotic world.

Psychics, soothsayers, and seers; analysts, pollsters, and pundits; politicians, priests, and professors; well-meaning prognosticators, all.

But see, the tension that lies deep down is between the soothing predictive words of person standing in front of us (or the person on our computer based devices) and the suspicion that we have, resonating from a deeper place of intuitive knowledge, that such predictions are false.

But since we can’t know the future, but we can prove the present, we buy into the lull of certainty that prediction gives us, and we err on the side of prediction, rather than dancing with the uncomfortableness of uncertainty.

Patience.

Being aware of, and secure in, the present.

Letting go emotionally of events that happened in the past.

Not needing to be in control of everything, all the time.

These are emotional skills that, once honed to a fine point, make human beings less susceptible to the predictions of well-meaning prognosticators.

Because the only thing that is guaranteed to be knowable, is that tomorrow will come, no matter how we feel about it.

[Advice] To What End?

What matters the most?

Asking the right questions, or listening to the right answers?

What makes the most impact?

Personalized individual behavioral changes, or massive societal shifts?

When expanding and rapacious technological advancements and the human ability to ignore a crisis until it is impossible to manage its effects merge, the ability to bravely tear down an old system and replace it with another system, is the only skill that matters.

But if we don’t know what matters the most and if we can’t agree on what makes the most impact, then we can’t answer the last question, which becomes the most critical one to get right:

What outcome do we want to end up with?

[Advice] White Space

The person, or organization, pressuring you to make a decision right now, to hurry up, to do the quick and easy thing, are crowding your decisional white space.

This is a rhetorical and persuasive technique where all the methods of persuasion and influence from reciprocation to consensus, meet at the head of a pin.

They know that you know this. That’s why they’re crowding you.

And you know that something is happening to influence your decision making process— you feel the pressure and the stress emotionally and psychologically—but you’re not quite sure why or how.

The framing the person, or organization uses, is that the quick decision is benefiting you, but in reality your quick decision actually benefits them.

Make a quick decision and don’t think about the future, because maintaining the status quo is really what matters, and besides, who can know the future?

Hurry up to achieve harmony, or ensure stasis.

Make a quick decision for immediate gain—or at least, the perception of immediate gain—based on the appearance of an immediate need that needs to be filled.

Don’t slow down.

Don’t consider all of your options.

Even better, you have no options other than the ones that the organization—or the person—in charge gives to you.

Full pedal to the metal driving 105 miles per hour.

But…

The singer Jewel turned down a $1-million-dollar recording contract when she was homeless, broken, sick, and needy.

Money is really no object.

Bob Dylan made albums when no one was listening.

Neither is safety, security, or the status quo. They are stories we tell ourselves, and let ourselves be told.

The future is unknowable, uncontrollable, and imprecise, yes, it always has been. But, today is the place where you have the most control over what you do.

Patience, slowing down, meditating, praying, contemplating, thinking deeply, disagreeing, exploring options, taking your time, being mindful of your surroundings and your inner life—these are not stories, frames or listicle based techniques or shortcuts.

They are skills, based in deeply held values, that resonate through your decisions.

These skills expand your decisional white space, and make it less likely that the person—or organization—pressuring you to make a decision across the table, will have any success at filling your white space.

And they will have even less success crowding the white space of your life.