Chickens and Eggs

Chickens and eggs.

The reasoning that we use to determine which came “first” is the same reasoning that we use to determine causation in decisional areas where correlation might be a better heuristic tool.

The query regarding which “came first” blinds us to the fact that both the chicken and the egg are here—now.

When we get caught in the circle of determining causation, we are really looking for a place to put blame, so that we can be off the hook, for our part in the causation process.

Most of us aren’t looking for clarity (though we say that we are) and most of us aren’t looking for understanding (though we insist that we are) but most of us are looking for the easy way out of having to take responsibilities for those things in our lives that are hard.

Chickens and eggs.

[Strategy] Barns and Mangers

An all knowing, all seeing, all good God, sent His only begotten Son to the Earth to save sinners.

Just writing this line, at this time of year, at the end of such a year as 2016, is considered naïve and near-sighted by many people.

However, as a statement of faith, particularly during the season of what used to called Advent, they are an acknowledgment that the season goes past materialism or doctrinal belief and goes directly to something humbler.

This line, this statement of faith, is about acknowledging the presence of something bigger than ourselves, acknowledging the need that humanity must be saved from our own problems and choices, and acknowledging our desire to be closer to something ineffable that takes us out of ourselves and unites us to each other.

Without human technology.

Without human misunderstandings.

Without human friction, conflict, or interruption.

An all knowing, all seeing, all good God, sent His only begotten Son to the Earth to save sinners, and his Son was born in a barn and was laid in a manger.

There are fewer places (even back in the bad old days) more humble and nonobvious for the person who is the object of such a radical claim to be laid in, than a manger.

The long realized, but rarely remarked upon, true revolution and revelation (that equally confounds the atheist, the agnostic, the follower of another set of religious beliefs, or the rational philosopher) is that omnipotence and omniscience would deign to descend from heaven to earth and into a manger.

During this time of the year, humility is at the core of the Christmas season. Not necessarily humility from accepting (or rejecting) a statement of faith, but humility coming from the awe that such a proclamation could be made, backed up, and continuously defended and propagated for over 2,000 years.

The strategy point is here:

Humility can come from staring at the world built by rational evolution.

Humility can come from being overwhelmed by not being sure about the meaning of the season.

Humility can even come from realizing how much forgiveness, grace, and reconciliation we have in ourselves.

Humility can come from accepting the statement of faith and acting on it.

But, the humility that lies at the core of this season (and yes, I’m well aware of pagan rituals, Catholic Church history, and humanity’s general inhumanity to man) is the humility of coming to the realization that the One True God outside of humanity, outside of time, and outside of our lived experience cared about us enough to send His Son here to this earth, to be born in a manger.

And from there comes the only question worth exploring through the renewal of the New Year:

What must the true nature of such a God be?

[Strategy] Truth and Fairy Tales

The uncomfortable truth is that an understanding and appreciation of the impact of human emotions is required to address the conflicts of the present day.

The comfortable fairy tale is that everywhere human beings are freed from the impact of their emotions by more economic choices, more scientific knowledge, and more opportunities to engage rationally with an ordered world.

The uncomfortable truth is that people very often refuse to change their behavior and walk the hard emotional path from awareness to competency unless a radical catastrophic (either positive or negative) personal or social event occurs to them.

The comfortable fairy tale is that humanity (both individually and collectively) is trending inevitably toward an integrated, united, globalized mindset, less captive to the paradigms, conflicts, and drivers of humanity’s conflict-ridden past.

The uncomfortable truth is that some people don’t want resolution (or closure) to the conflicts they are experiencing, and seek instead to inflict the consequences, process, and results of their personal conflicts on others.

The comfortable fairy tale is that resolution would be easier to get to if only irrational actors ceased acting irrationally through the auspices of more knowledge, more data, but less received, conceived, or perceived wisdom.

The uncomfortable truth is, the more that we think about the very nature of the human beings with whom we are in constant contact (and with whom we are in constant conflict) the better we get at managing, not the conflicts of others, but the reactions in ourselves.

The three areas in which we grow are often overlooked, but as conflicts, and the confusion about why they occur, increases, these areas will become more critical to engage in with mastery:

Intentionality—no more accidents. Yes, it seems exhausting to always be consciously aware of what we say, what we do, what we think, and what we feel. But it’s equally exhausting to experience the results of a lack of intentionality.

Self-awareness—physician heal thyself. Yes, it might be a more entertaining and distracting approach to be filled with the noise of others (and the constant pitch of the world). But healing yourself requires coming to terms with the signal coming from inside yourself.

Hearing—rather than listening to speak. Yes, it requires patience to listen to others with whom we disagree, and with whom we agree. But when we miss a critical conflict message because we didn’t hear it, we will have to be far more patient with the consequences as they roll out in our lives.

As the framing of more and more comfortable fairy tales run up against the wisdom of uncomfortable truths, it becomes imperative for those who have eyes to see, and ears to hear, to become more strategic around these three areas.

Network Leap 2

The leap from here to there has never been closer.

Sure, leaping is naturally hard.

That’s why people caution other people, before they embark on a path they can’t see, into a future they can’t understand, with outcomes that are unimaginable, to “look before you leap.”

It’s been written before that, in the context of a conflict, this is terrible advice, most often given terribly.

In the context of the idea of the primacy of the network over everything else , leaping from the Internet “in here” (the greatest communications disruption tool invented by man yet) to the network of physical relationships, textures, and moments in the world “out there” (the physical world), it’s actually great advice.

The difficulty of leaping from inside the machine to outside the machine is misunderstood and underappreciated. Google is trying it’s best to make that leap, as is Facebook, but the real players in the leap from virtual to physical, might be platform builders who understand two things:

Connectivity is not a bug, it’s a feature. Too often in the non-virtual world, connection is now shifting from being treated as something to be hoarded (though there are still those who do that) to something to be freely shared. This shift is thought of by the hoarders as a bug in the system and they do all they can to wipe it out.

Access is a responsibility. Too often in the physical world the location where the fiber optic wire ends (the last mile concept) is thought of as the place where it’s not financially worth it (a profit can’t be made) to provide access to the people living beyond that, sometimes literal, “last mile.” This mindset is shifting, because the reality is that access is gradually moving from a limited privilege to a global civic good.

Once people, businesses, and networks wrap their heads around these two philosophies, and then are self-aware enough to act on them with intentionality, “look before you leap” will return to being the terrible advice it always was.

[Advice] Conspiracy Theories

The standing rule is that people tend to most easily believe in conspiracy theories that they create; and tend to reject the conspiratorial thinking of others.



The trouble with our concerns about fake news, is that they come from a place where critical thinking has been reduced in favor of playing to (and supporting) audience attention spans that rival those of hummingbirds.

The long read, the long form content, the long movie; the challenging idea, the scientific journal, the complicated path to learning a new language; these are all in competition against TL;DR (too long; didn’t read), the 30 second cat video on YouTube, the 6 second looping Vine video, or the easily shareable click-bait article.

Audiences have been convinced by both marketers, and journalists (just marketers in another way) that their thinking and content consumption choices are sophisticated. That they are able to sift through biases consciously (without relying on assumptions and inferences from facts not in evidence), come to rational conclusions, and then act on those conclusions to co-create an orderly world.

Oh, but were that so.

When audiences can pick their own personalized access to “knowledge” and can choose their own “facts” then news that comes from sophisticated marketers (some former journalists) and content creators, becomes the coin of access to the conspiratorial realm. And social cueing, confirmation bias, and attribution activates individuals in the audience to create their own, publicly viewable, and socially shareable conspiracy theories.

Not about aliens landing at Roswell.

Not about the Illuminati running the world.

Not about a rising one-world government.

Not about a coming cashless society.

But conspiracies about stolen votes, illegal voting (and voters), racialism, economic injustice, Big Pharmaceutical companies poisoning vaccines, Big Agricultural companies poisoning seeds, Big Banks ceasing to be allowed to failed, Big Governments seeking to curb natural rights, Big Faith seeking to curb libertine tendencies, and on, and on, and on.

This type of conspiracy theory mongering is particularly subtle and insidious, because it plays on the mistrust and biases audiences already have built in to their world-view and thinking, but it does the play at scale, and one-to-one. This creates a feeling of community (we’re in the know) while also creating a feeling of persecution (we’re on the outside of everyone else).

And people should have expected it. As more knowledge, has become more accessible to the common individual (if you have a smartphone in your pocket with Internet access, you have a supercomputer) we have been encouraged to embrace the conspiracies we like, share them with our friend circle, and then sit back and wait passively for reality to match our frames and worldviews. And when that doesn’t happen, we go back, double-down, and start the conflict cycle.

Mass media (led by the collapsing and panicking journalism field) is complicit in this as well, seeking to drive audience attention to ideas and concepts that are spurious, but that also generate clicks. This is because mass media content production can’t figure out (at scale) how to get audiences to pay for something they can get anywhere for free, but it’s also driven by the ego-based desire to be seen, be acknowledged as an expert, and to grow the network and personal brand of the content creator at the expense of the market, and the audience, gaining new knowledge, or being challenged in any meaningful way.

Fake news—and the environment that allows conspiracy theories to metastasize—is not going to go away. The echo chambers of social platforms are too powerful, with too many voices, too many passive audience members, and too many exclusively self-interested actors.

What is going to have to change is, as always, the hardest piece: Individuals are going to have to decide what they will absorb, what ideas they will believe, and they critically reject other ideas, based on objective evidence and proof.

But if individuals (and audiences) could do that effectively, the placebo effect long-ago would have ceased to be effective.

[Strategy] Communication Channel

The voice is a communication channel.

So is a pen, a piece of paper, a keyboard, a desktop computer, or even a mobile phone.

So is a television screen, a computer screen, and a mobile phone screen.

The eyes, the hands, the body are communication channels.

So are mobile applications, Internet platforms, and even websites.

The ability to miscommunicate effectively comes about when we confuse the channel, with the message coming through the channel.

Or we confuse the medium with the message itself.

We seek nuance through these channels in a vain attempt to connect completely with another human being. The problem is that these channels are flawed because they are channels that exist of human making, human molding, and even human compromising. The nuance that we seek through using these channels—the clarity, courage and candor we ultimately seek—will not only come through such channels.

Conflict is easy when the medium and the message are confused. Conflict relies on obfuscation, confusion, miscommunication, and disconnection.

Blogging, tweeting, “facebooking,” Snapchatting, or using whatever the platform of choice to communicate with nuance, will result in more conflict not less. This is because nuance is sacrificed when using these platforms to communicate ideas that are easy to understand, but hard to manage, and may not ever result in resolution.

Reading is a communication channel.

So is thinking.

[Podcast] Earbud_U, Season Four, Episode #9 – Jason Dykstra

[Podcast] Earbud_U, Season Four, Episode # 9 – Jason Dykstra, Storyteller, Marketer, Conflict Management Specialist

podcast-earbud_u-season-four-episode-9-jason-dykstra

[powerpress]

Sometimes the host screws up.

He misses the date, misses the appointment, misses the guest entirely. And then he’s gotta say he’s sorry, get the process back on track, and make no excuses.

I had to apologize to our guest today, Jason Dykstra. And while he’s an amenable guy, and things happen (as the bumper sticker points out) the way to run an organization is to almost never make a mistake.

But when you make that mistake, the thing to do is to take responsibility, stand up and say “I screwed this up. There’s no excuses. Please forgive me.”

That gives the other party the option to say no, say yes, or ignores you completely. It also gives them the option to look at your vulnerability, determine your credibility, and to make a decision about you.

Now, if mistakes keep happening, then there’s a pattern of behavior. But a one off, an “almost never happens,” a “rare but not damaging miscalculation” these are forgivable.

What’s not forgivable are mistakes that reveal an ethical, moral, or even spiritual failings.

These are the Jimmy Swaggart level mistakes.

Or more recently, the VW emissions scandals.

Or even the Wells-Fargo “clawback” issues mistakes.

And no amount of apologizing will help sweep away that stain.

Some mistakes, as an old supervisor of mine liked to point out, you can’t come back from.

What does this have to do with mediators building their businesses?

Well, there are mistakes a mediator can come back from.

There are mistakes that reveal a mediators’ patterns of behavior. But when mediators are putting themselves “out there” the possibility for mistakes explodes ten-fold.

And many well-meaning mediators market poorly (or not at all) because of fear of making a mistake.

But, as a mediator who practices what he preaches, Jason will help us walk through all of this today, and more.

Connect with Jason in all the ways you can below:

Website: http://www.jasondyk.com/

Facebook (The L3 Group): https://www.facebook.com/L3GroupTC/

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

LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/jasondyk

Twitter: https://twitter.com/jasondyk

Twitter (The L3 Group): https://www.twitter.com/thel3group

[Advice] Conflict Manipulation

The manipulation is simple, but the consequences are complex.

We lament “Why can’t we all just, get along?” and then we proceed to irritate, obfuscate, or deceive the other party.

Then we look at them with Alfred E. Nueman’s famous facial expression and metaphorically shrug our shoulders.

The problem is not “getting along” (whatever that may mean, in whatever context you may place it for your conflict) the problem is that resolution is a chimera, and managing the other party in conflict is emotionally exhausting.

So, we dance the conflict two-step and hope that the other party will dance with us. But the consequences of the dance of avoidance (particularly if avoidance is a baseline rather than a temporary strategy) is that we avoid addressing the things that matter to us. And the months, years, or even decades roll by, and we harden into emotional positions from which we cannot extricate ourselves.

There’s too much cruft around the outsides.

The story that we tell ourselves then falls back to the original lament, the original starting position, and when it’s time to get to resolution (or management) we stymie the other party yet again.

“Why can’t we all just, get along?”

Well…there are reasons…

[Advice] How to Have Gratitude

Remember how easy it was to say “thank you” when you were a child and you had nothing to lose?

Yeah…neither do we…

And the thing is, as we become fully autonomous adults, with our own minds, motivations, and needs, it becomes less easy than it ever was in childhood.

We can talk all we want about the history of the Pilgrims, the fractious nature of their relationship with Native Tribes, or even if they should’ve left Europe in the first place, but underlying all of the dogmatic anger and resentment against the Pilgrims in our contemporary culture (and in some cases, against this day), is one simple fact:

It’s really, really hard to humble ourselves to say the words “thank you.”

It’s also really, really hard as adults to be thankful when we believe inherently that our own power gets us what we have, rather than working collaboratively in a community with others, creating “good enough” governments, and resolving arguments without resorting to violence.

It’s really, really hard to have a heart of gratefulness when we feel that our ideas, our emotions, and even our identities have been changed, stolen, appropriated, or even wiped out all together.

It’s really, really hard to say “thank you” when we feel that the system and structure is the one to whom we are giving thanks (it’s not) rather than the Immovable Force behind the system and structure (which we may—or may not—believe in).

It’s really, really hard to understand that saying “thank you” is not about how we feel today, tomorrow, or even how we felt in the past. Instead, having a heart of gratitude is about doing what’s right no matter what our ephemeral and fleeting feelings may be.

All of this is hard. And it should come as no surprise that it’s always been hard.

Both at the beginning of celebrating this thing called Thanksgiving Day, and all the way through today, two hundred and twenty-seven years later.

But if we get through this day, then the long spiral of renewal toward next year becomes one that happens without the baggage of resentment, conflict, and strife.

[Strategy] Why So Few Self-Aware Organizations?

Organizations, founders, managers, and employees who are self-aware do better than those who aren’t.

This should come as no surprise, but in an economic, social, and even political climate where “knowing thyself” is as mysterious as “knowing thy customers,” it becomes incumbent upon an organization–and the people employed by it–to be self-aware.

Here are a few questions to get you started:

  • What does our organization do here in the world?
    • Why are we doing it?
    • Is what we’re doing useful, not to the market or to our customers, but also to the overall economy?
  • Does our company care?
  • Are we just here to satisfy our shareholders?
  • If our employees don’t care (or do care) why do they care and how do we grow what they care about?
  • What do other people (i.e. the market (fans, customers, clients, shareholders)) think that we do?
    • If there’s a chasm between those two perceptions, how do we cross it, if we want to, or how do we live with it, if we don’t?
  • Are we recruiting, interviewing, and hiring people that are self-aware about why they want to be here?
    • And if we aren’t, how do we get them to leave in a way that honors them and makes space for the kind of people we want to be here?

Answering all (or any) of these questions honestly and clearly, requires the courage to speak up, be in the room, stay engaged, and be open to self-critique.

And in case you’re wondering if this all actually works, well here’s a little something to watch