[Advice] Entrepreneurs Disrupted

We are at the end of about a ten to fifteen-year cycle of entrepreneurship being sexy. And now is a good time for disruption.

This is evidenced by current exits, acquisitions, and even the folding of companies. And while some VC dollars are drying up a little bit in traditional geographic locations, other dollars are moving to non-traditional geographic locations.

Like Pittsburgh.

Or Cleveland.

In those places though, where the culture of Silicon Valley (“fail fast, fail hard”) has yet to completely penetrate, two distinct phenomena are going to bump up against each other over the next few years. And this friction will occur even as breathless articles—and blog posts—will be written about the death of entrepreneurship in the major media, political, and social centers of the United States.

The first phenomena will be the mismatch between a traditional VCs perception of what the culture of investment should be, and the perception of culture in places geographically, (and culturally as well as ideologically) removed from that culture of investment. There have been a few businesses built like this in the Midwest (Basecamp, formerly 37 Signals, comes to mind) but there will be more friction in the coming years.

The second phenomena will be the mismatch between a “small business” mentality, and a “entrepreneurs” mentality. This will manifest in all kinds of ways, including work ethic, employee education level, and other localized influences. Many of these are unquestioned and “in the air” in Silicon Valley, and the mismatch is already acute outside of Silicon Valley.

Both of these mismatches can be overcome, managed, or eliminated completely through the effects of numerous, gossamer like transactions, but they all represent disruption.

That is, disruption for both the end of entrepreneurship being “sexy”, and the beginning of something else, even greater taking root in unexpected places.

HIT Piece 9.13.2016: Facebook-as-the-Internet

You are probably going to read this post by clicking on a link from Facebook, if you read this at all.

More likely than not, you won’t read this if you see it posted on LinkedIn (it seems too arduous to click on an article, thus the increase of click-bait recently on the platform).

If you happen to see the link to the blog post on Twitter (I didn’t pay for it to trend, nor do I have enough heft to cut through the constant firehose of information on the platform) you most likely won’t read it either.

These three platforms (along with Google) have created an environment of ease of access, shareability of information, and have grown through social proofing (“Everybody else is there, so I must be there as well”) that their influence as media companies is now being seriously discussed by media companies still around from the 20th century.

This leads to three problems, beyond the obvious ones though:

  1. There are biases evident in both the algorithms that run these platforms (as usual, computer models and programs are created by human beings, and human beings have biases) but that phenomenon is compounded by the fact that the people using the platform the most have their own biases. The real struggle is not to get more human curators to do the work of curating that an algorithm is programmed to do. The real struggle for both human curators and the human programmed algorithms running in the background of these platforms, is to educate and inform the audience using the platforms in spite of their biases.
  2. Facebook, Google, LinkedIn, Twitter, Pintrest, Snapchat, and on and on, are not the Internet. They are applications built atop the Internet. By only accessing information through these silos (the search engine Duck Duck Go actually gives better results than Google) the “lock-in” effect gets deeper and deeper in the person doing the search. This can be a positive. But it can also create myopia, willful ignorance, and a lack of curiosity about the world outside of these platforms.
  3. In the future, the social media and information communication platforms built on top of the Internet will become more fractured, not less. This is the reaction/response to the first two problems, and to solving the problem inherent in the sentence that opened this post. Eventually, more and more niche audiences, being less and less served by the platforms built at “mass” (i.e. Facebook, LinkedIn, Twitter, Google, et.al) will seek information out on the long-tail of options. There will be some reverting back to what came before social media (i.e. chatrooms, discussion boards, email listservs (I’m on two or three) and other tools) but eventually, niche audiences will seek access to their own silos outside the megaphone of established social media platforms.

Note, I did not say that these platforms would be profitable, popular to the masses, or easy for outsiders to integrate to and use. Reddit is already like this to some degree in its resistance to monetization, its relative openness, and its vain efforts to curtail its core users’ language and political preferences.

But as every woman seeks the promise behind being her own information queen, the seduction inherent in getting away from Facebook-as-the-Internet will grow in popularity and promise.

[Strategy] Average in the Future

There have always been people in societies, cultures, and among populations all over the world and throughout history who have committed an average level of effort to the work of building their lives.

They lived. They died. And they didn’t make a ripple or a dent in the universe.

It’s only in the last 100 years or so that the protection for being average was codified at a mass level through the direct efforts of the Industrial Revolution and the aftereffects of that same revolution.

Another way of saying this is “C’s get degrees.”

Yes, they do.

But, over the next 100 years, they may have to get a different set of skills in order to maintain that “C” status, both in life, and in their careers.

It’s always been demanding to be average; to stay in your lane; to follow directions without critically thinking; to not be the nail that sticks up; to protect the status quo by not engaging in conflicts that matter.

And it’s just going to get even harder.

[Advice] Nostalgia and Disposable Income

When a town economy runs on the fuel of nostalgia for an imagined past, and relies on a pool of people with disposable income who are willing to spend money to remember the past, the town is in trouble when either the nostalgia or income run out.

This is not anything new in the culture of towns away from bustling city centers globally, but the phenomenon will become more acutely noticed in the coming years, as nostalgia is abandoned in favor of the new and the shiny (you can’t compete with that) and as disposable income becomes less evenly distributed and less disposable.

And if you don’t think that it can happen in the 21st century, well, there are gold and silver “rush” mining towns throughout the American West that do a brisk business in seasonal tourism as ghost towns.

And it only took them 100 years to get there.

[Advice] Evolving Cultural Sensibilities and ADR

As the economic, cultural, and spiritual forces that used to bind us together continue to refragment from overarching macro-cultures to indispensable micro-cultures, alternative dispute resolution practitioners must take notice.

Overarching macro-culture was driven by communal events, television, economic stability, and overarching cultural “norms” that allowed people to engage in conflicts and disputes with the same regularity they always have, but also allowed the impacts of those conflicts to be dampened.

Indispensable micro-culture is driven by technology, network connections that defy geography and notice, a dismissal of the status quo, and a strong identity component. People still have conflict in these micro-cultures (what used to be called “sub-cultures”). But the impacts of those conflicts are like wildfires that catch the masses attention for a moment, but without a “there” there, there is little sustained effort mounted to ameliorate the effects upon people in those micro-culture conflicts.

Conflict resolvers, conflict coaches, conflict engagers, mediators, arbitrators, and others have watched this evolution occur over the last fifty or so years, with greater acceleration, but the response to the evolution through providing access points to conflict resolution has not been as quick. This is mainly for three reasons:

  • Indispensable micro-culture is still seen as “niche” and not really enough to build a business model on by the entrepreneurial conflict resolver. This is a terrible fact, but except for some people doing some great work in resolving conflicts in specific areas with specific groups in conflicts (i.e. with parties in churches, with divorcing or separating pet owners, etc.) there is more focus by ADR professionals on how to gain credibility with the courts—still standing as the last guardians of a passing away overarching macro-culture.
  • There are still enough parties in conflict participating in the remaining civic life of a formerly overarching macro-culture. This is something that will pass away over time, but right now, there are enough of the “masses” left around that many professional conflict resolvers look at the problems and conflicts of that group and decide to address their issues first. Both as a way to make a “dent” in the universality of conflict, and to make money from a reliable income stream.
  • Refragmentation is still not understood—or accepted psychologically, emotionally, or spiritually—as an inevitable outcome of the erosion of the twin, post-World War 2 oligopolies of corporation and government. Now, this is not to say that government will disappear either now or later; but the fact is, that as conflicts and disputes between parties in indispensable micro-culture become harder and harder to understand, the overarching macro-culture responses from government entities (i.e. new laws, regulations, taxes, and fees) will be less and less effective. This is because indispensable micro-culture conflicts are driven by esoteric, identity based rules, that require conflict resolvers to engage in relationships with those cultures to resolve—and to go beyond the overarching macro-culture rubric of intercultural communication skill sets.

None of these three areas are that daunting to overcome. And once overcome, the business models to get ideas for resolution to people in conflict begin to overwhelm the entrepreneurial conflict resolver. All that is required to get there is the courage of conflict resolvers to act outside of the “box” they have been trained in.

[Advice] On Influencers

Influential personalities and brands online are about to become even more influential as the years go by.

And mediators, lawyers, and negotiators should take note.

Influencer advertising is tricky to navigate, whether you are trying to partner with the peacebuilding neighborhood association with a vibrant Facebook community or the pop singer Rhianna.

Influencer marketing is only going to grow larger in the coming year for the very same reasons that social media is influential now: Individuals trust other individuals more than they trust brands. In the field of mediation and peacebuilding, where trust is a huge deal, influencers and thought leaders such as Bernard Mayer and Kenneth Cloke bring their substantial influence to academic programs, academic writing, advocacy and other areas.

However, as the influence of those individuals begins to fade, a new generation of influencers is rising in the ranks of mediation and peacebuilding professionals, such as Patricia Porter, Brad Heckman, Cinnie Noble, and others who have begun to leverage social tools and the wide reach of the Internet to make a dent in the peace building universe.

For the ADR professional with limited resources to be able to connect with larger names in the peacebuilding world, there are a few things to remember when considering using influencers to advertise your content, your services, your philosophy, or your processes:

Does the influencer’s brand link well with my brand promise?

Carefully considering how an influencer’s brand (which may range from Bernard Mayer all the way to Kim Kardashian) complements the strengths and reduces the weaknesses of the peacebuilder’s brand promise is key to developing a long term relationship with the influencer. Influencers are people first and foremost, and peacebuilding professionals should be about building that relational knowledge ahead of jumping into a branded relationship.

Is the influencer’s audience an audience that I want to be addressing as a peace builder?

Depending upon who the influencer’s audience is (and audiences range in taste and structure from the 1,000 followers the neighborhood peace builder has on her Facebook page, all the way to the millions of fans and followers Jon Stewart has) the peace builder has to decide carefully if that is an audience worth talking to. The fact of the matter is, every audience that a brand influencer has is not appropriate for a peace builder to talk to, nor is every audience open to hearing a message about peace.

Does the influencer’s message help or harm my message?

Every influencer talks to their audience in their own way, using words, images, symbols, and other forms of social cuing that inexorably tie that audience to them.

Some influencers are less savvy than others, but that does not mean that they aren’t sophisticated communications professionals in their own right.

 

[Opinion] The Promise of the Computer Leaves Some People Behind

Access to the means of production in an increasingly computerized global economy is THE social justice issue of our time if indeed the computers ate—and will continue to eat—all of our jobs.

There is an issue with the fact that rural areas in the United States (and worldwide) have limited access to the wonders of the Internet and computer based development, because of the fact that their geographical location is not urban.

There is an issue with the fact that a student who would love to move back to their hometown of 20,000 people can’t because the computerized opportunities they were trained to take advantage of, don’t exist in rural areas.

There is an issue when the only response from the increasingly dense urban populations to the increasingly sparse rural populations is “Well…move to the city.” Or even worse “Well, you chose to live in the country.”

Yes, people have a right to move around and live where they can, and they have a right to experience the consequences that come from making those decisions. The most iconic image of post-modern film history is that one outside the window of Deckard’s car in Bladerunner as he escapes the populated, polluted, oppressive—but full of opportunity—city, to go live in the vast, open, country. It is telling that fiction gets this dichotomy righter than lived fact.

Considerations of access, of course bring to mind the question of who will pay for such changes? The choices before us are either hard, difficult, and without obvious answers as to the outcomes of any of them:

The fact of the matter is, Universal Basic Income to everyone is not economically feasible in a country of 320 million individualists.

More calls for higher tax rates will only economically stifle entrepreneurship and further the gap emotionally between the “haves” in the city and the “have-nots” in the rural areas.

So, if we really believe that the role of government is to be a safety net, then what greater net should government be providing, than the net of advocacy, pressure, and even protection around access to the computerized means of production, via high speed cable that goes past “the last mile”?

If we don’t believe that such advocacy and protection is the work of good government, then the truly fortunate few should be creating businesses, entrepreneurial opportunities, and using every means at their creative disposal to make sure that the rural populations—which are increasingly poor, increasingly white, and increasingly politically hostile to the new order of computers because they are finally experiencing the end of the Industrial era—have the means to make a living.

And another app for doing something that our mothers used to do, won’t really bring that kind of meaning through job growth to those rural populations. Nor will it bring anything but pennies in the form of “sharing” or “gig” economic structures that cannot support the needs of children, families, or communities where education levels are low, and hope is fleeting.

If we believe that education is way out, and that not increasing access, but that instead increasing skills, e.g. teaching everyone to code, is the way to go, then we need to reform the education system from K-12 in truly, deeply, profoundly, radical ways.

And the enterprising few need to leave the cities, head to the country, and be prepared to really dig in for ten to twenty years into reforming an educational system that is simultaneously perceived as the “only place to get a good job” and also seen as “the last best hope for our children.” And the enterprising few must do it while also showing a modest profit.

However, we do have another, more comfortable choice: We can collectively decide that the rural areas don’t matter. That geography is a state of mind rather than a physical place. We can decide that “those country people” are irrelevant. We can decide that the urban poor need and deserve more attention than the seemingly spread out rural poor. We can decide—when we look at all—to continue to use the language of the 18th, 19th, and 20th century to try to resolve and acutely 21st century problem.

We can make such decisions and continue to support policies, and politicians, of all stripes who engage in such decision making.

And all the reformation of education, the gradual migration toward denser and denser urban areas (and the concomitant spread of those areas outward), and the increase in computerization and automation, is guaranteed to lead to more cries of income inequality, racism, sexism, and calls for the acquisition of capital to made harder for the fortunate few, rather than easier.

Which will create more conflict, not less.

[Opinion] Customer Service to Human Beings

Human beings have multiple problems with other human beings.

This is neither a revolutionary statement, nor is it particularly interesting, unless you consider that in the next ten to fifteen years or so, robotic, reactive, automation will be cold-calling your house at six in the morning.

Unlike the human being that you talk to now (who often talks off of a script) this automation will learn from your responses (all the way from a polite hang-up to a use of curse words combined with a hang-up) and will shift in the way that it responds to the next person it calls.

Automation can’t feel. Automation doesn’t get tired. And with the new reactive automation systems coming down the pike in the future, automation will learn about you, your neighbor, and the other customers down the street.

Long-term (like twenty-five to thirty years out) customer service in human-to-human interactions at scale (for instance, those interactions you currently have at the local social services office) will be almost completely automated, from kiosks, to straight robotics, automation will replace humans in many types of face-to-face interactions, leading to upheavals in employment opportunities and even in emotional engagement.

Human beings have multiple problems with other human beings. It remains to be seen if human beings will have multiple problems with non-human actors in early stage interactions around services and processes.

[Podcast] Earbud_U, Season Four, Episode #1 – Chris Strub

[Podcast] Earbud_U, Season Four, Episode # 1 – Chris Strub, Social Media Engager and Connector, Part 2

[Podcast] Earbud_U, Season Four, Episode #1 – Chris Strub

[powerpress]

Welcome back to the fourth season of The Earbud_U Podcast!

The nostalgia for the perceived security and safety of the Industrial-TV complex dominated world of work and human interaction, is almost deafening.

The nostalgia mostly comes in the form of complaints about the work ethic of the current generation by a generation feeling left behind, and discounted.

Our guest today, Chris Strub is back from the second season of The Earbud_U Podcast. He defines putting in the work and redefining what the new work ethic is, by building a new way of working, using tools that allow him to grow his impact, and actively demonstrate the changing nature of the work ethic conversation.

When work ethic (or nostalgia for an imagined time in the past when people worked “harder” than they do now) is discussed, it’s often framed in the context of “paying your dues.” That mythical state of working hard, being unnoticeable (except for the work that you do), making no demands upon the work structure, and showing appropriate deference to the life experience of people older than you.

In a communication world with digital tools that are reshaping everything from shopping to working globally, “paying your dues” can begin at the age of 15 doing things that

  • Don’t scale
  • Will not appear on a resume
  • That an employer will never know about
  • And will bring the person passive income that can be leveraged after ten years…at the age of 25.

You know, at the moment when the “you should be ‘paying your dues’” conversation begins to happen, directed by superiors, co-workers, and others who didn’t have the digital tools that the 15 to 34 year olds have at their disposal right now.

Work ethic still exists. We just haven’t figured out a new way to calculate its value.

Listen to the podcast and take the multiple opportunities out there to connect with Chris today:

[Opinion] You Can Bet Your Bottom Dollar

If you’ve got all your money in front of you, and you put it all on black (or red) you might just be betting your last dollar. Your bottom dollar, if you will.

Employers and employees in the last century used to believe that motivation and morale were traits that could be squeezed out through the regulation of labor, one 22-pound shovel at a time.

But in this new century, as the wheels have come off of the Industrial Revolution, it’s hard to take the measure of modern motivation and morale. Motivation, and even morale, have become individualistic and based, not in professional loyalty, but instead in social public display. Many people—employers and employees alike—have come to understand, without saying out loud, that they have to be willing to abandon old notions of employee loyalty, and even work ethic in order to advance in the workplace.

But many people don’t want to push their chips forward. Many people—employees and especially employers—don’t understand what they’re meeting in a future where motivation is exemplified through doing things that don’t show up on a resume and that don’t scale immediately. Many employees, and employers, feel as though they are putting their souls at hazard.

And as more technology replaces human motivation (which is a trait, not a state) and human morale (which is about the soft skills of team development, rather than the hard skills of work ethic and loyalty and—increasingly—intelligence) becomes less interesting to employers as a trait to develop, many more people are going to choose to not be a part of this world.

Which will inevitably lead to conflict, which may come burnished with the patina of the 20th century language of social justice, equality, and overall restlessness, but underneath will be about motivation, intelligence, access, talent, and even the ability to engage in emotional labor.

Rather than continuing to seek in vain the next 22-pound shovel.