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

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

On Liberty, Wikileaks and Sullen Paranoia

“We in this country, in this generation, are — by destiny rather than choice — the watchmen on the walls of world freedom.” John F. Kennedy
In America, we pride ourselves on freedom, first amendment rights and the ability to have extensive privacy protection.

Yet, Wikileaks, Edward Snowden, Bradley Manning, Big Data and other intersections between the government and corporations sharing information to either get us to buy more, spend more, or to just watch us more, has put to lie some of these freedoms.

Enough Americans still see this country as the “Home of the Brave,” but less and less so over the last few years.

However, there is nothing that couldn’t be recaptured about the freedom to be left alone, inherent in our American freedoms, by replacing a few legislative leaders and by rethinking how we look at the cultural and social implications of privacy.

Two articles, one from Jules Polonetsky  and one from Peggy Noonan make the point that, while personal-public behavior may change in the short-term, due to surveillance and monitoring, in the long term, such efforts serve to create a nation of, in essence, sullen, paranoid, people: Angry and pessimistic at being watched constantly, but unable to stop it and believing that it is everywhere.

The balance between the result of every click, search and posting being held against me and government and corporations being able to interrupt me constantly with marketing and appeals to buy or support more and more stuff, has not been worked out fully in the American public sphere yet.

Fortunately for all of us, the American public will figure out how to resolve the tensions in this conflict, long before the laggards and late-majority in governments—local, state and federal—will.

-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/

Big Data, or How I Learned to Stop Worrying and Love Federal Data Gathering Centers

Ain’t gonna need to tell the truth. Tell no lie. Everything you think, do and say is in the pill you took today.”–Zager and Evans

There is a direct line between the rise of GMO’s, the enthusiasm with which “Big Data” is being adopted, the coming of Google glasses and other wearables, the prevalence of Federal Government “data centers” (7,000 at last count) and the ubiquitousness of cameras on stoplights, street corners, and in city parks.
This line overlaps with mobile device tracking, police and the NSA monitoring your cell phone calls and Internet searches, and the coming of “the Internet of Everything.”
This line is followed ever so casually, by the prevalence of laws and policies designed to provide a benefit (i.e. the Affordable Health Care Act, among others), but that tangentially allow larger and larger private and public bureaucracies to burrow deeper and deeper into personal behavior choices that we make on an individual and societal basis.
The intersections all meet at a point of behavior monitoring, or “nudging,” of private individuals into buying acceptable products, acting in acceptable ways and making sure that everybody else does the same.
In the arena of conflict resolution and peace building, we here at HSCT find the idea of behavior management or behavior monitoring by large, faceless, entities to be–well, “creepy” (as the kids are wont to say as they Tweet out every instance of their lives looking for connections)–and authoritarian.
Dare we say, all of this progress smacks of Orwellianism.
Now, before we are accused of wearing tinfoil hats and searching the skies for black helicopters, we have an “early adopter” curve for you to make our next point.

Now, early adopters are the people who will buy the I-phone when it’s brand new and will probably buy the first pair of Google glasses at $200 a piece.Your folks in the middle–the early and late majority– are most of us.  They will buy a smart phone from Wal-mart two years from now and only because their friends all have one, so “why not?”

Your third group is at the end of the curve. The laggards are the people we all know who still have VCR’s and will never buy Google Glasses because they’re either paranoid about Big Brother, or they just don’t care.

The anti-GMO people…
The anti-CCTV camera people…
The ACLU…
The guy who drives around town distributing a mimeographed, weekly paper, out of the back of his car which is full of garbage and may or may not have an animal in the back.
These are your laggards.
Moreover, it is the behavior, choices and conflicts that this group of people present, that confounds, distorts and affects bureaucratic “thinking” and policymaking, and leads to more and more talk of “the Internet of Everything.”
Now, mugging people of their autonomy, independence and free will and limiting choices, stands in opposition to peace, in our opinion.
The right NOT to participate is the most sacred right in the Constitution.
This sacred right, to go off on one’s own, creates conflicts with other individuals and societies.
However, peace is NOT the absence of conflict.
The false promise of all of these technologies is that by everyone, everywhere, at all time, having their behavior, choices, ideas, attitudes, conversations and thoughts, confirmed, conformed, reformed, and reconstituted, for the benefit of the lowest bidder; that somehow, that act of “tamping down” the unruly nails, will ultimately lead to some sort of man made Utopia.
That is NOT peace.
That is TYRANNY.
Let us all become vigilant watchmen on the walls for peace.

-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/

[Advice] Masculinity in Conflict-George Zimmerman/Trayvon Martin Edition

“Our fathers were models for God. If our fathers abandoned us, what does that tell us about God?” -Fight Club

“We used to have the church. Which was another way of saying, we had each other.” – The Departed
“The six scariest words in the English language are ‘I’m from the government and I’m here to help.’” -Ronald Reagan
Conflicts-Are-The-Symptoms

The opinions of the media, the social justice community and the black community have been largely monolithic. Speaking with one voice, they have roundly expressed outrage over the result through social media outlets, on the internet and in traditional media.

We here at HSCT have an opinion on the case and the verdict, however, we start with three caveats:

  • We were not in the courtroom and with the exception of details we have gleaned from the aforementioned outrage, have no ideas about the facts of the case.
  • We were not the jurors, the judge, the prosecutor, the defense attorney, the investigators, or anyone else who had direct access to the facts of the case.
  • We were not in the courtroom and did not hear one of the facts of the case, presented in evidence, during the trial, nor did we watch one moment of the trial coverage.

However, from the 50,000-foot up level, we recognize the ripple of conflict, brought on by a confrontation, occurring in a society dealing with difficulties in many areas, including race, gender, power, attention and advocacy.

With that in mind, we reprint here a blog post Masculinity in Conflict that we wrote back in December of 2012 following the Sandy Hook school shooting.

We here at HSCT believe that the same, core issues around misplaced masculine power that were in evidence then, are in evidence now, both in the 17 year olds’ actions as well as the 29 year olds’ response to those actions.

When are mature, responsible men going to start “fixing” other men and young boys so that events like this do not have to happen anymore?


We were hesitant to even comment on the killings in Connecticut this week in this forum, because here at HSCT, we have a core value that all life is precious and that all lives have value.
We particularly hold this value dear for people who cannot defend themselves adequately in the world, such as the mentally ill and children. Both of those groups were impacted by the actions of one mentally ill individual.
We tend to also wait until all the facts are in and then make a judgment about a situation, and over the last six to seven days, with a speed never fully imagined in a world before social media, we have been held breathless and traumatized by the changing facts of the hour on the ground.We here at HSCT take no official position on gun control or assault weapons bans.

We do note , however, that gun-related violence and gun based crimes in places where such bans are in effect (such as Chicago and other major metropolitan areas)  runs rampant, with black on black murder rates, that make what happened in Connecticut look like exactly what it was: random and senseless.

We take no official position on treating the mentally ill. We also take no position on survivalists and people who fear the “End of the World” or economic collapses.

However, we do take a position on conflict and we do take a position on ways to avoid, ameliorate and prevent conflicts form occurring in the first place.

And in this case, the most glaring issue is not access to weapons or mental illness (those have been with us since Abel killed Cain, or two monkeys slew each other over fruit, depending upon your belief system). The most glaring issue is one, which we have spoken little about at all:

Masculinity.

What does it mean to be a man?

How does a young child grow into a boy and finally, through the throws of the teenage years to be a man?

How does he honor, respect and protect himself? What emotions is he allowed to show, express and experience?

We have a crisis in the world, and it is with our young men: young men ages 12 to 35 commit the majority of violent crime. Restless and bored young men commit the majority of rapes, murders, robberies and assaults. We watch as young men in this country play video games and consume media that passes along messages that violence and anger are appropriate methods of resolving conflicts with others.

We compound our problem by medicating young men for ADD and ADHD when in the past, they would have been put out to push a plow or work in a factory to wear themselves out.

And then we wonder at their behavior. They lash out aggressively after years of bullying and violence that they have seen: Unable to talk to parents, educators or even each other. They feel alienated from females and from education: Some colleges are almost at 60% female 40% male and the male dropout rate in the first year of college is criminally underreported.

So….who’s to blame? Who’s responsible for all of this? To whom can we point? What government agency or law can be passed to “fix” this so that we can return to our lives?

One group is responsible for all of this and can fix it effectively and one group alone:

Men.

Let me restate that in case you missed it: Responsible, mature, steady adult men have an obligation to mentor, coach, advise and raise (yes, I said raise) the next generation of men. And too many fathers, brothers, uncles, grandfathers and others have failed miserably at that task.

The “why” is unimportant; what is important is that men have abdicated this role for too long in our society overall and in families in particular:

  • They have allowed unscrupulous males to abuse and molest innocent young children;
  • They have allowed the state to step in where they should have years ago;
  • They have not partnered with women; instead they have allowed women to take on more of the blame and the responsibility for the failures of men and boys to acculturate to our new society and culture.

It’s no mistake that the killer in Connecticut was taken to the gun range by his mother and taught to shoot.

Men have to stand up and say that emotions and feelings are real and that they feel them and that anger is not a primary emotion: disgust, fear, worry, betrayal, love, grace, and on and on.

Men have to stand up and be responsible for their own reproductive, mental and physical health: Go and see a therapist and talk about the experience. Go and talk to a religious leader and talk about that. Wrap your tool in a condom and talk about being with one person monogamously and how fabulous that is. Go to the doctor and talk about how that restores you as a man and makes you stronger.

Men have to take their sons, nephews and grandsons and hug them every night of their lives and tell them that they love them and that failure is only temporary and that the world, while scary, can be conquered through hope. Men have a responsibility to teach and mentor the next generation to remember that a child is more than a support payment or a burden and instead is a gift that comes with a price.

Men have to take their daughters, their wives, their aunts, their mothers and their grandmothers and demonstrate that honor and caring are strengths, not weaknesses.

Men have to stand up and say that bullying someone because of color or sexual orientation is cowardice and that understanding comes, not from the media or the pundits, but from talking through differences and accepting them.

Men have to stand up and show that being physical and being strong are two different things.

Men have a lot of responsibility to take responsibility for, before shootings and murders stop, before violence is banished; but if we don’t do it now, more kindergarteners will die, more mothers and parents will wail, more laws will be passed and the problems will continue.

-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/

Book Review: Linchpin: Are You Indispensable? By Seth Godin


We live in interesting times.
The internet, social media, the connection economy have shifted everything. 
Old industrial based models in TV-advertising,newspapers, real estate listings, the record industry, etc, etc, are either dead or dying.

The fact that evidence of them still exists should only be taken as evidence that corpses can still walk around and talk. People, institutions, organizations and governments are attached to the past methods and means that were “tried and true” but are not so much now.

The idea that work (blue collar or white collar is unimportant) is value-less is dead as well. Millenials in a recent study, asserted that they would rather collect unemployment than do work that is unfulfilling. Baby Boomers with power, influence and dollars, hear this and wonder if the sky is falling. Gen-Xers (like myself) hear this and wonder why we didn’t have the guts to make that assertion back in the 90’s.
Our K-12 education system is broken and we’re not sure what can be done to solve what happens at home. 
And the only things that the marketers with big data can come up with is how to effectively “mass-market” more to sell us stuff.
What is a person to do in the midst of all of this noise?
Author, speaker, entrepreneur, consultant and marketer, Seth Godin has a suggestion: Become indispensable. Become a linchpin. 
Godin makes this evolutionary as well as revolutionary, argument in his book, Linchpin: Are You Indispensible?, published in it’s first edition in 2008.
From Linchpin: “If you are deliberately trying to create a future that feels safe, you will willfully ignore the future that is likely.”
Bureaucrats, whiners, fundamentalist zealots, all of the folks in these groups are nostalgic for a future that hasn’t happened yet, Godin argues, and the primary reason that they have difficulty in seeing and comprehending the future is that they are emotionally attached to an outcome and they are resistant to, and fearful of, change.
But, Godin argues, we as individuals,  small business owners, entrepreneurs, solopreneurs  and others who want to either make a living in the “new” economy or make the leap from “hobbyist” to professional, have but one choice:

To be absolutely artistic, absolutely remarkable and absolutely committed to performing the long-term emotional labor required to niche a product, approach and perspective to the smallest group of committed individuals who will honor the provider with trust, credibility and referrals and ultimately, cash for our emotional–and sometimes physical–labor.

As a small business owner, entrepreneur, consultant, teacher, trainer, mediator and peacemaker, I screamed at the book: “IF THIS IS SO GREAT WHY HAVEN’T MORE PEOPLE DONE IT ALREADY!!!”
The answer is simple: The lizard brain. The amygdala. The resistance.
Godin argues that the lizard brain, or the resistance, is  the ancient evolutionary part of the human mind that seeks stasis, calm, and sameness. 
When aroused or threatened, however, it reacts with fear, paranoia, anger, rejection, defensiveness and all the other range of negative human responses to external–and internal–stimuli. 
Caiman Lizards, Not the GEICO Lizard
 
Thus schools encourage curriculum approaches that standardize children’s thinking.
Thus workplaces encourage human resource departments to standardize approaches to conflicts and friction, to avoid lawsuits and loss of money.
Thus governments make regulations that seek to remove all of the “rough-edges” from society and if they can’t be removed, then may seek to criminalize the rough edge.
Thus culture takes in what used to be outré and formalizes it, standardizes it, and welcomes it into the “mainstream.”
Godin argues that this happens below our radar and is so ingrained in our approach to economics, law, culture, government and other areas, that when disruptive technologies give rise and permission to perform disruptive creativity the results often scare us, astound us and then become dismissed. 
How many times, both personally and professional have you heard, thought or said “I could never do that.” Or, “That’s fine for them, they’re in [blank industry], we’re special and unique over here and that won’t work for us.”
That’s the resistance.
Godin ultimately argues, even as he dedicates his book to the resistance, that fighting the resistance by being indispensable in a job, in a family, in a community, online or off, matters more NOW than at any other time in human history.
Becoming truly indispensable is no longer a privilege of the highly educated, the obscenely wealthy or the incredibly smart/talented. 
Anyone can start a blog, curate a Twitter account, be interesting on Facebook. 
Anyone can build a movement around a cause, build a brand around an idea or build a culture around reaching for the unusual rather than the mundane.
We here at HSCT believe that the future is coming. We are not attached to it, even as build for it. The heart of bringing peace through effective marketing, targeted artistry in conflict engagement and impassioned speaking and advocating, can shape a future where we are all Linchpins and no longer cogs.
Linchpin: Are You Indispensable? by Seth Godin

Hardcover: 256 pages
Publisher: Portfolio Hardcover; Second Edition edition (January 26, 2010)
Language: English
ISBN-10: 1591843162
ISBN-13: 978-1591843160

-Peace Be With You All-
Jesan Sorrells, MA 
Principal Conflict Engagement Consultant
Human Services Consulting and Training (HSCT)
Follow the Human-Services-Consulting-and-Training page on Facebook
Follow our Principle Consultant, Jesan Sorrells, on Twitter: www.twitter.com/Sorrells79
Connect with HSCT on LinkedIn: www.linkedin.com/in/jesansorrells/
Email HSCT questions or comments at: hsconsultingandtraining@gmail.com
Check out HSCT’s website: http://hsconsultingandtrain.wix.com/hsct