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

Know Your Role…

The traditional definition of being a “creative” is dead.

2001 Meets Planet of the Apes

Professionals and passionates in fields from nonprofit fundraising to sports celebrity, now describe themselves as being “creative.”
Being a “creative” has been co-opted by tech innovators and entrepreneurs.
The term has gradually transformed in meaning from defining those who toil at creating a sculpture, a painting, a drawing or a photograph to encompass anyone who is moderately skilled at being an outlier at what they are doing.
Marketers call themselves “creatives.” So do corporate executives.
Entertainers describe themselves as “creative” and even the RedBull Flutaug participants describe themselves as being a “creative” force for daring to do the impossible.
Well.
We might have made up that last part…
As a firm whose owner and founder has a background in the fine arts and who developed a former practice that involved design, color, line texture, emotional impact, subtlety and message, we wonder, here at Human Services Consulting and Training, how long will it take for everyone to describe themselves—and the work that they do—as “creative?”
We aren’t wondering to pick a fight or out of a pique, but instead are focused on a reality: In a world that is increasingly tolerant, supportive and mindful of the great impact of “the weird” (which is what being a “creative” used to be all about) where is the room for those who are in conflict with the “creative?”
What happens when the person who doesn’t view their role in an organization as being “creative” (but instead views it as being “just something I ‘do’ from 8-4 or 9-5 to pay my rent”) gets into a disagreement with those who view EVERY role as having the potential to be “creative?”
This is an expanded version of our article (link here) about who will hire the jerks and the bullies in a world where “the weird” is tolerable and the people who seek to limit or hold it back are socially (and sometimes legally) sanctioned.
How do you empower those who do not believe that their actions and lives have a drop of possibility of being “creative” in an organization, a society or a culture and give them the tools to describe themselves, their roles and their lives as “creative?”
-Peace Be With You All-
Jesan Sorrells, MA
Principal Conflict Engagement Consultant
Human Services Consulting and Training (HSCT)
Email HSCT: hsconsultingandtraining@gmail.com

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)
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