listening tools

On Seelesorger "Soul Carers": The Leaders of the emerging single interconnected civilization

A Seelesorger is the German word for a Soul Carer, one who nurtures the inner person. In the current age, our civilization needs and cries out for experiences which create soul enrichment and cultivate the inner life of the individual. It could be said, in fact, that all of humanity is on a soul searching quest VIA the social fabric of the internet through relationship building and identification with tribes closest to one’s heart and personal passion. Again, social networks are fostering a deeper experience of our humanity on a daily basis for the individual and, increasingly, for the corporate entity.

A NEW MODEL OF COEXISTENCE: Vaclav Havel, first president of the Czech Republic from 1993-2003, spoke in 1994 in Philadelphia upon receiving the Freedom Medal (given the previous year to Mandela and DeKlerk). In his speech, he commented on the giant upheaval within human civilzation:

“The distinguishing features of such a transition are a mixing and blending of cultures, and a plurality…of intellectual and spiritual worlds. These are periods when all consistent value systems collapse, when cultures distant in time and space are discovered and rediscovered…[For us] the artificial world order of past decades has collapsed and a new, more just order has not yet emerged. The central political task of the final years of this century, then, is the creation of a new model of coexistence among the various cultures, peoples, races and religious spheres within a single interconnected civilization.”

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THE SINGLE INTERCONNECTED CIVILIZATION: Mr. Havel, the single interconnected civilization you spoke of in 1994 has arrived in the form of the internet, accessed from ports near and far, North, South, East and West, liberal and conservative, animated and static, mobile and hard-wired. Humanity has woven through the social fabric of the internet an image of itself, with all persuasions and orientations present and full of voice in images, video, music and text. We are weaving this tapestry, this fabric, together for the good of our children…as a kind of patchwork-quilted net for them to rest in and communicate through…to one another for the good of the planet and the future. The projects to save the eco-system, the economy and our very existence as humans have become multitudinous and far reaching.

Some of our projects are listed here, Mr. Havel:

http://bit.ly/crowdsourcing_examples_innovators

EVERYONE HAS A PLACE BY THE FIRE: We concur with Aaron Kipnis, who writes, “You belong. You are welcome. You have magic. You don’t know how to use it yet. You will learn. There is a place for you by the fire.” This statement by Kipnis applies to the phenomenon of what Clay Shirky meant by titling one of his recent books “Here Comes Everybody”. Mr. Shirky wrote recently in an essay entitled “The Shock of Inclusion” that “…the Internet could easily become Invisible High School, with a modicum of educational material in an ocean of narcissism and social obsessions. We could, however, also use it as an Invisible College, the communicative backbone of real intellectual and civic change, but to do this will require more than technology. It will require that we adopt norms of open sharing and participation, fit to a world where publishing has become the new literacy.”

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In this single interconnected civilization of the social fabric of the Internet, the time has come when single voices will reverberate through carefully woven and connected networks to penetrate the soul of humanity and inspire needed change. The quality of this change contains a mystery so deep and enlivening one can hardly find time OR energy to plum its depth.

TRACKING THE GODS: James Hollis, in his book “Tracking the Gods: The Place of Myth in Modern Life”, writes, “Paradoxically, never have humans been more free. Yes, the loss of mythic grounding has tossed souls on the high seas and left them neurotic, addictive and adrift. Yet the threat of the abyss also brings a radical openness to the experience of being. Ironically, to experience this life in new ways it is necessary to recover what myth has represented historically.” I would submit to the reader that the building of social networks is truly a deeper group delving into the collective unconscious than mankind has EVER experienced or participated in. We truly have the opportunity to track the gods in this medium. But it takes an ability to listen and read between the lines. It takes a psychological and spiritual mindset.

LISTENING TO THE ORACLE: Dianne Skafte, author of “Listening to the Oracle: The Ancient Art of Finding Guidance in the Signs and Symbols All Around Us” writes, “I understand now that oracles never really left the world. They went on speaking through the cries of birds, the patterns of light upon a wall, and the thousands of other little signs showing us the way…It is we, carriers of modern culture, who have turned away from the oracles. Bird calls mingle with the airplane roar overhead, but we pay no attention. Strange coincidences urge us forward or caution us back, but we see no meaning in them. Our society harbors a great fear of anything that ushers the mind into dark, unknown regions of psychic life.” I submit to the reader that the Internet and our accessing of it and use of it HAS ushered in a possibility of spiritual renaissance, the likes of which we cannot begin to comprehend. At the forefront of social business best-practice, the number one action IS to listen, listen, listen. The amount of listening tools that have come onto the market at the advent of social business is truly astounding: http://bit.ly/listening_tools_news Using these tools to not only discover an audience for one’s product and service BUT ALSO for one’s own heart goal…to discover one’s tribe and their conversations…this is the REAL potential in these tools.

BRIAN SOLIS, author of ENGAGE, writes, “Gathering intelligence to inspire meaningful and actionable social programs is priceless.” The art of listening is re-emerging and this is a crucial entrance point to spiritual experience and life. The path of meditation is just one spiritual practice wherein the individual hears himself/herself and then the world around AND within. Deep listening is a vital activity in all realms and the basis for weaving humanity together through understanding. RACHEL NAOMI REMEN, Clinical Professor of Family and Community Medicine at the UCSF School of Medicine and one of the early pioneers in the mind/body health field, has said of listening, “The most basic and powerful way to connect to another person is to listen. Just listen. Perhaps the most important thing we ever give each other is our attention…. A loving silence often has far more power to heal and to connect than the most well-intentioned words.”

To repeat, for many individuals and even corporate entities the social networks are fostering a deeper experience of humanity and the soul on a daily basis. A single interconnected civilization is emerging and its missions can be seen in group activities called Crowdsourcing or Crowdfunding. There has never been more potential for humanity to act as a group to accomplish a single unified task than the present.

Follow your bliss: The future of human interaction with the invisible

Follow your bliss and the universe will open doors where there were only walls. ~Joseph Campbell

The future of human interaction with the invisible has fully arrived. We are now firmly in an era where Predictive and Temporal Analytics (THINK: Analytics-Driven Policy) MATCHED WITH abundant Storytelling/Transmedia genius HAS yielded full-blown portals into the realm of RELATIONSHIP TO THE MYTHIC. One need only look at the largest portals to VIRTUALPHYSICAL and ROMANTIC relationship creation for evidence of these doorways.

WHAT IS “RELATIONSHIP TO THE MYTHIC”? (And why is this important?)

Joseph Campbell, the mythologist, writes, “The role of the artist I now understood as that of revealing through the world-surfaces the implicit forms of the soul, and the great agent to assist the artist was the myth.” Wolfgang Pauli writes of “an invisible, potential form of reality that is only indirectly inferable through its effects.”

I submit to the reader that through a combination of Listening to Oneself AND Investigation using Social Monitoring Tools, humans can now discover “worm-holes” that lead directly to their most cherished and inner-desired locations. I would also suggest that these most cherished INNER LOCATIONS are spiritual destinations characterized by terms like nostalgia and “the best times of my life”. Such INNER and REMEMBERED locations MAY be the most desirable locations known to mankind AND MAY also be THE wellspring of creativity for the individual, a society and the whole of humanity. We all seek the bright field, which IS the MYTHIC REALM.

The process for accessing these locations COULD trace the following path:

1. LISTEN TO YOUR OWN HEART by taking one single day out of your life and spending that 24 hour period alone. Simply listening. Karl Menninger writes, “Listening is a magnetic and strange thing, a creative force. The friends who listen to us are the ones we move toward. When we are listened to, it creates us , makes us unfold and expand.” Places like Spirit Rock, Esalen, Omega Institute, forests, deserts, islands and parks within cities can facilitate a window TO THE dreamed-of location.

2. WRITE! During your time of listening to yourself, write. And underline the words that mean the most to you. Those are your search terms, the keywords that you will use in the social fabric of the internet to find others like you, destinations of your tribe and eco-systems sympathetic to YOUR nature. Joseph Campbell writes, “One way or another, we all have to find what best fosters the flowering of our humanity in this contemporary life, and dedicate ourselves to that.” What a fabulous reality we have in that the social fabric of the internet offers abundant paths to the flowering of our humanity!

3. IDENTIFY YOUR KEYS. Take your keywords, your KEYS, to the social monitoring tools, visual maps, AND keyword tools and follow your findings to the location of your tribe in the social networks!

4. BOARD YOUR PLANE, TRAIN OR AUTOMOBILE, whether this be a metaphor for mental passage, spiritual exploration, relationship deepening/adjustment/discovery AND/OR actual physical movement.

5. WRITE YOUR LOVE LETTERS TO THE WORLD as you travel to the land of your tribe (Hint: That’s what blogging, tweeting, FBing, Flickr-ing, YouTubing, SlideShare-ing, etc. really are…these are your forums to express your GIFT to the world). The joy and beauty of your journey will infiltrate and instruct the fabric of the communities around you and inspire others to do their own exploration and SHIFT!

What each must seek in his life never was on land or sea. It is something out of his own unique potentiality for experience, something that never has been and never could have been experienced by anyone else. ~Joseph Campbell

Listening is a crucial skill in social architecture

Over the last week I have worked in Los Angeles with a variety of individuals and entities. The experience has been fascinating AND revealing.

One of the first observations I have is that most entities interacting for the first time with social media marketing truly struggle with the concept that relationship architecture and network analysis MUST be preliminary steps. And this is done using LISTENING tools like Radian6, Buzzmetrics, Trackur, Compete, JIVE and the like. The concept of listening to OTHERS as an INTEGRAL aspect of formulating marketing plans and models lies outside the conventional creative bent. Most of the super-creatives I have run into this last week are hell-bent on THEIR own vision, which is fabulous of course. AND it has been my job to be the listener and translator of what their prospective audiences say each day about their material.

LESSON #1: Transitioning creatives to customer-centric marketing/sales tactics IS JUST AS CHALLENGING as doing so with brand managers, marketing managers AND general managers at major corporations. BUT once both types of individual and entity see lists of top bloggers, top tweeters, top FB groups and top forums in which their audience resides AND the volume of their potential market…ONLY THEN do they wake up to the amazing POSSIBILITY that social architecture and relationship analysis provides. Again, employing strategists trained in LISTENING TOOLS is vital to customer-centric vs. product-centric business. (ie.- A single Key Influencer who tweets to 1.5 million of their prospects OR a FB group of 850,000 entirely populated with their kind of tribe members OR a blogger who over 2 million read every day. Those are NOT numbers to turn away from).

Recent video from presentation to Conservation group in California on social media

The Importance of a Customer-Centric Business Approach

Video Link: CCO vs. CMO – The value of the Chief Customer Officer

“The Realist Optimist is the most 
powerful and effective of the open 
leader archetypes, somebody who 
can see the benefits of being open 
but also understands the barriers.” 

~ Charlene Li, Open Leadership, 
published May 2010.

Focusing on the customer, listening to what he/she wants remains the number one most important first action for any organization desiring a satisfactory engagement. Social networks have initiated the world to completely personalized channels of content production, distribution and consumption. The engaged user can now create his/her own TV channel on YouTube, Google TV and numerous other video channels. The Conversation Prism is an excellent image of the variety of social networking sites available to an individual in his or her establishment of an online tribe.

When we listen to our customer, then we can select brands, products and services geared toward his/her needs. The customer-centric approach in social media specifically requires listening via social network monitoring tools like Radian6, Trackur, Compete, Webtrends and Cymphony.

A Chief Customer Officer will instruct brand manager, product managers and interactive/asset managers on the best use of energy within a given demographic/vertical after having participated in a listening project. Now more than ever, customers are becoming wiser in their choices about products and services sold online, primarily due to the vast amounts of time users spend online AND due to the phenomenon of user-selected/created channels. The mechanics of this has to do with personal choice and responsibility, along with the blossoming of sub-sub-cultures/niches beyond anything seen in previous societal configurations. Social networks allow us to know ourselves better, which in turn gives us more exact and precise opinions on what we want.