Advertiser > Facilitator
Today, I am focusing on the first role, from Advertiser to Facilitator (see the chart)
“Business needs to move from seeing themselves as an ‘advertiser’ to being a ‘facilitator’. As a Facilitator, business owners would provide the tools to allow people to to participate, interact, and produce their own quality content. Which changes their role from users/visitors to being an audience and fans.” - The Anatomy of Relationship in a 2.0 Community
The Status Quo Creates Scarcity
Look at what Paul Craig Roberts, former US Assistant Secretary to the Treasury has to say about job growth:
“Job growth over the last five years is the weakest on record. The US economy came up more than 7 million jobs short of keeping up with population growth.” Via Paul Craig Roberts
He goes on to cite these startling statistics:
“In the past five years manufacturing jobs have dropped 17%. Communications equipment lost 43% of its workforce. Semiconductors and electronic components lost 37% of its workforce. The workforce in computers and electronic products declined 30%. Electrical equipment and appliances lost 25% of its employees. The workforce in motor vehicles and parts declined 12%. Furniture and related products lost 17% of its jobs. Apparel manufacturers lost almost half of the work force. Employment in textile mills declined 43%. Paper and paper products lost one-fifth of its jobs. The work force in plastics and rubber products declined by 15%. Even manufacturers of beverages and tobacco products experienced a 7% shrinkage in jobs.” Via Paul Craig Roberts
Where are the new jobs that were supposed to come from the ‘Knowledge’ industry and from the “New Economy”? Look at this:
“The information sector lost 17% of its jobs, with the telecommunications work force declining by 25%. Even wholesale and retail trade lost jobs. Despite massive new accounting burdens imposed by Sarbanes-Oxley, accounting and bookkeeping employment shrank by 4%. Computer systems design and related lost 9% of its jobs. Today there are 209,000 fewer managerial and supervisory jobs than 5 years ago.” Via Paul Craig Roberts
Becoming a Facilitator
Long before the modern economy and Andrew Carnegie intervened in our education system we cooperated, collaborated, and helped one another. It is in our DNA, look at the interdependence in nature and the way one species helps another.
Step 1 - Awareness
The first step is awareness because you cannot change what you do not know, if you do not know that a change is needed.
For the last two decades I have noticed how dependent and dysfunctional business and the economy are. When interest rate spiked in the mid-1980s to over 20% solvent businesses quickly became insolvent due to its addiction to debt.
When I started my Houston web development business in late 2001 not only was the economy slowing due to 9/11, but the war in Iraq really stalled the North American economy. I remember noticing how isolated businesses had become as everyone was protecting his or her available cash. Hoarding and stockpiling was the rule of the day. A vibrant, positive, and possibility focused business community was stricken with fear and practicing scarcity. The community rallied around the troops but forgot to rally behind fellow business owners whose financial statements were bleeding cash.
Step 2 - Change Your Perspective
In a wonderfully generous gift my buddy Phil pointed me to Dave Pollard of How to Save the World (a fellow Canuck) in an essay with an fascinating title Creating the Jobs We Want (Phil where do you find these wonderful writers?)
This is entire post is a must read, especially if you have a bit of a rebel within you. I especially like “It all starts with the education system. That system is designed to make us dependent on the economic system that finances and controls it.” Dave points to artist Andrew Campbell, who said:
“In order not to fail most people are willing to believe anything and not to care whether what they are told is true or false.” - Andrew Campbell
Dave goes on to explain that in order to not fail we buy into the Four Great Myths of modern civilization culture, which are:
- Progress: we are better off now than in the past.
- Growth: a society addicted to better, faster, and cheaper.
- Competition and Scarcity: winners and losers thinking.
- Free Market and Free Trade: that a free and open market can equitably and effectively distribute resources.
He goes on to say that the economic system truth is simpler is better, collaboration not competition rules,
“The education system teaches you relentlessly to accept the four civilization myths, not to believe in yourself, to be ashamed of being ‘wrong’, to conform to be like everybody else, to fear failure and hence shun risk, and therefore to be obedient and do what those in ‘authority’ tell you to do. It deliberately does not teach you any of the critical skills shown in the mindmap above, because these skills would make you dangerous, independent, self-sufficient, and out of control — and that cannot be permitted.” - Via Creating the Jobs We Want
We have been brainwashed into being ‘takers’ and not givers i.e. consumers. Taking what we want because we think we want it, perhaps we have become a primitive race of ‘takers’ that consume without thinking about the consequences of our actions. Nature does not work like that. When something dies it gives back to another species whether it be food, fuel - there is always an exchange of ‘value’. Where is the value in consumerism other than a transfer of wealth? There is a better way.
Step 3 - Adopt the Role of Facilitator
We need to be more like farmers. Every farmer knows that they have to sow good seed if they are to have any chance at a harvest. Then they need to work hard by tending the crop and giving it some tender loving care aka TLC. The law of sowing and reaping states that when you sow you will reap a harvest and exactly how big your harvest depends on a number of factors. Some you can control and many you have absolutely no control over.
“If we want meaningful work we are going to have to collaborate with the rest of the world’s Disposable Citizens to create it. We are going to have to build a wholly new economy, one that will undermine and then replace (and be fiercely opposed by the beneficiaries of) the existing dysfunctional ‘market’ economy.” Via Creating the Jobs We Want
As you adopt the role of a ‘Facilitator’ a transition begins as you try to make an action or process easy or easier for someone else. That is how you sow good seed in a Relationship 2.0 context.
Lets Create Our Own ‘Generosity Economy’
In his essay Creating the Jobs We Want, Dave Pollard cites six pioneering actions:
- Discover your gift.
- Assess how your gift can be of service.
- Find people you want to make a living with.
- Design your service. Fill an unmet need.
- Network with other Natural Enterprises.
- Form Natural Enterprises into Community Economies.
To experience the generosity economy we will have to break our addiction to the Power and Consumption model and learn to collaborate and work together.
Collaboration is hard work, we will have to learn to stand up for one another, work with one another, and help you achieve your goals. As we do this we give each other permission to do what we love, what we are uniquely qualified and good at in the service of others. As Dave Pollard states:
“If we do it together, it need not be quite so scary. We can create the jobs we want, and, in the process, set ourselves and our world free.”
Together we can figure out how to make a living within our own ‘generous economy’. Will you join me on this journey?
