Dan Erwin

When Death Takes You By Surprise

Marilyn, my beloved wife of more than 50 years, died on December 29 of complications associated with Alzheimer’s. It was a fortunate death, though not, in the usual sense, a good death. She had lost 95% or more of her mental capacities, and had no obvious sense of who I was or of what was happening to her.

She was a wonderful woman, the love of my life, and I miss her dearly. When the kids and grandchildren came in from the Coasts to see her in Memory Care, she always had a big smile on her face. I don’t know whether she recognized them, but I prefer to believe that her wiring was so strong that she knew, unconsciously, who they were. Even in the last stages of her Alzheimer’s-destroyed-life, what a smile broke out on her face every time I walked into her apartment. We have a family photo of her reading to her three-year-old grandson in her lap, a paradigm of who she was and the simple happiness we enjoyed. I have always found a deep sense of satisfaction in the love we were able to give and receive, an experience depicted by that picture from a dozen years ago.

Initially, I decided not to write this very personal blog, but I decided otherwise because of its therapeutic value as well as a medical experience in the early ‘90s. As a result of a bout with serious prostate cancer and its inevitable surgery, I was surprised by the number of young men—and a few women--who wanted to talk with me about the experience. At the time, I had a number of projects at Ralston Purina, so had done a great deal of interviewing and had become a familiar face at headquarters. The questions, especially from the youngest generation, were about how I handled the news of cancer, my prognosis, the degree of success, the sexual implications and the potential for incontinence. I’m experiencing a similar number of the younger generation asking questions about Alzheimer’s and my wife’s death. It’s not often that people can talk about their own concerns and fears with someone they trust who’s had some success in dealing with those fears.

Death, of course, is a more traumatic and final experience for all of us. But having dealt with what can only be considered an “ambiguous loss” for more than two years, I had come to believe that with my extensive background in psychology and counseling and a phenomenal number of resources I’d be able to manage the finality of her death very well. But still, I was surprised that the experience of death took me by some surprise.

When it came to resources, probably no one on earth had more than I. My eldest daughter, Director of Fundraising for the research foundation, CureAlzheimers, has the ability to access resources from Harvard’s Alzheimer’s research center. Her husband is a research physician with an awareness of the physical and psychological implications of Alzheimer’s. My middle daughter was involved in Alzheimer’s research at UMass Lowell. One of my very best friends, Libby Bellinger, is a gerontologist with counseling background who also works for a long-term care organization and coincidentally, dealt with the personal issues of her own mother’s Alzheimer’s disease for 18 years. I have access to top physicians at the UMN medical clinic. And to top it all off, my wife was involved in research at Mayo Clinic with a physician who was inevitably and always available to me personally, or by email. With all that, it was improbable that I’d be surprised by death.

Furthermore, lacking financial worries, I was able to carry off all the right things for the management of emotions and life. I treated myself with care, putting off as many decisions as possible, and made certain to access the friendship of colleagues and neighbors. I was scrupulous about my routines, careful about food selections and kept up most of my exercise program.

Finally, my children and I decided months ago not to have a funeral, but instead to have a celebration of her life, inviting friends, neighbors and colleagues for drinks and appetizers. Indeed, the invitation was clear: “No liturgy, no ceremony, no rituals, no homily . . . just mingling, conversation, and even laughter.” And even though we’re not having the party until the end of February, I’ve been delighted by the overwhelming positive responses we’ve received toward that celebration.

How did the grief surface?

But in spite of all the decisions and care, her death has been difficult. There were tears at the strangest times of the day. I finally realized that they flowed when I noticed an especially sensuous gesture either between two others or in a TV show. Marilyn never walked into my study without her hand on my shoulder and usually a smile. I also noticed that though most of the time I was careful in the food I selected, I utterly failed to manage portions, gaining 40 pounds over the past 3 ½ years. But what really frustrated me was my inability to focus on tasks, especially on creative writing. I just couldn’t force my brain to engage. I’ve always prided myself on my ability to set worries aside, put them in a box, and go on with the task at hand. That didn’t work, especially the last two months as it became clear that Marilyn was dying. It was as though my creative juices had been wrung out of my body. But most significantly, in spite of keeping to my sleep routines, I found myself tired out—almost daily for the first two or three weeks after her death. I still have to take naps three or four times a week.

So what have I learned about grief?

Thus far, I’ve learned several things to help me process my grief more successfully. I don’t anticipate that the grief will ever be fully resolved and I’m not certain that I want that. But I do want to go back to life, giving myself wholeheartedly to my work.

First, I can’t stress how important it is to take care of yourself. My objective was to make certain that I kept involvements to the minimum and always do the things that are important to me. My children, as well as many friends, emphasized the necessity of that self-management. My children made it very clear to me, reminding me of their support, that I was to limit my visits to the home to just once or twice a week and get on with my life. Knowing Marilyn’s ever-Germanic orientation to task and work, I’m certain she would have approved and insisted. After all, Marilyn would not know that I’d been there two minutes after I walked out the door. I have a great awareness that my resources were unique. Still, to the degree possible, in whatever your situation, if you are to find hope and optimism, you must put yourself first. This is not a time to make sacrificial decisions for others or give others a lot of time.

Second, it’s important to access your support system regularly, and if you don’t have one, to seek one out. Most resident homes have group meetings and systems that you can tap into. Identify the friends who’ll do things with you, let you talk, and are simply willing to listen. They may not be the friends you expected, but they’re out there and they’ll do some caring for you. On occasion, I found it important to simply ask whether a person had time to talk with me. I learned to read the sign language fairly accurately so as not to overstay my welcome. When a person inquired regarding my wife, I usually shared two or three sentences. If they were desirous of further information or open to listening, they would inevitably make that clear to me after I’d shared just a bit.

Finally, it’s important to recognize that you’re not going to be able to predict or control your own responses to death. Give up the notion that the control mechanisms you’ve used to succeed in your professional career will work when facing a death in the family. Thinking you’re in complete control of your memories and emotions sets you up for failure and even more grief.

I have long been an optimist and practitioner of a “sanctified nonchalance.” In other words, I don’t hold tightly to life, but view it as a gift to be used for myself and others. And I gather people around me who hold similar views. Rather than focus on what I’ve lost, I face the future grateful for what I had. So I’m certain that makes the surprises of death easier for me than others. But still, as my friend Libby Bellinger said, when talking about my inability to control my emotions, “it kind of slips up on you, doesn’t it?”

Just a "Taste of College" Can Boost US Success in the Talent Wars

The need for hard-to-find talent has some of America’s best companies getting involved in high school education. A former client, now senior executive at General Mills, nailed the problem. “If we don’t build relationships at high school level, another major firm (Target or Best Buy) will steal some of our best potential talent,” she said. Business support and pushing of talent development, even at the pre-college levels, will more and more become a key strategic necessity for American companies. Talent development in K – 12 will take many different forms. 

What top researchers in Minnesota have found is that just a “taste of college” can boost high school student success, providing more opportunity for building our talent base.   

The program, emphasizing dual credit in high school and college, has been pushed by Joe Nathan, one of America’s most respected educationists, who specializes in inner city education. Nathan, formerly of the Humphrey Institute at the University of Minnesota, now runs research out of the Center for School Change at Macalester College.  Nathan believes that if we can develop a sense of “I belong here. I understand this world,” through dual credit classes for poor and minority students, we can keep kids who might otherwise leave school. The growth through advance placement classes, International Baccalaureate programs, or dual credit classes (taught by college profs in high school), has shown surprisingly significant results in developing potential talent. 

The report recommends that “dual credit” courses be available to younger and perhaps the less academically successful.  It also notes that a study of New York and Florida students revealed that dual credit programs demonstrated an “ability to raise the achievement of students not traditionally seen as successful in high school”—low income and low-achieving students. 

Participation increased from 17,581 in 2007-2008 to 21,184 in 2009-2010. That’s a huge change in a state will little over 60,000 public high school graduates per year.  

The program offers a number of significant advantages to both students and families.

• Students can earn a two-year associates degree while enrolled in high school.
• The programs, paid for by the various school districts, are free.
• It keeps some of the kids in school who might otherwise drop out.
• Students and parents can save as much as $40,000 on a four-year degree.
• Provides lower income and minority students a better understanding of school options.
• Provides students with a clearer understand of life goals.
• Makes for a far easier transition for students from high school to college.
• Makes it possible for those who do not see themselves at college to complete relevant certificate programs.
• Studies from several states show that students who take college courses in high school fare better in college. 

At first glance, “dual credit” programs may sound like just another flaky educational idea, but, as the statistics above demonstrate, longitudinal research strongly supports Nathan’s ideas. If you’ve been around inner city kids, you know that it’s their attitudes that get in the way of motivation and prevent them from achieving. And what Nathan’s program does is to focus on those attitudes, and provide constructive opportunities to impact the students’ learning context. 

Extensive research by Carol Dweck and her associates at Stanford has consistently shown that students with a growth mindset—a fundamental attitude--do better in school. Moreover, the research demonstrates that the growth mindset raises motivation and achievement, especially in difficult courses or across difficult school transitions. Though faculty may not label or talk about the dual credit experience as a “growth mindset,” that’s exactly what the experience can provide for students. 

Though I grew up in a family with college background, I have never forgotten how important my trips to the University of Michigan with our high school choir were. Years later, I can still see myself on that magnificent campus, talking to recent grads from my own high school. I recognize that those experiences were a piece of my drive for higher education. They impacted my attitudes and served to motivate me as strongly as anything anyone could say.    

Sure, I know that what works in Minnesota, Massachusetts or Michigan in the 1940s, may not work--because of resources--in Nevada, New Mexico or Alabama today. If you’ve lived and worked in several different parts of the country, you know that state cultures and state resources differ profoundly. That’s why smart thinkers in the US Department of Education are encouraging individual states to figure out what works locally, experiment with it, create a pilot program, tweak it, and when successful, celebrate and publicize the stuff. The “dual credit” program is one such successful strategy for developing talent. It’s actually quite amazing that just a “taste of college” can boost student success.

IBM's Unique, Highly Successful "Ground Rules"

A textbook case in how to drive change, IBM has been so consistently successful that it is almost boring. Even more surprising is the size of its workforce in contrast to other tech firms: IBM has more employees than Microsoft, Intel, Dell, Cisco, Apple, Amazon and Google all put together. Furthermore, only HP pulls in more revenue than IBM.

What’s the secret to IBM’s success?

In an interview with Steve Lohr, Sam Palmisano, the retiring CEO, says that the firm’s pursuit of excellence around four dimensions—ground rules—shaped the strategy and focus over the past ten years. Palmisano boils his ground rules down to four questions:

• Why would someone spend their money with you—so what is unique about you?
• Why would somebody work for you?
• Why would society allow you to operate in their defined geography—their country?
• Why would somebody invest their money with you?

These questions cut new territory in the business world in a number of differing ways, providing especially relevant insight into the 21^st century orientation to talent management, careers, and socially responsible businesses. The third, why society allows you to operate in their geography, was rarely considered in the past. Today, although many ignore the question and social responsibility, more are beginning to take notice and get involved. Indeed, Rosabeth Kanter points out six strategic reasons for serving, a highly relevant necessity in today’s world. Palmisano not only read speeches and memos from the founder, Thomas Watson, but he had lunch regularly with Watson Jr., once a month. The Watsons, he says, always defined I.B.M. as a company that did more than sell computers; they believed that it had an important role to play in solving societal challenges. It’s old-fashioned, but it’s motivational, he says.

The second, “why would someone work for you,” has become a significant matter in the battle for brainpower in a day in which the so-called talent war has gone global, along with talent shortages. It’s a reminder that although all kinds of employees are out of work, more and more businesses are having a difficult time accessing needed talent, even in states like Michigan. Skills shortages are widespread. Dan Pink’s comment back in 2001 is even more relevant today: “Talented people need organizations less than organizations need talented people.” Palmisano found that social responsibility resonated with the young people IBM is recruiting.

A couple of times a year, Mr. Palmisano speaks to groups of elite students whom I.B.M. is trying to woo to its research labs. The pitch, he says, is that I.B.M. is a place where you can make a difference and do deep science.

“You can change the world, and you can compete for a Nobel prize,” he says, referring to I.B.M.’s five Nobel winners.

(Eighty-seven percent of the candidates who were offered jobs by I.B.M. Research this year joined the company.)

Mr. Palmisano’s appeal to young technologists is just one example of an answer to one of his four questions.

The first question, why someone would spend their money with you, goes straight to the heart of business strategy. This is an issue that has gotten much attention since Drucker, and continues to be the beneficiary of much thinking, refining and focusing.

Viewed individually, these questions are not especially unique, excepting the talent focus, but together they are a phenomenal set of ground rules. My response when I first read the ground rules was, “my god, this guy is really a thinker, a great thinker. Not just the typical business yeoman who performs in workmanlike fashion to achieve the company’s objectives.” Taken together, his ideas are client focused, but at the same time, they force a scintillating inward focus upon the operations of the firm. They impact the culture, the strategy, the workforce morale, the commitments of its employees, finances and the clients’ expectations. It’s no wonder that Warren Buffett, who normally shuns technology, to accumulate $10 billion of shares, amounting to a stake of 5%.

"The hardest thing is answering those four questions,” Mr. Palmisano says. “You’ve got to answer all four and work at answering all four to really execute with excellence.”

Finally, it should be noted that Mr Palmisano was not bred a techie, but came up through the ranks of IBM sales with a Johns Hopkins history major. His thinking is highly indicative of the strengths of that liberal arts background. History people are weaned on the big picture, and thrive on the intellectual ideas that initiate and maintain change in a sea of competing ideologies. This critical tool is especially useful for analyzing the sequence of events leading up to massive changes and reformations, and adept at forecasting the consequences of ideas for good or ill. History is one of two or three fundamental critical tools of global human thinking and analysis, and Palmisano’s thinking reflects that background. It’s paid off superbly for the firm over his CEO tenure.

My One Wish for 2012

It’s that time of the year when many review the past, set goals for the next year, and make a few resolutions and wishes. My goals are ongoing, and I have no new resolutions, but I do have one wish—a very important one.

But first, a bit of background. For only the fifth time in US history, we’re facing a momentous choice about the nature of government. Both Republicans and Democrats believe this to be true. In fact, Newt Gingrich recently reached back to the 1860’s saying, “This is the most important election since 1860 because there’s such a dramatic difference between the best food-stamp president in history and the best paycheck candidate.” That’s a completely inaccurate, cheap shot. Obama, however, fully agrees that this election may well be the most significant statement since Barry Goldwater’s run for the presidency. 

Actually, there are four inflection points in American history when the role of government was up for grabs: the revolutionary period, the 1860’s consensus regarding the Civil War, FDR's initiation of the social net in the '30s and the 1960’s attempt by Goldwater Republicans to dismantle the social net. This choice will be the fifth. It reminds us of one important fact: the United States is not a static entity, but primarily an ongoing experiment. 

What drives my wish for 2012 is a series of very concrete interviews last week by Michael Barbaro and Ashley Parker, asking voters about their favorite Republican candidate and why. The interviews revealed a shocking disregard for policy.

Jonathan Gabhart, a 21 year-old college student from Spencer, Iowa, is leaning to Ron Paul, because of the Texas lawmaker’s unpolished speaking style—a “high-pitched, squirrelly voice.  He seems like a real person because of his eccentricities.” 

Andy Schwaegler, a 45-year-old tree farmer from Orford, N.H., is drawn to Mitt Romney because the well-coiffed candidate reminds him of his father, a business executive. “It’s something about the way he carries himself,” Mr. Schwaegler said.

Nancy Weaver, a 60-year-old retiree in Grinnell, Iowa, favors Representative Michele Bachmann because the congresswoman raised 23 foster children. “That’s a huge endeavor for any man or woman,” she said.

“It drives me crazy,” Rose Williams, a retired teacher in Bridgewater, N.H., said of Mr. Romney’s voice. “When he’s on TV or on a commercial, I put it on mute.” 

Dwayne Kriegel, a postal carrier in Grinnell, who is backing Mr. Santorum in the caucus on Tuesday. “He’s passionate about his dedication to family values,” Mr. Kriegel said. “The others say what they think the voters want to hear, while he lives it.” 

Eva Dunn, 60, a retired lieutenant colonel in the Air Force, has no patience for Jon M. Huntsman Jr., the former governor of Utah. Her objection: his demeanor in the debates. “He comes across as a preacher, and I just want to take his hands and tie them behind his back because he’s always pleading,” she said.

Again and again, voters pointed to the candidates’ personal lives as a guide to how they would lead the country. Mr. Gingrich’s two divorces, and his admission of adultery, gave pause to a number of people. “You wonder in times if it will affect his judgment,” said Zack Pickard, 36, a software salesman in New Sharon, Iowa. “Are we going to be distracted by his social missteps? It’s a distraction. Your leader should not be distracted.”

Clearly, we are emotional beings and most of our decisions, especially our voting decisions are based upon our gut and the state of our glands. In his new book, Daniel Kahneman emphasizes the emotional nature of our decisions and emphasizes the irrational in our lives. Although most of us think that we are conscious, autonomous authors of our judgments and our choices, the truth is otherwise. A study of voting patterns in precincts of Arizona in 2000 showed that the support for propositions to increase the funding of schools was significantly greater when the polling stations was in a school than when it was in a nearby location. A separate experiment showed that exposing people to images of classrooms and school lockers also increased the tendency of participants to support a school initiative.

Such “priming” has consistently demonstrated troubling effects. Money primed people are also more selfish: they were much less willing to spend time helping another student who pretended to be confused about an experimental task. . . . The general theme of these findings is that the idea of money primes individualism: a reluctance to be involved with others, to depend on others or to accept demands from others. . . . (These findings) suggest that living in a culture that surrounds us with reminders of money may shape our behavior in ways that we do not know about and of which we may not be proud. 

In still other experiments, researchers asked Princeton students to rate pictures of men’s faces on various attributes, including likability and competence. Observers agreed quite well on those ratings. . . . The results of the electoral races to the ratings of competence that Prince students had made, based on brief exposure to photographs and without any political context. In about 70% of the races for senator, congressman, and governor, the election winner was the candidate whose face had earned a higher rating of competence. (This leads me to wonder how Abraham Lincoln would have done in our world.)

In addition to our gut decision making, American history tells us that personality and personal ethics have little impact upon presidential decision making. More than half of our Presidents would never pass the financial ethics tests, much less today’s sexual morality test. It would be terribly shocking to 95% of the American population to realize that when it comes to ethics, and especially sexual ethics or personality characteristics, there is NO significant relationship to the expertise and commitments of all to government policy and national success. Some of our best presidents were what we’d label today as flagrant womanizers, and that includes Jefferson, FDR and Dwight Eisenhower. It's a truism that character, personality and ethics play little role a president's decision making processes.

So I'm primarily concerned with a candidate's policy commitments, especially when it comes to his perspective on the role and nature of government.  

To be specific, if you want an inconsequential government with no social nets and no regulations then vote Republican. If, instead, you prefer a modestly redistributive and regulatory government that the country has relied upon since the New Deal, then be prepared to vote Democratic.  And remember that all the talk about financial austerity is primarily a subversive attempt to ignore the larger issue of the nature of government.

Thus, my number one wish for 2012 is that voters will attempt to set aside their tribal commitments and  base their presidential deicision, at least partially, upon significant—truly significant—policy matters. 

Yeah, I know. My beloved grandmother would respond to my wish with a proverb from her English forebears about the utter futility of wishing and the necessity of taking action: if wishes were horses, beggars will ride. Still, I can make one wish for 2012, can't I?

Listening Is NOT a Linear Game

“Wait, wait. I’m not finished.” Four keys to truly listening.

Listening is far more difficult, more fatiguing and often more frustrating than talking. Even the best listeners have to bite their tongues to stop from reacting, interrupting or verbally identifying with the person talking. 

Effective listeners listen for different levels of meaning. 

The linguistic or denotative level is simply that to which the message refers. “Jim can’t come to the team meeting.” The individual words of the sentence and the sentence as a whole have linguistic meaning. “Jim” refers to one specific person and “can’t come” refers to a specific action that won’t take place. “Team meeting” is a well-defined event. That's linear listening. 

But it’s the non-linear, interpretive level of meaning where our brains really start churning. The interpretive level of meaning in a message is created by the complex set of cues within the message itself. These cues tell the other person how to make sense of the message. Is it to be taken seriously or lightly. Does the message mean exactly what’s being stated, or even the opposite of its literal content? 

When the message is delivered face-to-face, there are liable to be mannerisms, facial, hand and body gestures, as well as inflections and tone of voice that give us clearer indications of how a transaction is to be interpreted. When the message is delivered via other means, all you have are the words. 

The third level of meaning for most messages is the relational. The relational level of meaning is the complex set of cues within the message that indicate the relationship between the talker and the listener. Every message in an interpersonal transaction (that’s right, “every message”) either reinforces or modifies the existing relationship between the two persons involved. 

In short, effective listening inevitably involves a lot of parallel processing. 

Four keys to truly listening. 

It’s obvious that the opportunities for misunderstanding within the three levels of meaning are numerous. But organizational listening, even within the interpersonal, is inherently problematic. Add differing levels of hierarchy, work teams with several members, cultural and value differences, struggles for power, competition for scarce resources and the increased use of impersonal communication media to the soup and it’s a near-perfect set up for misunderstanding. So here are four keys to more effective listening: 

Avoid and ignore distractions. This doesn’t just mean shutting down your Blackberry or closing your web browser. It’s especially important to stop the business of formulating your response to what the other person is saying. Simply focus on what’s being said at the differing levels. Focus, focus, focus. 

Parrot and paraphrase. You can feel silly doing this, but parroting or paraphrasing not only shows the other person that you’re listening, but it encourages them to keep talking by showing that you’re actually listening. 

Ask thoughtful questions. Open-ended and implication questions help you see the issues more clearly. It also enables the talker to go deeper into what he or she sees as significant. 

Explore other’s listening mistakes. It’s a lot more difficult to learn from our own mistakes than from others. Whenever I’m around a “he said, she said” conversation, I pay close attention to how a person draws conclusions from that experience. I stay curious about their interpretations, sometimes even asking about how they drew their conclusion from what they heard. If you’ve sat through a team meeting, for example, and afterword someone tells you what they heard and the meaning they made from it, you begin to see how that person created meaning and how it (sometimes) differs from you. So I don’t just walk away wondering what planet they’re on or why I missed that. Instead, I pay close attention to their inference creating, learning about my own skills and even my mistakes, from them. Statisticians will tell you that our inference creations are far, far more wrong than correct. Most of us rather automatically think that mistakes were made, but not by us. That dog won’t hunt. 

The brilliant research scientist, Duncan Watts, formerly of Columbia University and now Yahoo’s principal research scientist, has a lot to say about our inference, meaning-making capacities. In a fascinating McKinsey summary on the future of marketing, Watts finds that we need to start suspecting our intuition (our inference-drawing and meaning-making capacities). Watts is talking about hard data, but his comment applies even more strongly to interpersonal/team listening. 

We can’t help thinking that we know why people do (say) what they do (say) or what they’re going to do. But whatever hypothesis or intuition you have, however self-evident it may seem, when you test it against the data, it’s wrong—not every time, but very often.

Want to Make a Lot of Money? Don't Major in Business.

Warning: This blog may be bad for your health.

According to some recent statistics, one of five college students today is majoring in business. Who recommended that dumb major? The pay statistics sure don’t support it. In fact, majors in American studies, political science, philosophy and literature (that’s right, the humanities--literature) make more money by mid-career than business majors.

This is not a blog that business majors and their parents will want to read. In fact, the Penelope Trunks of the world are probably already pissed by the first paragraph. Tough!

In the latest Pay Scale salary survey data for full-time employees who possess a Bachelor’s degree and no higher degrees, there’s a lotta bad news for business majors. You really, really need a liberal arts degree to make big money.

Recent employer surveys conducted by the National Association of Colleges and Employers find that workplaces most value three skills that you’re far more likely to find with a liberal arts education: communication competency, analytic excellence and collaborative teamwork. Don’t be too quick to think those skills are easy to come by or that you’re a natural. The level of skill sophistication demanded by most firms today would come as a shock to 99% of the twentieth-century workforce. On top of those recruitment demands, six-figure salaries are requiring three big squishy traits: adaptability, exploration competency and entrepreneurialism. In short, the driving contribution of liberal arts is a well-developed ability to learn and think, both fast and successfully.

What are the “liberal” arts?

I realize that many already hate this blog because it has the word “liberal” in it. The masses think that liberal arts types are artsy people who speak French, study Plato, ponder cloud formations and dress like counter-culture bohemians.  There’s a terrible misunderstanding about the liberal arts, and it’s not just college students who don’t get it. So here’s a bit of history.

The liberal arts began in the middle ages with the Trivium (“the three”): grammar, rhetoric and logic. Then they expanded with the Quadrivium (“the four”): arithmetic, geometry, music and astronomy. Ever wonder why music majors do well in software development and application? It’s the pattern thinking they learn in their artsy, music major. In most of the better colleges today, the liberal arts have expanded to what are labeled the humanities (English, languages, philosophy, the arts), the physical and biological sciences, and the social sciences (linguistics, history, sociology, political science). College and university leadership will tell you that the real purpose of the liberal arts is to enable students to make informed decisions of the most significance.

So some techie is going to tell me he or she knows how to make informed decisions? Sorry, research won’t support that widespread notion. Research findings consistently reveal that what students and graduates know is related to what they study and how they have studied it. Vo-tech schools, many so-called engine, tech and business schools, focus solely on the what. As a consequence they are limited in the how—including how to think and make informed decisions. If you think this is liberal arts elitism, you’re quite correct. And them’s the facts.

What that means, of course, is that engineering majors in the best schools are liberal arts majors. They take a lot of liberal arts courses, including humanities, physical sciences, biology, chemistry, math and the arts. Both the top public research universities and private engineering schools, including Cal Tech and MIT, require the liberal arts in both their engineering and computer science programs. And some of the top liberal arts colleges that don’t offer engineering have what is known as a 3/2 engineering degree. These colleges, like Bates, Carleton, Macalester, Williams and Colorado College, provide three years of classic liberal arts, and then their students march off to the engineering programs at Columbia, Wash U, Dartmouth and Princeton. I’ve worked with several of them. They’re really, really smart—and they make a lotta dough.

Furthermore, many of the top schools don’t even offer an undergrad major in business. Stanford, Harvard, Chicago, Princeton, Yale and Dartmouth don’t have undergrad business schools, nor do they offer an undergrad business major. They want the future business leaders to focus on a broad range of topics in the liberal arts and sciences. Just as you can’t major in medicine or law as an undergraduate, you can’t major in business as an undergrad at many of the top schools. They believe you need a liberal arts background to support the graduate MBA. Plenty of undergrads with a business major have tried to get into top business schools and found, to their shock, that those schools usually aren’t interested in undergrad business majors. Glenn Hubbard, Dean of Columbia’s business school, put it this way: “Go to the best liberal arts college you can get into and learn how to think.”

Why do so many colleges offer business majors? As a former university faculty member, I can tell you the answer in one word: MONEY. The populace believes business majors are the key to vocational success, so. . . .  In case you haven’t noticed, many of the large public research universities in the first and second tier charge more for business majors than any other undergrad major. That’s telling.

What did I tell my daughters? Get in one of the top liberal arts colleges and major in whatever you want—not business, even if they offer it. Do they do well financially? You can bet your sweet bippy on that one.

So what, over the long term, are the best liberal arts majors for big money? The top thirty salaries at mid-career all emphasize science and math—the liberal arts. Business doesn’t get near the top thirty careers. It’s number 59 in the listing. So knock it out of your thinking.

Photo: Flickr, Images_of_money

A Poignant Memorial to Vaclav Havel

With Havel, the message mattered but it was words themselves that penetrated the heart.

                              --Madeleine Albright

Although I regularly read the obituaries of leaders in the New York Times, when I finished Albright’s memorial to Vaclav Havel, “the principled president,” I performed a unique act. I sat in front of my computer glued to her words, tears flowing down my face and clapped. I cannot remember doing such a thing. It was an automatic response, much like the silence followed by an overwhelming ovation after a great musical performance. 

Admittedly, Albright had one of the few, truly magnificent leaders of the past fifty years in her sights. But this memorial focused upon Havel’s principled uniqueness while emphasizing his surprising, earthy, gutsy, poetic humanity. Facing the disintegration of the Soviet Union, he pleads with the Western world to assist the Russians. Albright’s panegyric emphasizes the contradictions in Havel, redefines what it means to be fully human and marked by contradiction. Invited to the US Congress, Havel does not celebrate the Czech Cold War triumph, but pleads for us to reexamine our moral values.

Summarizing the life work of Havel, Albright concludes with a reprise that speaks to us in our fragmented world.

Of the man who hates, Havel wrote, “He is incapable of making a joke, only of bitter ridicule . . . . Only those who can laugh at themselves can laugh authentically.”

As for ideals about governance, he concluded that “We may approach democracy as we would a horizon, and do so in ways that may be better or worse, but it can never be fully attained.” Summing up, he declared himself neither an optimist (“because I am not sure everything ends well,”) nor a pessimist (“because I am not sure everything ends badly”) but, instead, “a realist who carries hope, and hope is the belief that freedom and justice have meaning . . . and that liberty is always worth the trouble.”

Photo: Flickr.com, edition_of_one

The Next Frontier for Innovation, Competition and Productivity

A special report from the McKinsey Global Institute focuses on the next business frontier in two words: big data. McKinsey defines “big data” as “datasets whose size is beyond the ability of typical database software tools to capture, store, manage, and analyze.”

One thing for certain, the “frontier” will be impacting careers, recruiters and human resource departments profoundly.

To frame the big data problem--and the opportunity--McKinsey summarizes the data torrent in eye-catching statistics.

Here are some of the big data details from their report:

$600 to buy a disk drive that can store all of the world’s music

5 billion mobile phones in use in 2010

30 billion pieces of content shared on Facebook every month

40% projected growth in global data generated per year vs. 5% growth in global IT spending

235 terabytes data collected by the US Library of Congress in April 2011

15 out of 17 sectors in the US have more data stored per company than the US Library of Congress

Figuring out what all the sheer volume of data means and capturing the value of big data (McKinsey’s business) is even more striking in its potential for development in all the sectors and geographies. Here are the McKinsey estimates: 

$300 billion: potential annual value to US health care—more than double the total annual health care spending in Spain

€250 billion: potential annual value to Europe’s public sector administration—more than GDP of Greece

$600 billion: potential annual consumer surplus from using personal location data globally

140,000 – 190,000 more deep analytical talent positions, and. . . .

1.5 million more data-savvy managers needed to take full advantage of big data in the US

The opportunities for careers, recruiters and human resource people lie in the talent needed. What’s obvious is that our secondary and post-secondary schools have a lot of educating in math and statistics to be able to successfully take advantage of these opportunities. What many fail to recognize is that deep analytics typically require post-graduate university exposure, a costly, though equally profitable opportunity.

Are our schools ready for the implications of Big Data?

It's Not "An Eye for an Eye," but "Two Eyes for an Eye."

Don’t take “you scratch my back and I’ll scratch yours” too literally.

Most of us are familiar with the deeply held notion of an eye for an eye. In an intriguing study of interpersonal relations, Boas Keysar and his colleagues at the University of Chicago found that reciprocity, what he calls “giving and taking,” is asymmetric. People reciprocate generosity fairly equally the first time around, less so as time goes on. But selfish acts are treated quite differently. If you screw somebody, they’re going to screw you back twice as much—or more.

Overall, conflicts (taking) between people escalate rapidly, while generosity and compassion (giving) sputter out pretty easily.

We like to think that reciprocity is a simple give and take, “you scratch my back and I’ll scratch yours.” But the sentiments of that well-worn aphorism don’t square with reality. The research found that relationship (social) exchanges, in contrast to dollar-based exchange of goods and services, simply don’t work on a fair market basis. The study revealed that social exchange is based upon the meaning and interpretation of the social actions rather than on the objective value of those actions. That includes positive versus negative behaviors, compliments versus insults, rewards versus punishments, and helping a colleague versus hurting a colleague.

Keysar said, for example, that if you’re kind and let someone go in front of you, that driver may be considerate in response. But if you cut someone off, guess what? That person “may react very aggressively, and this could escalate to road rage.” The same rules operate in work settings.

Another experiment, using money as the exchange in a game, showed that taking quickly escalated as players became increasingly greedy over repeated exchanges. In a companion money experiment, the study confirmed that the act of taking inevitably has a far bigger impact on people’s responses than the act of sharing.

In sum,

1. Generosity is rewarded, but there is a tendency on the part of the recipient for it to weaken and sputter out.
2. Acts of taking have a far bigger impact on people’s responses than acts of sharing.
3. Taking escalates negative actions quickly--proportionately faster and larger than giving.
4. Relationship exchanges and responses, both positive and negative, are based largely on the personal interpretation of the actions, rather than the objective value of those actions.

Some work implications:

1. Rewarding generosity.

--Overtime work to achieve boss’s goals will be rewarded (however, continual overtime can be taken for granted, and lose its impact).

--Donating resources and time (occasionally) to colleagues will ingratiate you to them, making reciprocal rewards available.

--If you want support for your good deeds, you’ll need to interpret the deed to the relevant persons and self-advocate.

--Significantly effective and “useful” hierarchical and peer relations require a personal reputation of liking and respect.

2. Acts of taking.

--Refusing to support a colleague’s project can result in lack of support for your project, even when the person sees your project positively.

--Critical and negative feedback may do more harm to your relationship than good. Be very cautious, contract to give critical feedback, and match the negative feedback with the positive.

3. Escalating negative acts.

--Never, never burn your bridges, it’ll always cost more and more.

--If you have an image problem and people don’t think well of you, better to demonstrate your positive qualities in a new setting where you don’t have to overcome so much baggage.

--Loss of trust may be difficult, even impossible to repair.

4. Exchanges tied to interpretations.

--Rewards won’t be granted solely on the basis of your deeds and generosity no matter what the actions. Personal interpretive and advocacy strategies are needed to “grease” the relationship.

--Interpret your repayment of generosity to the original giver. He or she may not otherwise understand.

--People trust their first impressions, whether of taking or giving. After the first impression, changes are difficult.

--Make self-advocacy the rule, not the exception.

There you have it: street smarts par excellence! Hope it helps.

Boaz Keysar, Converse, Wang and Epley, (2008) Reciprocity is not give and take. Psychological Science, V.19, N.12.

Photo: Flickr, by Manoj Trikila

More Clarity on Ben Franklin's Two-Bird Economic Theory

My December 7 blog on turkeys and bald eagles received some exceptionally useful insight on the birds—and their characteristics, from one of my readers, a lover of the wild turkey. Franklin, as I wrote, sorted economic philosophy between the turkey and the eagle. 

Franklin’s economic point was that though the eagle was classy looking, it made its living by feeding on the helpless. I related my grandson’s observation that the eagle was a mean bird who stole fish from the gulls in flight. One especially knowledgeable commentator and hunter, Chris Blazer of Montana, pointed out, in agreement, that the eagle was “frequently a scavenger.” 

Franklin argued, incontrast, that the turkey was symbolic of just one instance of the issues of freedom. He believed that people who work hard and play by the rules should have a fair shot at prosperity, and rejected the notion that self-indulgence and genetics should be rewarded. 

He was especially attracted to the wild turkey and proposed the turkey for the national bird, but my description, Mr. Blazer pointed out so well, was quite a bit shy of the mark. I described the turkey with an “easily distracted mind and artificially swelled breast.” Through the lens of the barnyard, the turkey is a hard worker, disciplined, a follower of the rules, and quite willing to give hell to anyone who tries to make trouble. Mr. Blazer pointed out that my description had little relationship to the wild turkey and the strength of Ben Franklin’s analogy. With Blazer’s input, Franklin’s point is far stronger. 

Mr. Blazer happens to be a hunter—and a fan of the wild turkey. He revealed my confusion (and ignorance) between the wild and the domesticated birds. As I wrote, “the domestic turkey is easily distracted and puffed up." But, "the wild turkey (in stark contrast) is a wily bird that eludes predators and hunters readily, manages to thrive in a wide variety of environments and, while not aggressive, defends itself and its own when provoked.” Franklin’s analogy has a lot more strength, insight and contemporary relevance than I first noted. 

As the writer so eloquently put it, “we could be a very different nation if we had followed his advice.”