Dan Erwin

Framing: The Unique Power of Metaphor

Early in my management consulting business, I learned the power of business metaphors. And of reframing problems and solutions with different metaphors to gain support for achieving certain organizational objectives and personal goals. Framing is one way of seizing leadership opportunities. It’s all about how you manage meaning with words, the central task of leadership. Talk is actually the resource you use to get things done. So, anyone who wants to change thinking and get things done pays close attention to metaphors, the very best descriptive lens

Louis Pondy, one of the more effective management scholars, emphasized that leaders’ effectiveness lies in their “ability to make activity meaningful” for others. Effective leaders “give others a sense of understanding what they are doing.” Managers, in contrast, pay attention to how things get done, while leaders pay attention to what events and decisions mean.

The fundamental tool of making or creating meaning is the ability to frame. Framing not only makes sense of an activity or process, but it also sets forth the character and significance of a subject.

Framing and business
In complex and chaotic business environments, there is usually a lot of maneuverability around “the facts.” But if there is any uncertainty or ambiguity around facts, the game is about constructing reality, through framing, leading others to action. 

For the Coronavirus Chaos: by Einstein

Albert Einstein seems to have an endless supply of relevant quotes.This one is especially pungent for all that's going on in especially religious contexts today:

"Science without religion is lame: Religion without science is blind."

"Better to be six feet apart..."

"than six feet under," says Governor Gretchen Whitmer of Michigan. Although I'm quite certain that the virus will rebuild the value of science and scientists, I also suspect that it's also hardening anti-science perspectives. 

Michigan Gov. Gretchen Whitmer (D) vigorously defended her continuing stay-at-home order Friday after thousands of protesters converged on the capital, Lansing, and four northern Michigan sheriffs said they would not strictly enforce it.

“You know what? I can take it,” Whitmer said during an appearance on ABC’s “Good Morning America.” “If it makes people feel better to take their frustrations out on me, that’s fine. All I ask is let’s not get overly political here. Let’s focus on the public health. … I know that there are a lot of businesses and people that are hurting right now. But the fact of the matter is it’s better to be six feet apart right now than six feet under.”

Whitmer has faced hundreds of maskless protesters in Lansing, along with the refusal of at least four Michigan sheriffs to support her authority. She has shown herself to be a very capable state leader.

Currently, Michigan is the fifth deadliest state for coronavirus. Some people have difficulty looking reality in the face.  There are a lot of covidiots out there. Where there are intelligent rules, there are always people to break them. Plenty of people never seem to understand that smart safeguards, designed by specialists, save lives.

General James Mattis on "Why Read?"

I've always wanted to say something very direct when an acquaintance or a client asked why I read so much, but I was always a bit too cautious to verbalize my real beliefs out loud. But if a prominent, knowledgeable person  supports my beliefs publicly, I'll happily repeat them. I have, however, gotten to the place over the past ten years when someone asks why I read the NYTimes or a magazine like the New Yorker, I can be fairly direct. It usually comes out like, "look, there's no way you can become intelligently aware of what's going on in this world unless you read the Times or the New Yorker." That's true whether or not you agree with the writer.

But here's General Mattis verbalizing my actual beliefs in the context of the military: If you haven't read hundreds of books, you are functionally illiterate and you will be incompetent because your personal experiences alone aren't broad enough to sustain sustain you. Any commander who claims he is "too busy to read" is going to fill body bags with his troops as he learns the hard way.  

A Limerick on Corona Virus: "My Coffee Buddies"

Mike Schneider, one of my coffee buddies from Mac (Macalester College) wrote this especially apropos limerick:

    I want to keep my coffee buddies at ease
    So this limerick will not mention disease
    But it would be remiss
    To not say that I miss
    Sitting with you guys and shooting the breeze

Enjoy!

Why Are People Hoarding Toilet Paper?

The answer is both curious and hilarious. I just got in from my local grocery where I noticed the toilet paper shelves were empty. Seeing a store employee, I asked him why people were buying so much. He shrugged and said he didn’t know. "Probably plenty in the warehouse." Because of my consulting business, I happened to know that there was at least one Kimberly Clarke plant in the next state over—Wisconsin. They make Scott and Cottonelle toilet paper as well as Kleenex. I’m pretty certain we don’t import any from China. I suspect, instead, that a lot of the Chinese forests have been felled long since, much like the Brits. But with all those nearby Wisconsin forests, I’m sure there’s no shortage for making paper of all sorts.

So why are people hoarding toilet paper? Lo and behold, several were curious about my question and did even more homework. 

All kinds of journalists and specialists weighed in on the “problem.”

Australia has also suffered from panic buying of toilet paper despite plentiful domestic supply. A risk expert in the country explained it this way: “Stocking up on toilet paper is … a relatively cheap action, and people like to think that they are ‘doing something’ when they feel at risk.” I didn’t know that, but I’d need a lot of research to believe it.

Brian Cook, University of Melbourne, said that his suspicion is that it is how people react to stress: they want an element of comfort and security. This is an example of “zero risk bias,” in which people prefer to try to eliminate one type of possibly superficial risk entirely rather than do something that would reduce their total risk by a greater amount.  Ummm, maybe.

“Fear is contagious,” says Steven Taylor, a professor of psychiatry at the University of British Columbia and author of the Psychology of Pandemics. “We pick up cues by looking to other people—it’s how stampedes happen in stadiums—so if you’re in a shopping centre and you see some people around you acting in a frightened way and stocking up, that’s going to have a fear contagion effect that causes other people to start over-purchasing.” Really?

"Did Lincoln Really Matter?"

In this rather fraught period of political campaigning, the New Yorker’s Adam Gopnik has chosen to write a thoughtful “review(?)” of Fergus Bordewich’s Congress at War. Since it’s Gopnik you can be very certain that his essay is going to be a lot more than mere review or summary. He does not let us down.

So, let’s not work over the essay, but with my comments on the first page of my download. I’ve read through it several times. Admittedly, the comments tell you about me, but they tell you a lot more about Gopnik. (You can’t write a response without telling your readers about yourself—consciously or unconsciously.)

In the upper right hand corner, I wrote and circled my comment—“absolutely brilliant—as usual.” Gopnik always fits in that category. That’s why I work at digesting everything he writes.

Further on down, I noted a reference to “subterranean socialism supporting business.” Of course, we had...

“How do you write like the Economist?”

A new member of the Economist staff asked as he began to compose his first leading article for the magazine some years ago. “Pretend you are God,” a senior colleague replied. But since the deity regularly fails to comment directly on current affairs, as Stefan Collini amusingly wrote in the London Review of Books, that anxious recruit may have had difficulty putting this recommendation into practice. Though I’ve occasionally found errors and unreasonable bias in the Economist, it seems to happen far less in their magazine than others I regularly peruse. Or, they admit to their perspective. So, it has remained a weekly practice for more than forty years.

Over the past few decades the divine model has served the magazine exceptionally well. In 2017, the firm generated operating profits in excess of $70M alongside its related enterprises. This, despite being part of an industry where increasingly large losses are the norm. In fact, just a few days ago McClatchy, which operates the Miami Herald and The Kansas City Star among its 30 newsrooms in 14 states, announced it has filed for a Chapter 11 bankruptcy restructuring.

Still, my commitment to the Economist is not unusual, even in a world in which other sophisticated magazines have difficulty just staying alive, much less keeping readers for decades (except, of course, the New Yorker)...

Two 3-Letter Words for Problem Solving—and Creativity

I’ve always been fascinated by how words work--and what they can do to us. I’ve been especially intrigued over the past thirty years by questions—yeah, I’m a question nut! I actually have an entire shelf in my library on the discipline of questioning. My hobby is easily explained. Effective questions are a key to learning and growing. Which means that questions are how we make change. And inevitably, clients hire to me to help them make change. 

So, I was glued to a recent column by the NYT’s Bret Stephens on a new book, The Secrets of Jewish Genius, which I took to be about creativity and problem solving. (FYI: I’m English and Scot--not Jewish.) I’ve long since learned that as soon as I begin to get into disciplines like economics, science, politics, psychology, psychiatry, human resources, fiction, music, etc. and etc., I start running into Jewish writers. Here’s just a brief list: Sigmund Freud, Benjamin Disraeli, Albert Einstein, Franz Kafka, Irving Kristol, Rudolf Serkin, Daniel Kahneman, Jeff Pfeffer, Abraham Maslow, Karl Marx, and Milton Friedman.

So, I was very curious about the answer to Stephens’ thesis question: “How is it that a people who never amounted even to one-third of 1 percent of the world’s population contributed so seminally to so many of its most pathbreaking ideas and innovations?”
Stephens deals with the “Jews are Smart” explanation, commenting that it obscures more than it illuminates. Instead, he chooses to deal with the question of why intelligence is matched by “bracing originality and high-minded purpose.”

The answer to his question is surprising: “Jewish genius operates differently (from other thinkers). It is prone to question the premise and rethink the concept: to ask why (or why not?) as often as how. . . Where Jews’ advantage more often lies is in thinking different.”

There are the two very, shockingly simple, important words that can add significantly to your creativity: why not?

The Most Underrated Skill in Management??

This past Spring’s issue of the MIT Sloan Review (2017) had an intriguing article with the above title, minus the question marks. “This sounds interesting,” I thought. “Wonder what they’ll say?” At the conclusion of the third paragraph the authors wrote, “We’ve come to believe that problem formulation is the single most underrated skill in all of management practice.”

Good shot guys, but not quite. After thoughtfully re-reading the entire ten-page article, I concluded, that the article was exceptionally insightful from a process standpoint. But as far as being the “most underrated” skill, it’s nonsense. Uniquely, it offers me the opportunity to challenge common business priorities that need serious rethinking. But, reflecting for just a few moments more, I was reminded of a brilliant and thought-provoking set of articles edited by the eminent psychologist, Robert Sternberg, entitled “Why smart people can be so stupid.”

The authors of “Smart people. . .” come up with a number of reasons for their conclusion. In spite of the MIT quoted research, one of the most apropos reasons for stupidity is what can be termed the mindless assimilation of social (business) biases. With their impeccable MIT Harvard reputation, these patently smart people demonstrate a bias that is clearly that of the academy. If you read widely and analytically in business, it’s obvious that thinking about people competencies is controlled by organizational behaviorists with a solely psychological background. They look solely at thinking, but not at conversing. It explains too clearly what’s going on in the MIT article. 

It’s an innocent limitation, but limiting conclusions to a single discipline, like psychology or organizational behavior, inevitably limits formulation and potentially creative solutions. Extensive research reveals that...