Dan Erwin

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...

What I Wrote More Than Ten Years Ago Is Clearly Nonsense Today!!

Thankfully! I'm very happy about that change. The post, published in 2010, was written still earlier. At the time, my coaching revealed that it was absolutely necessary. This single post garnered more than 35,000 readers and something like 32 comments, half profoundly rejecting and the other half profoundly reinforcing. I published most of them on the site. When I got into executive coaching in 1984 there were very few women VP's, much less CEOs. One client, a CEO from a well-known consumer product company, talked to me at length about women in executive roles. I got McKinsey on my side and we encouraged them.  After more than six years at the consumer firm in the mid-1990s, they gradually promoted eight or ten women to VP. Today, women have a significant role at that firm. Though plenty of firms are still male driven, that has been changing over the past ten years--and drastically. I should indicate--with a sense of pride--that my eldest daughter is a vice-president of a leading non-profit.

After reading this, I hope you can have a good laugh at me, and then add your own notes. You'll note my defensiveness in response to some of the early comments. Amusing, but ah well.

The post, originally published on April, 26, 2010, is entitled 7 Behaviors That Keep Women From Getting Ahead

On numerous occasions over the years, I've coached women managers and execs.  Recently, while going through my file on influence management, I stumbled on an old article by Mary Ellen Drummond entitled, Seven Things We Do That Keep Us From Getting Ahead, from a now defunct (?) magazine called Women Managers.  Although these recommendations don't apply to a few female execs that I've worked with, they certainly apply to a large number.  Drummond doesn't mention the basis for her conclusions, but because of my studies in nonverbal research I'm well aware that a number of the recommendations have a research basis.  This information seems to go in cycles in business circles, but I've seen a number of recent articles on personal presentation.  I'm also aware that the top business schools, including Booth, Kellogg, Harvard and Stanford give time in their program for personal presentation, usually in leadership development programs that focus on interpersonal communication.

I've found that typically, because of their socialization, women are not aware of these issues.  The issues surface out of the assumption that business is a man's world, and that if a woman wants to succeed, she'll need to mimic some of the male behaviors.  (Although I've seen and read all kinds of responses to that assumption, I recommend a great deal of flexibility in these issues.  FYI: I've noticed more than a few men that need help with their business behaviors.)...

Can Charisma Be Learned?

There are actually two questions here: can charisma be learned, and will it positively impact business outcomes? Since I’ve worked over the years with clients to develop their charisma, I find the questions, well…amusing. Because the answers to both questions from those in the disciplines of rhetoric and communication is yes. Of course. We’ve known that for years. In fact, for centuries.

But what’s especially interesting about recent research (2011) by the psych and economics faculty at the University of Lausanne is that they look at the question from the perspective of economics in the European context, confirming the power of the discipline of charisma.

But there’s a lot more pragmatic stuff to be added to this research as well as most blogs and studies. The discipline of charisma is inevitably viewed from a public address format: a speaker addressing a group. But for career people, there are far more opportunities to practice and learn in a one-on-one or small group. Furthermore, it’s best to start adding charisma from your tool-kit early on, rather than waiting until you get a managerial promotion. It’s also far less intimidating to learn in a one-on-one or small group, than to wait until you’re a manager and have large group responsibilities.

Given my assumption, let’s ignore the research laundry list of tactics, and the unique opportunities provided by public address settings. Besides, if you gain the competencies in small groups, you can automatically transfer them to the public address context. So, skip those long lists of skills to gain the competency, and focus on just two very significant tactics that will set you on the path to charisma. Furthermore, with just a bit of reflection, these two skills for one-on-ones and small groups will readily open up other strategies..

Adam Schiff Meets Alexander Hamilton

Long before Alexander Hamilton arrived on the Broadway stage, he forecast the rise of a presidential demagogue. A trusted member of George Washington’s cabinet and Secretary of the Treasury, Hamilton wrote the majority of the Federalist papers in his late twenties, finishing them by the time he was thirty-years-old. Not only did he pen this work—the fundamental interpretation of the Constitution--but he heavily influenced the ratification of the Constitution by bringing in the state of New York. And all this by the time he was thirty years old (especially for those of you who are so concerned about the age of today’s presidential candidates).

As a 35-year-old, here’s what he wrote about his fears and anticipation of a presidential conman on the golden escalator.

When a man unprincipled in private life, desperate in his fortune, bold in his temper, possessed of considerable talents . . . is seen to mount the hobby horse of popularity—to join in the cry of danger to liberty—to take every opportunity of embarrassing the General Government and bringing it under suspicion—to flatter and fall in with all the nonsense of the zealots of the day—it may justly be suspected that his object is to throw things into confusion that he may “ride the storm and direct the whirlwind.”

Although not all history is predictive, as a critical tool history sometimes...

So, Pete Buttigieg Annoys His Competition

I find that amusing. Especially when his competitors immediately go to his lack of Washington experience. There is absolutely no necessary correlation whatsoever between experience and expertise. That’s a well-researched conclusion.

My wife, an elementary school teacher, came home one day with an anecdote from a teachers’ workshop. The speaker told the story of someone wanting a position as elementary coach because she had twenty years of elementary school experience. Her principal refused, but later in an aside to his assistant commented that actually she didn’t have twenty years of experience. She just had twenty years of first year experience.

And still others will say that Mayor Pete...

Nobelist Robert Shiller’s New Approach to Economics: The “Economic Narrative.”

My graduate research early in the 1980s was focused on narratives. By that time education had begun to realize that teaching just facts or principles without embedding them in stories was a poor way of teaching. The primary reason for that wasn’t fully understood until neuroscience got in the business of figuring out how memory and understanding work. The result of a lot of research was that memory is based on stories that we put into our gray matter, not on principles or facts. Sounds dumbly obvious today, but it wasn’t obvious until fairly recent.

I studied narrative and brief stories from the standpoint of their actual form and then the underlying values that caused people to buy into the story. What made most sense to me was that stories primarily take the form of tragedy, comedy or fairy tale. Tragedy and comedy are two very different ways of attacking human experience. And fairy tale is something else!

Tragedy is about destiny and fate. I just finished watching the four seasons of The Bureau, a French series on espionage. The final ending was a tragedy, where the leading character experienced the fate of death (Don’t let that keep you from watching the series. It’s just fascinating.) I responded as an American and didn’t like that ending, even though it made perfect sense. The French and especially the Greeks love tragedy. The Greeks always look first for tragedy and I suspect that’s part of the reason their economy is in the shitter. We Americans much prefer comedy—not “funny ha-ha,” but someone succeeding as a result of their wit, wisdom and strength, like all the John Wayne stories of the past (that really dates me!) But Americans really, really love fairy tale—someone coming to the rescue, like the cavalry rescuing the settlers from the Indians (that’s not politically correct, but we still like these stories in different contexts. Today, they often take the shape of mysteries with an especially sharp detective, who’s often a female!) Social psych has found that American optimism—related, I’m sure to our beliefs in priorities of comedy and fairy tale are part of the rationale for our national success.

So, what does narrative have to do with business and economics?
I learned just a few years into business consulting that the stories people told revealed as much about their firm as direct questioning...

Why a Kid’s Rudeness and Bad Behavior Might Be a Good Thing

It must have been fifteen years ago, but I still remember the incident. My wife and I were at a church picnic with a lot of families and several of our church’s pastors. After a meal, we were a bit involved in an ongoing conversation with adults. But we couldn’t help notice that one pastor’s daughter of ten or twelve years was waiting on her mom and dad while her younger sister and the rest of the kids were roughhousing and making a lot of noise. We had noticed that the younger sister was ignoring her older’s requests for help. And when pushed a couple times, she had rather pointedly said she was playing with her friends--and took off. But contrarily, several adults had commented that it was “so nice” that the pastor’s daughter was helping at the picnic.

After the third or fourth person commented how nice that the older daughter was helping, I looked at my wife and she rolled her eyes and got a similar response from me. Since it was a fairly large group of adults I stood up and my wife immediately joined me for a brief walk out in the forest. “Well, I suspected that. . .” and before I finished my wife responded, “yes, it was obvious.” “Gutsy younger daughter,” I added, to my wife’s laughter and agreement.

We didn’t have to say anything else because we both recognized that the pastor had some fairly narcissistic behaviors that were negatively impacting his older daughter--and that she was being ignored by her younger sister. In other words, it wasn’t “so nice” that one daughter was taking care of her parents. At her age she should have been free to explore, play with her friends  and get dirty,  instead of wearing a nice dress—and being unconsciously controlled by her parents.

And the “rudeness” of the younger daughter? Probably good stuff. I suspect that goes against the grain of a lot of parenting. But there are a couple very important pluses in “bad behavior.”

Actually, Alligators Are Great

That's the last word from Douthat's Sunday NYTimes opinion--and that's the argument, Douthat says, that the Republicans will be making.

When Trump Gets His Alligator

...

In the Ukraine scandal, the guardrails protecting the president from his worst impulses broke down. Makes complete sense.

Photo from The Economist

And of course he wants alligators and poisonous snakes on the Rio Grande border. The Economist totted up the cost of his schemes. The total, including water pumps, electrified flesh piercing spikes--and shooting migrants in the legs--would add up to approximately $30 bn...

Better Schools Are Not Enough (Part One)

My wife, who consulted and taught in both upper-middle class schools (Littleton, Colorado) and numerous inner-city schools (Detroit and Minneapolis), was the source of many insights that would never have crossed my mind or appeared in policy articles. One of her deep-seated insights was that merely fixing the schools could never heal many children’s educational problems, much less significantly impact achievement. And she had the breadth of experience and political wisdom to support her conclusion.

Seven years after her death, her conclusion has finally surfaced—in two intriguing places. The first was an indirect statement out of the mouth of Mayor Pete in the August Democratic debate. Ezra Klein called my attention to it in his analysis of the August debate. Coming after a lengthy section in which the candidates debated different health care plans, decriminalizing unauthorized border crossing, and a series of gun control ideas, none of which have the slightest possibility of passing in a Republican controlled senate.

At that point Buttigieg spoke up to say that this was the conversation that we’ve been having for the last 20 years. Of course, these policies are all true and needed. But when he proposes the actual structural democratic reforms that might make a difference—and make the policies possible--people look at him funny, as if this country was incapable of structural reform. Buttigieg’s basic understanding is that when the middle class has to hold down two or three jobs just to exist, children cannot get the kind of support and family education they need. He’s applied that insight to all kinds of situations. But significantly, I suspect he understands, since he’s married to a smart teacher, that schools with lower poverty rates tend to have higher scores, while schools serving large numbers of poor students have a different perspective on what achievement looks like. That’s all a reflection on the long-standing and well-documented connection between a schools’ poverty rate and achievement.

Education isn’t enough
But the most thoroughgoing analysis of this issue was written by Nick Hanauer and appeared in the July issue of the Atlantic. He sets up the problem uniquely, admitting that he used to think that better schools could heal the country’s ills. But, he acknowledges, he was wrong.

The common view is that both poverty and rising inequality are largely consequences of America’s failing education system. And, Hanauer admitted, he’s supported that view publicly and in the establishment of organizations, embracing education as both a philanthropic cause and a civic mission.

The typical reasoning is that if we improved our schools, modernized curricula and teaching methods, increased school funding while eliminating poor teachers, then low-income and working-class children would start learning again. That would result in better graduation rates and increased salaries, eliminating much of today’s poverty and inequality.

In contrast, Hanauer finds that American workers are struggling because they are underpaid, not primarily because of poor education. In fact, Americans are more highly educated than ever before. Despite nearly record-low employment, most Americans have seen practically no wage growth since 2000. He puts it rather clearly: educationism is tragically mistaken. Why is that? “Even the most thoughtful and well-intentioned school-reform program can’t improve educational outcomes if it ignores the single greatest driver of student achievement: house-hold income.”

(See part two for Hanauer’s rationale and data.)
**The Atlantic, July 2019.

 

 

From the Atlantic's James Fallows. . . to Pete Buttigieg

In the Fall of Rome, Good News for America.

The October Atlantic just arrived and I was immediately intrigued by James Fallows fascinating article. Actually, it's a response to Peter Mellon's, The World of Late Antiquity and the new book, Walter Scheidel's Escape from Rome. Fallows argues that though the US government is essentially sterile and self-paralyzed, he's found a terrific amount of resilience in state and local governments. In fact, he's found that state and local government, and for certain large private organizations and universities, the country is mainly functional--in exactly areas where national governance has failed. 

Especially enlightening is "that by large margins, Americans feel dissatisfied with the course of national events--and by even larger margins, they feel satisfied with and connected to local institutions and city governments." An American Enterprise Institute team found that 80 percent of Americans found their own town to be an excellent or good place to live. And 70 percent said they trusted people in their own neighborhood. . .