Dan Erwin

"How to Be Brilliant." It's all about discipline, not giftedness.

Forget about genes as "unchanging" "blueprints" and talent as a "gift," all tied up in a bow.  The review of David Shenk's new book, The Genius in All of Us:  Why Everything You've been told About Genetics, Talent, and IQ is Wrong, in today's NYTimes Book Review summarizes much of the important research findings over the past ten years.

Reading over the review a couple times, I hooted with laughter remembering the old saw from music school about how to get to play at Carnagie Hall:  practice, practice, practice.  That's exactly what Anders Ericsson has learned about development, the notion of deliberate practice.

Shenk sets out to overthrow the conventional ideas surrounding the words, "nature" and "nurture."  But he also recognizes that you can't overthrow the conventional ideas and images that have been accumulating for more than 125 years.  In fact, as I've argued in numerous places, old dogma dies hard.  Once concepts are deeply embedded, a superstructure of assumptions and ideas grows around it.  Rejecting a dogma means that many ideas are now questionable, more research could be invalid, and that the reputation and contribution of many scientists might be questioned.  As you can guess, old dogma rarely gets challenged. 

Still, two significant and distinct lines of psychological research have been built up over the last fifteen years.  One body of research shows that intelligence is fundamentally a competence that can be developed.  A second line of research shows that supervised coaching, maintained at high levels for extended time periods, along with disciplined learning, can be far-reaching.

I draw two very important conclusions from this research.  First, the next time you pick up the Wall Street Journal and read an article by Charles Murray (of the Bell Curve) and his ilk, remember that he's either BSing or clueless.  Here's a copy of a letter by Robert Sternberg of Yale and Tufts, which I've posted on my website, challenging Murray's archaic ideas.

What the research also reveals is that we need not be stuck in careers and vocations that go the way of the Dodo bird as a result of technology and innovation.  If we are willing to persist in continual growth, we can create new opportunities for ourselves.  I've seen clients do that very thing for years and years.

Oh yeah.  What Shenk seems to be unfamiliar with is the notion of small wins, the best way to persist and grow in the face of failure.  You can find my basic discussion of the process and the research here.  Why small changes work. . . . andMotivation and small wins . . . .

Will We Ever Catch Osama bin Laden?

The two terrorism wars of the past decade came into existence for two unrelated reasons:  to remove Saddam Hussein and to catch Osama bin Laden.  The U.S. army has been successful in achieving the first objective, but will we ever catch Osama bin Laden?

U.S. Attorney General, Eric Holder, was questioned on the prospects of the Al Queda leader ever being captured and put on trial.  Holder's answer was quite straightforward:

The reality is that we will be reading Miranda rights to the corpse of Osama bin Laden. 

Fanatics have a way of avoiding their pursuers, and when the end is near, taking their own life.  Hitler is the classic example.  Now that Al Queda is buffeted on all sides in both Afghanistan and Pakistan, it would be rich to finally find and catch bin Laden.  The geography of that area, however, is among the toughest in the world.  Difficult donkey trails, towering peaks and messy weather.  I suspect that Attorney General Holder's comment is on target.

Initial Jobless Claims Down, Week Ending March 13

Initial jobless claims for the week of March 13 were down 5,000 from the previous week to 457,000.  To get a sense of what's happening, one year ago initial jobless claims were 644,000.  Quite a change.  As I've indicated previously, initial job claims are considered a gauge of the pace of layoffs and an indication of companies' willingness to hire new workers. 

The positive change is reflected in reports that hiring is up for the fifth month in a row in both manufacturing and service industries.  Further information on hiring is on my post, Good News.

Once more, here's the interpretive material from Mark Zandi.  Only when claims head down to 400,000 will the economy be creating enough jobs to maintain stable unemployment.  Closer to 350,000 will lower the unemployment rate and mean that the recovery is evolving into an expansion.  When we get to initial weekly unemployment claims of 300,000, boom times are back.

Quotation of the Week: Philippe de Montebello

Increasingly there are a lot of people in the academic world who have trouble with the masterpiece, with the concept of good, better, best.

--Philippe de Montebello, Director of the Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York, 1977 - 2008

(NYTimes, Conversation with Philippe de Montebello)

I wish that were only true in the academic world, but sadly it is not so.  I meet ordinary people, or businesspeople who have a great deal of trouble with the notion of cultures, or ideas (or whatever) being good, better or best .  I face people constantly who have profound difficulty with the notion of research being more significant and valid than their own intuition.

De Montebello is also puzzled by the "rapidity and and the eagerness of the press to embrace the anticollecting lobby.  The press has been for the archeologists and for the source countries and against museums."  Why?

Ah well.  This discussion is a lost cause.

What Will an MBA Degree Do For You?

The January/February Harvard Business Review has a research analysis of the top 100 performing CEOs.  They found to no one’s surprise(and for a lot of reasons) that the MBA drives the success of a significant proportion of those CEOs.

But let’s broaden the question.  What will an MBA degree do for you?  My answer:  It all depends.

Before I answer the question, I should explain my perspective.  I’ve been a consultant to top managers and execs in leading companies, as well as a number of small, privately held firms, for more than 25 years.  I also hold several graduate degrees including a PhD from Minnesota.  Aside from my business experience, I’ve taught in MBA programs, and taken a five-day class at the Chicago Booth Business School (I have no business education, whatsoever, and no one gave a damn, including my friends at McKinsey).  Finally, I insisted that all of our daughters get a graduate degree before they got too serious about marriage and family, all of which they did.  They are all very glad that they picked up grad degrees.

From that set of differing perspectives it strikes me that there are three issues of significance that determine whether an MBA will be of great value to you, and make possible better opportunities and jobs. 

1. The quality of the student body and their interaction.  That, of course, rules out the value of an online MBA.  Quality is normally measured by testing for admittance (GMAT, etc.) as well as the  experience and firms for which classmates worked.  Having dropped in on both top level as well as ordinary local college/university MBA settings, I need to warn you that the differences in students are monstrous.
2. The quality of the faculty and their resources.  That’s also determined to a high degree by the quality of their educational background, the relevance of their research, and their business experience.  Business experience for better faculty is often reflected in their consulting relations, information which is usually available in their resume or vita.  The differences in faculty knowledge base and experience, like that of the student body, is also monstrous.  By the way, great students draw great faculty and vice-versa.  Companies pay attention to these differences.  Proctor and Gamble, for example, only recruits from a dozen or so MBA programs.  3M is only interested in chemical engineers and scientists from top schools.  If you want to build your own business after an MBA, there are a few schools with solid entrepreneurial programs.  The rest are iffy, and may not do much for you.
3. The quality of the alumni network.  In the early years of work, your ability to gain a top job, providing superb experience will be impacted significantly by the alumni network of the school.  If you intend to live in the state in which you grew up, then go to the best public university in that state for an MBA.  Instead, if you have a lot of wanderlust and are interested in the leading companies or international positions, the nationally known MBA programs have the leg up on the rest of the college and universities.  There are monstrous differences in the power of alumni networks.

I’m aware that some of you will want to bring up others who succeeded with none of this background.  They are the exceptions.  Some also believe that it’s possible for an individual to develop these skills in a lesser setting.  Possible, but not very likely.

Americans tend to believe in the insta-success society that the tube proclaims.  But the fact of the matter is that success for 99% of the population is all about a great deal of effort and struggle.  I celebrate that very essential fact of life.

What will an MBA do for you?  It all depends on which MBA and your willingness to work your tail off.

If you already have a great job, and your firm suggests that it'll do more for you (and them) if you finish an MBA, then go for it.  Most any MBA from most any school, including onlines, will work for some companies.  But clarify the firm's expectations for you before you sign up for the MBA program.  In those settings none of the three issues I've discussed may have great relevance.  But, get your firm to pay for the degree.  Although the official answer is "no" in many, if not most companies, I've found that there are plenty of exceptions to that rule, especially if you're quite valuable to the firm.  You can often finagle the MBA costs if you agree to stay at the firm for, say, another five years.

Dweck's Mindset: Five Reasons Why Living in the Growth Mindset Is So Difficult

Although conventional wisdom still maintains that a person's intelligence and abilities are a fixed quantity, Carol Dweck and Anders Ericsson have put the lie to that conceit.  But once you understand the new mindset and set yourself to growing and staying in that growth mindset, it's still difficult. 

Why is it so easy to fall back into old thinking and old habits outside the new growth model?  Here are five reasons:

1. For more than 100 years society has said that success is about being more gifted than others.  It's emphasized the notion that failure measures you.  Effort, we've heard is for those who can't make it on pure talent.
2. We don't talk about or emphasize either vulnerability or struggle as good things.  Ridiculous as it is, we believe in instant success without struggle, and that showing vulnerability is a sign of weakness rather than strength.  In fact, feeling vulnerable is merely a sign that we've identified something else to learn. 
3. We have told the younger generation that they could be anything they want to be and it isn't always true.  We tend to ignore the high requirements of struggle and effort necessary for great achievement.  Insta-achievement won't square with reality. 
4. It's difficult to sit with someone who is struggling or trying to cope.  The pattern of long-term support of the younger generation is not admitted to nor ingrained into our society.
5. We don't applaud risk-taking.  What risk-takers risk is failure, and failure is something we're trained to avoid. 

I'd summarize the growth mindset this way:  Living on the learning edge is the smart thing to do.

Never Let a Crisis Go To Waste

In yesterday's blog I pointed out that the small Israeli blunder during VP Biden's visit was a superb opportunity for the Obama administration.  And though the media had picked up no reports, yesterday, about the Obama administration using the blunder to their advantage, I suggested that it would be stupid not to.  (Of course, I was also pointing out to my readers that politics is much of the game of life.) 

This morning's news shows that my prediction was on target.  Mark Landler's article in the Times said that getting into a serious fight with Israel was risky, but that the payoff might well shore up Mr. Obama's credibility as a Middle East peacemaker.

Eric Cantor of Virginia, the house Republican whip and Sarah Palin issued a statement calling on the president to "push the reset button on our relations with our ally israel."  Hillary Clinton reaffirmed our relationship with Israel as a family member, but kept up the pressure on Netanyahu.  There were also numerous attempts on the Israeli side to calm the waters.

David Makovsky, the senior fellow at the Washington Institute for Near East Policy, whom I referred to yesterday, said, "I don't think this issue should be like a Christmas tree, where you hang all these other ornaments on it.  The whole episode should end where it began:  you had a problem with those units, so you figure out how to fix it."

In contrast to Makovsky, however, some of Israel's staunchest supporters in Congress said that the experience might focus minds on the larger prize.

Mr. Obama had a long, private conversation with Mr. Netanyahu yesterday.  Its contents have not been revealed.  But you know that Obama is taking advantage of the tempest in a teapot to reset his own boundaries with Israel.

Okay.  What can we learn from this?

1. In human relations, as in international relations, never let a crisis (a screwup) go to waste.  Step up to the plate and take advantage of it. If you fail to do that, it's possible that people will respect you less and that will result in a loss of credibility.
2. Take your time to reset the boundaries, but always reset them.
3. Take advantage of the situation to demand relevant changes.

Three Principles Of Career Politics: Netanyahu and the Settlements

There's a great deal, personally and career-wise, to learn from the Israeli failure to watch their p's and q's during the visit of VP Biden to Israel.  Thus, I intend to analogize from that example to comparable personal opportunities in business.

David Makovsky, esteemed specialist of the mideast, respected by both Israelis and Arabs, describes the situation on the CNN site here.  Essentially what happened was that during the visit of VP Biden to Israel, the conservative wing of parliament announced that they would be adding 1600 housing units for ultra-orthodox in East Jerusalem, what both Biden and Clinton identified as an "insult."  In other words, the Israelis overstepped the family boundaries (Israel and US are clearly family).  As of this morning neither Clinton, Obama or Netanyahu have backed down, but there's a lot of face-saving going on by Netanyahu.  He has to keep the support of both the US and his party, the Likud and that really takes a politician.

Some strategic background:  Obama gained the Jewish vote in the election and will certainly keep that vote, but he also intends for movement on the Palestinian/Jewish front.  That issue has been a thorn in America's side for decades and he would like to move the two-state process on. 

Though no one has breathed a word about this, the Israeli announcement is actually a gift to the Obama administration.  The Jewish blunder has put Israel in an embarrassing position, a position that Obama would be a fool to ignore.  The blunder surfaces all kinds of issues over which Obama intends to renegotiate (informally, that is), issues that would be far more difficult for the US to surface and renegotiate.  Of course, there will be all kinds of noise, in which all three sides attempt to reposition themselves, but my perspective is that the blunder once again puts the US clearly in the driver's seat.

How is this personally useful?

Although this is an international case of nations overstepping boundaries, I'd draw your attention to the fact that there are many work situations in which it's very important to guard against others overstepping your personal/organizational boundaries.  I learned this lesson in, of all places, the church.  When I was an associate minister in a Pasadena church, nearly 50 years ago, we had a troublesome and yet very powerful layman who was aligned with an extremist political organization.  He had developed a Sunday church class which he used for his own political purposes and we had been stymied for some time about how to best deal with the situation--a situation which regularly created problems throughout the congregation.  In the Protestant congregation you just can't march in and can the guy's ass like some of my Catholic brethren do.  So the senior minister argued that we needed to keep tabs on what was going on.  Once, he said, that the layman overstepped the bounds and became divisive we could haul him before the board, give him a dressing down, and limit his power.

That is exactly what happened. 

And I learned a great deal from it, not least that we humans are driven by self-interest and quite accustomed to honoring few clear distinctions between our messy, conflicted lives and our obligations to each other.  Actually, we have few two-dimensional (black/white) virtues to jeopardize.  We all want our share of power, and politics in some form is how we both gain and lose that power.

The second thing I learned and which our daughters taught me in spades, is that we are all fundamentally political animals.  What that means is that getting three teen-age daughters to agree on something, unless you choose to use coercion (which I've always viewed as ultimately destructive of relationships), is a highly political activity.  A lot of fun, but also very political. 

Now that our daughters are in their forties, I feel perfectly free to ask them all kinds of questions.  The most hilarious and insightful political issue I ever surfaced with them was the result of a question I asked at a raucous dinner at our lake place, in front of their husbands and children.

"What," I asked, "was the most difficult problem growing up in our family?"  There were knowing looks at each other, and big smiles before our middler answered the question (it's always the middler).  I did not expect the answer to be about politics, but there you go.

"The real issue," she said to much laughter, "was that we could never play you or mom against each other to get what we wanted.  All our friends usually worked their parents that way, but we could never pull it off.  You both were too smart for us."  The issue is totally political, and all about the very human effort to gain cooperation.

The third thing I've learned about politics is that you'll inevitably find yourself in business settings where someone, like the Israeli Likud, is overstepping the boundaries.  Observe them, take notes over two or three missteps, and then have a "come to Jesus party."  Once you've got the data, be sure to use the opportunity to either renegotiate (informally) or can the person's ass.  You can be sure that Obama will be renegotiating the Israeli relationship as a result of this blunder. 

In spite of all his foibles, few American presidents were better at the process than Lyndon B Johnson.  He could marshall data, suck up with promises and gifts, or put the fear of god into legislators to get what he needed.  This is my way of suggesting, as a trained theologian and research scholar, that moral fastidiousness is more about personal weakness than courage.  From a business example, Jack Welch fit the example to a T.  This century will need a different kind of example than Welch, but never forget that politics is at the core of human and career success. 

I allude to the research on negotiation/politics in my blog, How to haggle (part 3).

How Will Chris Dodd Fix Wall Street? Here's What Michael Lewis Says Needs to be Fixed.

Business is screaming it isn’t the problem and attempting to discredit the fix.  Plenty on the left and the conservative right say the fix doesn’t go far enough.

But what is it that needs to be fixed?  Perhaps the best answer is in a timely interview with Michael Lewis and a review of his latest book, The Big Short.

If you saw “60 Minutes” last nite or have your hands on Michael Lewis’ latest book, you know what he has to say.

Understanding the macro issues is no easy task, but Lewis intends to make it fairly easy for us.  If The Big Short, is anything like his earlier books, Liars Poker, Money Ball or the New, New Thing, his readers will be in for a fascinating and illuminating ride through the meltdown.

Steve Kroft of 60 Minutes attempted again and again to place blame and turn the conversation into an ethical black/white, good/bad discussion.  But Lewis is too smart and too honest for that simplicity.

Instead, Lewis found that the meltdown was built on flawed mathematical models that most financial executives did not really understand themselves.  He believes that the roots of the meltdown are found in the development of complex, opaque financial products like mortgage derivatives.  As Lewis describes it, Wall Street hid the risk by complicating it, and by getting the rating agencies to give triple A ratings to bonds that were poor quality.

Lewis, in his ever colorful prose, describes the investors who went from the stock market to bond markets as “like a small, furry creature raised on an island without predators removed to a pit full of pythons.”

Lewis, like most great writers, has the ability to introduce his readers to complex subjects, make them quite intelligible and do it all with a great deal of narrative panache.

You’ll find the CBS 60 Minutes interview here. 

The New York Times review is here.

Matt Damon and the "Green Zone"

I’m a sucker for espionage and war stories with a lot of action so I headed for the movie yesterday, hoping for a couple hours of escape.  The ultra-earnest Matt Damon was his serious, stoic self throughout the entire movie.  He was the good guy up against the bad guys from the Pentagon. 
 

The movie was a very bad case of the simples, unsatisfying in its reflection of “Bush lied, people died” reductionism.  It lacked the fun of Damon in “Oceans,” and the occasionally conflicted story line of his Bourne episodes.  Not even a romance intrudes.  The failed character development contrasts Damon as good-guy warrior and the weaselly Greg Kinnear replaying, as Ross Douthat put it, some combination of Donald Rumsfeld, Paul Bremer and Douglas Feith.  The grizzled CIA operative, played by Brendan Gleason, is also a good guy in this movie, knowledgeable of Iraq, attempting to get the real story behind the war.  A grimly farcical movie, it circles around Damon gone rogue, searching to find the truth about WMD and learning that it’s all a ruse for war against Saddam.  Ho hum.

So why am I writing this review? 

Actually, it’s a ploy to get my readers to think about two important, but related matters.  These are matters which, I hope to show, influence how we think about this business of being human and eventually how we think about our careers, the main focus of my blogs. 

Why does Hollywood look upon American politics as an inevitably toxic world, and distance itself from that reality?  Successful politicians can never be good or evil.  They will always be good and evil. 

Growing up in an evangelical church, I was taught that one would never really want to get involved in corporate business.  It was too political and thus too evil.  Of course, governmental politics was way off the screen for any "true christian.”  The issues were always presented as a matter of personal christian ethics.

Those of us with the slightest knowledge of the founding fathers and their genius displayed by the constitution realize that they understood and used the self-interested agendas of political players to cancel each other out.  Their obvious intent was to limit the damage that one branch can do.  Indeed, they openly acknowledged their cynicism, and built upon flawed human nature.  They had no difficulty with self-interest.  It's inherent in the political nature of humans.

It’s also a profound mistake to think that career success will ever come without political knowledge.  Hard work and deep smarts will have to be supported by political action.  Political action in most any arena is eventually about high compromises and low moral trespasses.  We might just as well get over the adolescent notion that we can honor the distinctions between our messy, conflicted, self-interested lives and remain morally pure.  Contrary to the “righteous,” I’m quite certain that wherever Yahweh resides, He is quite aware, willing to affirm our necessary foibles.

In sum, the aftermath of this recession suggests that all of us, professionals, businesspeople and “politicians” need to recognize that the lines dividing the ethical are not nearly as clear as we might wish and that political action is inevitable.  Hopefully, you see that like much of Hollywood's attempts at righteousness, the Green Zone is an ethical farce.