Dan Erwin

Trump Was Predicted 18 Years Ago

If you've read the shock and surprise of the past two weeks, you'd be certain no one could have predicted the Trump and populist win. But you'd be wrong. Some commentators were alert to the electoral change. Both before and after the election, a passage from Richard Rorty's 1998 book, Achieving Our Country, circulated on the web.

Here's what he had to say:

Playlist for an Alzheimer's Death

I often refer to my wife’s early death from Alzheimer’s complications as a "good death." If you have experience with Alzheimer’s you’ll understand that comment. But what made death easier for her and us was our love of music.  An NYT opinion article by Mark Vanhoenacker, described some basic end-of-life planning and focused on his deathbed playlist. It rang a lot of bells because of my wife’s death from Alzheimer’s nearly five years ago.

Vanhoenacker’s very human insights resonate: the music that gives our lives meaning can bring comfort at the end. Lest you think I’m describing sad, gloomy funeral music, let me disabuse you of that thought. Paul Simon once said that music should continue “right on up until you die.”  And Simon’s music was never funereal...

Listening: A Simple Pattern with a Big Payoff

A few days ago while having lunch at a local grill, a young guy sat down beside me. Shortly, we were engaged in a fast and hot conversation and I found out that he was a residential architect and he learned I was an executive coach. Learning that I too was fascinated by architecture, he began to quiz me about my specific interests and background. Finding that I grew up in metropolitan Detroit in the ‘forties and ‘fifties, he wanted to know about some of the great residences near the still-beautiful Fisher building on Woodward Avenue. An enlightening conversation about the monstrous costs and impossibility of building such magnificent homes today followed.

The question
As he began to leave nearly an hour later, he asked one question I’d heard before: “what’s the most important communication rule I need to know for my business?” “Well,” I responded, “not the talking I’ve been doing here. Instead, ask a couple highly relevant questions and listen, listen and listen. Then clarify the responses with another question or two, and listen, listen, and listen some more. At the end of an hour you’ll know a great deal of highly useful client information.” He nodded in very strong affirmation.

Listening is frequently and sometimes naively associated with only information gathering about tasks and the background of an individual. Often the more important information from listening is assessing the talker’s intent or motives—what that person is trying to achieve. Many times the partner’s goals and motives are not explicit, sometimes purposefully kept private. Over time, listening can enable us to figure out why...

Trump, Populism and the Election

If you voted Trump, don’t expect too much. If you voted Clinton, the world is not at an end. 

Candidly, I was 80% shocked and surprised, and about 20% merely reflective. What created these stats for me was last week’s blog, What’s the noise really all about?--a blog that defined populism and that has now become predictive of Trump’s success. Populists believe in their own virtue—and that they are being mistreated by a small circle of elites. Added to that belief is the view that “if we work together, we can overthrow those elites.”  That just happened in our election. What’s unique is that Trump’s win is the first time populism has elected a president--even though populist ideas have impacted voting throughout American history.

American history of populism
This morning I rechecked the history of populism and gained a number of fascinating insights...