Dan Erwin

The Trouble with Saints

If you’ve read sociology, you’ve probably read Max Weber. Weber (1864—1920), one of the founders of the discipline of sociology, is the update to Machiavelli. Weber's brief pamphlet, Politics as a Vocation, is the best prescription for politics, especially the politics of the past two years. So, I was both amused and delighted by a brief article in the 1/24 issue of The Economist on Max Weber’s enduring wisdom. Lecturing in the midst of German turmoil of 1918, The Economist emphasizes how his insights still make sense of politics.

Germany was in a far worse state than our Trump world. Rival Berlin factions battled for power in the streets. Several leaders were murdered. On January 28th of that year, Max Weber lectured liberal students “On Politics as a Vocation,” one of the most important contributions to modern political theory, as valuable a map to the contemporary political landscape as it was 100 years ago. (The thirty-page pamphlet is available free on the web, via Google.)

Weber was contemptuous of leaders solely determined to stick to their principles, whatever the consequences. “This ethic of conviction was the hallmark of saints, pacifists and purist revolutionaries...

The Flip Side of Happiness

Too much of a good thing can backfire. And that, research reveals, includes happiness. It’s intriguing to find significant research explaining the downside of emotions. Not least because I’ve always been intrigued with the upside of bad emotions and the downside of good emotions. Anger, for example, has an upside. And, in a never forgotten experience with a client, paranoia—at least for a lawyer—can have an upside too.

American culture is all about the pursuit of happiness. We’ve institutionalized that pursuit in the Declaration of Independence. But we understand the governmental caveats to that pursuit to assume also that we don't do anything illegal or violate the rights of others.

Still, I’m not a happiness-hater. Normally I have more than my fair share of happiness...

Lifelong Learning for Lifelong Employability

What’s the best way to go about business learning and stay abreast of constant change and new developments? In the February issue of the McKinsey Quarterly, Beth Davies and colleagues go beyond my question and focus on learning for lifelong employability. They set up their conclusions by distinguishing between the skills people have and the actual skills companies need. Then, of course, they add artificial intelligence into the mix, making for an absolutely superb analysis of human competitive advantage and the tools necessary for lifelong learning.

Their analysis of the necessary tools for adult learning (andragogy) covers the most salient issues from learning research.

1. Relationships help in learning by stimulating the parasympathetic nervous system. The parasympathetic nervous system conserves energy, slows the heart rate and lowers the blood pressure particularly after fight or flight responses. But under the pressure of business learning, relationships stimulate this “calming down” system, enabling people to process new ideas and learn more effectively than when working alone.Largely, I’ve found, it was because of traditionally competitive relations that only began to break down in the 1980s and ‘90s. In spite of the hullaballoo about AI, I’ll bet the majority of organizations are still in the middle ages regarding learning and development—except, that is, for technology groups...