Dan Erwin

7 Ways Great Questioning Can Lead to Personal Success

In the vast majority of cases, whether you’re selling ideas to colleagues or a boss—or a product or service to a client--success begins with the ability to ask good questions and then listen--really listen--to the answers.  Contrary to these two basic facts, for most business people there is an "80% Syndrome" at work: 80% of the time, the person selling or attempting to persuade is doing the talking, and 20% of the time the other is talking.  The 80/20 syndrome is extremely common and counterproductive for anyone selling ideas or products. 

In point of fact, if the “seller” would reverse the "80%" syndrome, they would be much more successful.  That means 20% of the time given over to questioning and statements by the “persuader,” and 80% of the time given over to information giving by the client.

I’ve Actually Been Paid to Teach People How to Do Small Talk

You’d think it was a waste of time and money if, that is, you didn’t know who paid me to learn how to do small talk. There were fifteen to twenty out of my nearly five-hundred one-on-one executive coaching contracts. Those who paid for my services were at least vice-president level in huge (multi-billion dollar) international companies. It was never an ordinary manager. In fact, several who contracted for my services were C-Suite executives.

So why were the small talk clients all C-Suite execs and vice-presidents? The answer was the same for every single one of these clients. They were high achievers. They really knew their business and they’d focused every working day on their business discipline and its demands.

But now they needed to know how to do small talk because of their role as company representatives to community and neighborhood charities as well as national and international charities. Since involvement was important to their firm, they were expected, as executives, to attend as company representatives. Most of them didn’t know how to talk about anything except their business, so they were tongue-tied in their new role. They were embarrassed to talk about their problem in the firm, so an external consultant was the way to go. And I just happened to be available—or one of their close friends recommended me.

How to Evaluate an Artificial Intelligence Tool

Anybody can do it. Here's the basic model, along with my reasoning for its value for every business person or professional in law, medicine and architecture.

Artificial Intelligence tool evaluation is an issue that just about every professional needs to start thinking about. More and more the corporate and professional worlds are being marketed  for AI tools, some worth purchasing and others a waste of money. Appropriately, these decisions should be made by people with a lot of relevant background.

But nearly every work person, business or professional should have a basic understanding of AI. Yet recent conversations with a number of colleagues reveal that AI is dark hole for the majority  of people. So in this blog, I want to offer the underlying thinking about AI from the standpoint of theory construction, and offer two straightforward suggestions.

My first suggestion starts at a different place than you might expect--with the actual background of AI thinking: argument theory. I’m quite certain that most in technology aren’t familiar with argument theory, but actually it’s the basic background of AI tools. In fact it’s the basic background of all human reasoning—sophisticated and unsophisticated.

Rumors of Conspiracy Are a Normal Part of History

Not just national or international history. Even my own history. As a twenty-year old rumors of conspiracy terrified me. No longer. History provides me with a healthy antidote: Richard Hofstadter.

I graduated from college in 1959, a few years before Richard Hofstadter's essay on The Paranoid Style in American Politics came out in Harper's. As an associate in a Pasadena (California) church, the conspiracy theories of the John Birch Society were driving me nuts. One of the promulgators of conspiracy, a retired naval officer and member of the "society" was teaching in adult classes. The senior minister, a swell guy, but utterly gutless, let it go on and on. I was a history major, so I was familiar with American conspiracy theories. I was amazed how many in that well-educated, upper-middle-class church were believers in the process. . .