Dan Erwin

Fifty Years of Curiosity

For more than 50 years, I’ve been trying to understand why dealing with powerful people was initially so nerve-wracking and scary. When I told one of my daughters about these fears, she was shocked. “But dad,” she responded, “you’re a very powerful and intelligent guy yourself.” That’s not where I started out. Fact of the matter, in a piece of feedback at my 50^th high school anniversary, eight of my classmates said they didn’t really recognize me. When I asked why, they responded in unison that the guy they knew as “Dan” was “shy, quiet and withdrawn.” Not the Dan sitting in front of them in 2002.

What changed it all was that I understood that if I was to be successful in my vocation, I’d have to change my behaviors—drastically. I was very fortunate. With tons of education, mentoring and feedback, I was able to make the changes. Though obvious now, for a long time I failed to understand my shyness and withdrawal. I thought it was just a natural characteristic.

Where fear comes from
I grew up with a highly narcissistic mother. Going through the psychiatric classification of mental disorders, the DSM-5, I noted that she knocked seven of the nine defining narcissistic categories out of the ballpark. As my brother said over her grave, she was a “mean lady.” I learned early on that I’d have to work hard to please her, take care of her, defer to her opinions and agree with how she understood the world. Of course, I also learned that if I disagreed or didn’t do what she expected, she was liable to abuse me emotionally and withdraw any and all rewards. 

So, going away to college—far, far away, offered freedom at last...

I Never Thought I’d Read a Psych Book this Enlightening—and This Much Fun!

               Before You Know It: The Unconscious Reasons We Do What We Do
                    By John Bargh, PhD

Last Spring, I got cornered by one of my friends, a psych analyst, while vacationing with her and her husband. We’d been having some heavy discussions and I’d been taking a solid position on the conscious brain and ignoring the unconscious (Only nerds like me do such things.) Finally, she asked the question: “Well, Dan, do you believe in the unconscious?” Recognizing she was probably pissed, I stared at her for about 30 very quiet seconds and finally responded, “I’m agnostic.” That discussion went no further.

But after working through John Bargh’s book, I’m a convert to the phenomenal role of the unconscious brain. Bargh had me from the first line of his book: “In college, I majored in psychology and minored in Led Zeppelin. Or maybe it was the other way around.” The scholarship doesn’t get any better, and the fun never stops. . 

Deciding Whether to Buy a Book. . . .

Or, why I bought Yascha Mounk’s The People vs Democracy.

If you have only so much time to read and you’re watching your pennies, how do you decide whether to buy a new book outside your area of expertise? One way to go at that is to check out who’s reviewing the book. You may not know all the reviewers, but you can probably flag bias pretty quickly if you read a few of the online reviews. Next you have to ask yourself what you think about the bias. And then, decide. I bought Mounk’s book on the above basis!

Mounk’s recent book The People vs. Democracy has been reviewed or commented about positively in the Wall Street Journal, the New York Times, The Economist, Washington Post, The Atlantic and the New Yorker. That says “buy me.” I had read his earlier book with much admiration, and this was another fascinating study to buy and digest.

Mounk points out that democracy—not just in the US—is going through its worst crisis since..

Information Overload Anxiety (IOA)

. . . And how to overcome it.

Our world is a poly-saturated, paper and internet-polluted society. A world in which those with the right information have power. A world where fortunes are made or lost, careers are secured or shot, health is enhanced or damaged by one factor--information. Indirectly, I built my business out of a love of cutting-edge information. I was enlightened of its importance by a Pillsbury client about 25 years ago. I had just recommended a book to an IT director and he responded with a strong rejection--and a comment: "We pay you to read for us."

I thought it was a stupid comment. But I took it to the bank for big bucks.

This, however, is not the 1980s. Anyone with a slight excess of gray matter understands the necessity of reading, study and learning today--just to keep up and build a little career security. As a consequence, I'm regularly asked what I'm reading--and how I stay on top of stuff. Since I'm currently reworking my reading habits, now's a good time to respond to that question. 

Over the past couple years I've been cutting back on my newspapers, journals and magazines. For a number of reasons. The overlap in some results in needless ...

Intellectually Curious? A Potpourri of Insights for the End of the Year

The Eavesdropper: Saving the lost art of conversation. Sherry Turkle, MIT’s digital psychologist, (an academic interested in the relationship between humans and machines) has an enlightening interview with Atlantic’s Megan Garber. Conversation is messy, full of pauses, interruptions and topic changes, she admits. So Turkle and Garber take us on a tour through a local Apple stores, noting that everybody’s talking, but nobody’s talking about anything except what’s on the machines—to prove her point. My protégé recently responded quite affirmatively to my comment that techies are usually the poorest conversationalists in an organization, especially when compared with folk in, say. . . marketing. But I have no complaints. Their inadequacies brought in big consulting bucks. In her new book she’s going to “out” herself as a “partisan of conversation.” Why do you think that’s actually important? I can give you a pot full of reasons.

In a formal recant, Ross Douthat gives us Confessions of a Columnist. I suspect he’s taking a tip from David Brooks’ paean for humility. Douthat intrigues us with several important big mistakes which he made in 2013. He told us, in effect, that he’s a poor predictor. . .

What Are You Reading? Here Are Five Especially on Career Development

What’s often frustrating about the plethora of web material on personal development is the difficulty of sorting the highly useful recommendations from the fluff or the just plain wrong-headed. A terrific amount of so-called career research suffers from the halo effect—the bias that because an attribute is productive in one occasion, then the other related attributes will also be productive—and in other situations. The halo effect is also at work in the distinction between cause and correlation. Still, there is far more empirical, social science and humanistic research in the field than most would imagine, so whenever that’s available, I recommend it to my clients. On other occasions, I recommend the work of well-known authorities. Here are a number of potentially useful recommendations.

Stanford’s Bob Sutton, on Five signs that your mentor is giving you bad advice, an expert in the field of career and behavior, supplies us with an unusual, even unique set of valuable insights. Sutton reminds us of the struggle to take something that works well in one place and replicate it in another (the halo effect). As Sutton points out to mentees, they “have to play an active role in judging the advice they get.” Sheryl Sandberg is among those who reveal that mentors have played a key role in her success, but that she’s learned . . .

What Are You Reading? Here Are Five for the Intellectually Curious.

What makes you think your company needs a hierarchy to succeed? There's a growing body of evidence that shows that organizations with flat structures outperform those with more traditional hierarchies in most situations. Harvard blog's Tim Kastelle says that hierarchy is overrated and Gary Hamel lays out the rationale for this long-overdue argument.  

It used to be that flattery, conformity and compliments were enough to butter us up. But now, as Adam Grant writes in The Sneaky Influence Tactics You Never Saw Coming, these stealth strategies are tougher to spot.  And if you're not aware of them, you're liable to fall for them. But you can see the virus coming, and put a stop to it early on. 

The corollary to the Matthew Effect is "from those who have nothing, even what they have will be taken away." Slate's Anne Hulbert, in Give It a Rest, Genius, lets us know what the new success books don't tell us. The bad news (I guess it's bad) is that the 10,000 hour rule of those great success books is not so easy as you might think. The books really don't do realistic justice to the grunt work they champion. Here's the more painful insight to Gladwell, Colvin, Coyle and Shenk's good. . .

What Are You Reading? Here Are Four for the Intellectually Curious

Are all creative people a little bit crazy? Not necessarily, but there are some connections. Fast Company's Eric Jaffe lays out the studies in What Neuroscience Says about the Link Between Creativity and Madness. Some stuff for a good conversation or two as well as support for the explanation that Hollywood (and business) creative types are sometimes manic-depressives. You don't want to dispose of the schizoidal types because Cognitive disinhibition may make schizotypal personalities more prone to delusional thoughts. It could also make creative minds more fertile.

Sylvia Hewlett's HBR blog, How to Choose the Right Protege, is a reminder that "building a posse of proteges is one of the smartest things a leader can do." Hewlette points out that the "protege effect" leverages career traction for managers. It makes them far more promotable. She adds seven tips for going about choosing your proteges. A must read for every manager who really wants to succeed. 

Adam Grant, (Why Men Need Women) the Wharton Professor, is one of those guys you'll want to get to know. I regularly read his blogs, articles and research, but somehow I missed this one back in July so thought you'd want to read it. Grant is young, smart--no, brilliant--and immensely aware, aside from being a highly popular professor and researcher. Typical of men who become generous, Bill Gates explained that two female family members — his mother, Mary, and his wife, Melinda — were major catalysts for his philanthropic surge. 

Rolling Stone's Tim Dickinson lays out the facts--and I do mean the real data-- in How Republicans Rig the Game. Dickenson is smarter than hell, an award-winning journalist and a guy who's work has been anthologized in The Best American Political Writing. Of course, he's also beloved by Russ Limbaugh (I'm just kidding.) "One man one vote" may be going the way of the dodo bird as the Republicans hold back the tides. But eventually the younger, browner, queerer electorate is certain to swamp them. 

Flickr photo by Klast 

The Dark Side of Leadership

With today’s political darkness, many have compared the government shutdown to the conflict between Clinton and Gingrich. What was missing with both Gingrich and today’s Tea Party is what Jeb Bush calls a “little dose of reality.” Before we look at Jeb Bush’s remarks, it’s wise to recognize that this dark side of leadership has a long history in fact and in literature. One of the greatest speeches in Western history, Hamlet’s soliloquy in Act 4, Scene 4, emphasizes the foibles of leadership with an utter lack of a sense of reality. Although Bush comments from a political perspective, Hamlet applies just as well to business leadership. This is a highly relevant case of what literature can do for the politician and the businessperson.

Street Smarts on Steroids

Fifty years ago if you had career street smarts, you paid attention to your boss, followed through on his expectations and figured out how to stay out of trouble. That would put you on the career ladder. By the mid 1980s, with the coming of technology and the information age, you learned to “manage your boss,” use technology to achieve some of your boss’s goals, and how to work cross-functionally. The career ladder was dissolving. By the 1990s, street smart workers knew to manage their boss, work cross-functionally and apply technology to their job.  But they also knew, much to their dismay, that neither their boss nor the company was going to take care of them. The career ladder had been "disappeared."

In the 21^st century, work life and career for many has gone to hell in a hand basket. Today, the street smart professional takes it for granted that that he or she will have to manage their boss(s), their work, and their entire career. But how, many ask, do I turn myself into the unique, desirable professional that will be able to open career doors for now and in the future 

FYI: street smart—alert, calculating, shrewd and with the resourcefulness to survive in a business environment.