Dan Erwin

Luck, Genetics and Self-Awareness

In a recent interaction with my lead physician, a superb internist at the University of Minnesota Medical school, I found myself questioning his conclusion about the role of luck in my life and health. Going over the conversation in my mind, I realized that I needed to clarify some issues with him. We had been talking about my lab results, which were absolutely flawless. I commented that my 87-year-old health was a result of good genetics, taking care of myself and the high-quality medical care that I had received at the med school. That was where he added that I needed to factor luck into my overall health success. To be specific, he noted that I would be in a far different situation, perhaps long gone from this world, if I hadn't walked into emergency 25 years ago and had a pacemaker installed immediately. I had a heart blockage, so, he said, I was really very lucky. A few more days without the pacemaker and that would have been it.

I decided just a few hours later that I wasn't in full agreement with his conclusion--at least as we left it. 

Putting flesh on my decisioning
Let me explain: My decision to head to Emergency--a trip resulting in the pacemaker--was the result of several issues. First, by the time I was in my early fifties, I decided that I'd need to take charge of my healthcare, a decision based on extensive reading on health and aging as well as personal experience with a couple mediocre physicians. I was also strongly oriented to research-based medicine insights long before that trip to Emergency. My unusual background  in communications, counseling and educational psychology, along with my experience teaching stress management, all added up to a great deal of mental and physical self-awareness. In spite of serious allergy problems, my wife maintained superb health by regular interaction with a couple physicians. As a result, I was quite used to being around physicians and not always enamored of their insights. In addition, one-of my sons-in-law is an MD/PhD, formerly a Harvard Med School physician, and his wife, my daughter, has been a VP in medical research for years. Furthermore, another daughter has been in medical research management for years, now a research manager at Harvard Med School. On top of this rich background, I long since rejected the typical male attitude toward health care--taking an aspirin and ignoring potential issues. I've maintained regular relations with several physician specialists at the UMN Med school for years. In addition, the fact that my brother never took care of himself, dying early with diabetes, obesity, lung problems, etc., etc. served as a warning for me for at least the past 35 years. So I've had tons of background emphasis in the role of personal health management--all adding up a rich, long life.

But the pacemaker incident was not the first time I took

My Passion Turned Toxic

So I left it, nearly 40 years ago. It was one of the four or five smartest moves in my life of nearly 90 years.

I’ve loved my life even more for the last 40 years, and found it very meaningful. Initially, both of my professions in the first 22 years were also very meaningful—and even very happy and successful professions with national recognition. But eventually, both professions became toxic. Or, as my wife referred to the culture where I worked last, very “plastic.”

Let me explain.
The term, toxic, is defined as “harmful or unpleasant in a pervasive or insidious way.” But that’s nothing more than a dictionary term. If you’ve talked to people who use the term in reference to a relationship or a situation, you know that the dictionary term doesn’t tell you very much. The term, like many others is ambiguous. It’s a classic case of polysemy. It has many meanings, but all the meanings are determined by the context. So what’s toxic to one person is not to another. Toxic is not merely sensitive to the context. The meaning of the word toxic depends completely on the situation for its meaning.

Of all the hundreds of people related to the last culture in which I worked, no one would ever think of that culture, except my wife and I, as toxic. In fact, when I talked to a leader from that culture, years after I left, he was very offended that I described the culture as toxic—even though I used my wife’s term—“plastic.”

Do You Have a Two-Track Brain?

In today’s tech oriented business world you’ll need it. Here’s why.

One of the most difficult problems with collaborative conversation is staying on track. Smart people inevitably get waylaid by tangential ideas that are suggested by their meeting interactions. That’s precisely why many think that team meetings are such a waste. Yet solutions and decisions in today’s business world inevitably require conversations to gain the buy-in of diverse teams and multiple business disciplines.

One underlying limitation business groups face is that few participants have a good handle on sequencing ideas. We used to think that software coders, who constantly work with digital sequencing, should be able to manage linkages. We’ve found, however, that the majority of technical people are unable to make the transfer of digital sequencing to conversational sequencing. Those with an extensive background in

What Can the Use of Statistics Do For You?

For many the question about statistics may be whether there is any real reason to fully understand how to use statistics. After all, you may have only so much time in the day. But the answer to the question is a strong, absolute yes. Using statistics strategically can be an unusually powerful game plan in many personal and work situations.

But let’s begin with some very basic statistic examples, the kind Harper’s magazine publishes on a single page in every issue. To a significant degree they are more fun than relevant. Here are a few from the recent issue:

-Amount spent on the average U.S. date: $73

-Percentage by which Democrats are more likely to trust the Wall Street Journal than Republicans: 36

-Percentage increase last year in the amount of credit card debt held by Gen Z adults: 40

-Percentage of U.S. adults 50 or older who play video games at least once a month: 45
-Portion of U.S. adults who consider Michelangelo’s David to be pornographic: 1/5

-Percentage of Americans who currently own an electric vehicle: 4

-Percentage of Americans who say they’d never buy an electric vehicle: 41

-Minimum annual number of fortune cookies produced worldwide: 3,000,000,000

Well, so much for that highly relevant information!

These are the simplest kind of statistics. What really brought this post into existence was a recent episode with a colleague who was obviously distressed over what I considered an ordinary, flawed statistic. It became clear at that very moment that most people have little understanding of how evidence in the form of statistics works—what it does rhetorically. That’s especially true since very few have ever engaged in high school or college, or had college course in statistics.

So I thought, based on my own expertise, it just might be helpful for some of my readers to understand just how and why statistics often serve as powerful proof. And hopefully then, my readers will be able to make better decisions around statistics. . .

and most importantly, be able to use statistics for their own personal and career advantage.

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.

What Am I Missing?

I was a bit surprised in a recent conversation with my ophthalmologist that though she was a superb eye physician, she was utterly in the dark when it came to human behavior. We got off my discussion of some refraction issues—readily resolved—and onto the behavioral failures of highly educated business people. Her underlying assumption was that the behaviors shouldn’t have happened because these well-educated people should know better.

I commented that far more often than not, behavioral failures are out of ignorance, not laziness or intention. Boy, that didn’t go over well. I repeated the simple statement a couple more times, but it was obvious from her nonverbals that she absolutely was not accepting my conclusion. I thought about saying, “look, I’m the expert in behavior and you’re the expert in ophthalmology,” but realizing that she wasn’t ready to go that far, I stuffed it, just letting it soak in and knowing she’ll want to talk about it six months from now at my next appointment. So, I went back to the questions about my refraction.

What she was missing was a great deal of understanding not only about human behavior, but especially about the complexities making up simple behaviors like listening and questioning, much less the rich complexities of highly interactional business conversations and often highly interactional personal conversations. Her problem was not unusual: medical specialties like business specialties (think “silos”) create thick walls. And some issues of behavior never break through such walls. And like plenty of professionals, they naively think they understand talk and communication. Sheer nonsense!!

Many never give thought to what they’re missing, especially in their conclusions about human behavior, business or otherwise. In this instance as in many, she was missing a lot of facts about the business of human interaction. Most people simply talk and communicate based on what they learned from their family of origin and perhaps from a teacher or two. I had a required speech communication course (“sending and receiving”) in high school in 1950-51, but very few have had my educational experience, much less a quality trained teacher.  And if you’ll think about it, very few families ever talk about talk and communicating, or even have the expertise to engage thoughtfully and accurately.

The “what am I missing” question is quite different than the “what am I missing out of” question. That’s primarily a question about missed luxuries in life—missed experiences that others might have or be having. “What am I missing?” is a question about your thinking related to problem solving and decision making. It’s an attempt at gaining better data and/or better ideas in your processes.

But this question of “what’s missing?” is assuming a far more important and obvious role in technology, a role that openly costs billions of lost dollars for a company. Of course, I’m quite capable of also arguing that what’s missing in conversations can also cost billions, but let’s not go there.

So, as I reflected about the issue with my eye doctor, I thought not only about what we miss in behavioral interactions and knowledge, but how often we miss major issues in business thinking—especially in the cutting-edge world of algorithms. And about how often algorithmic failures have become front page issues.

Hitman, Saint, and Also Seriously Human

A questionable ethic? This is not the kind  of stuff that's usually talked about openly. But get an important executive in a corner, telling him or her that you'll not identify the source, and he'll agree with this messy strategy.

A few years ago, after developing a relationship with the CIO of a major American corporation and successfully working with a number of his subordinates, I was faced with a challenge. Another consultant, call him John, was edging into my info tech territory from corporate marketing. As soon as I saw what was happening, I set up an appointment with the CIO. I assassinated John with truthful rhetoric and precise data. It was a barrage of sophisticated, critical, agitating rhetoric by which I intended to maintain control. By no stretch of the imagination did I wear my usual nice-guy hat. The next day, the CIO canned John’s ass.

While hard to accept and admit, on occasion it’s necessary to become hitmen because of threats to our career by others. Indeed, plenty of people go into business unprepared for a larger reality that can be supportive, constructive and fun, but occasionally requires them to work with somebody who is dangerous to their career. They may be highly deceptive rivals, indifferent and lazy assholes who won’t carry their weight on a project, or clueless incompetents who need to be brought to their senses.

Religiously ethical?
But my consulting experience reveals that a surprising majority of people hold an ethical and/or religious commitment to life that plays havoc with their feelings. Feelings that certainly would keep them from becoming the mean and calculating hitman suggested below.

As an ordained minister, a former parish pastor and seminary professor, it’s imperative to point out that these quaint religious ideas often sabotage not only your career, but also your life. And even more significantly, these “nice guy” feelings lack a rich understanding of what it means to be fully human. In short, the baseline of normalcy in the “religious” reality structure is often profoundly dysfunctional and false. A serious confusion exists between what people think they should be and what actually is. And it’s understandable that many haven’t come to terms with those differences given the predominant, though skewed, religious perspective.

While hard to accept and admit, on occasion it’s necessary to become hitmen because of threats to our career by others. Indeed, plenty of people go into business unprepared for a larger reality that can be supportive, constructive and fun, but occasionally requires them to work with somebody who is dangerous to their career. They may be highly deceptive rivals, indifferent and lazy assholes who won’t carry their weight on a project, or clueless incompetents who need to be brought to their senses.

Religiously ethical?
But my consulting experience reveals that a surprising majority of people hold an ethical and/or religious commitment to life that plays havoc with their feelings. Feelings that certainly would keep them from becoming the mean and calculating hitman suggested below.

As an ordained minister, a former parish pastor and seminary professor, it’s imperative to point out that these quaint religious ideas often sabotage not only your career, but also your life. And even more significantly, these “nice guy” feelings lack a rich understanding of what it means to be fully human. In short, the baseline of normalcy in the “religious” reality structure is often profoundly dysfunctional and false. A serious confusion exists between what people think they should be and what actually is. And it’s understandable that many haven’t come to terms with those differences given the predominant, though skewed, religious perspective.

Five Laws for Interpersonal Sensitivity and Success

It’s not very often that you can learn strategies for talking and communicating that always are true. Much of the time in psychology, communication or sociology, strategies are very context oriented. The strategy will work in one situation, but not in another. That means that you’ll have a lot to learn to be successful. But when the strategy is a rule or a law, you can apply it to all kinds of situations in many different contexts.

Back in 2015, I wrote about a fascinating study by Rod Hart and Don Burks who surfaced a relationship between “expressive” communication and “instrumental” or “rhetorical communication.” They emphasized that expressive communication is very attractive in business because it involves frankness, honesty, openheartedness and non-manipulative intentions. But they also pointed out that as attractive as it is, expressive communication rarely provides people with effective means for creating and managing relationships. In contrast, the research found that instrumental or rhetorical communication is based on rules or laws, working successfully in nearly all situations.

The study remains highly relevant. Indeed, the information that was laid out by Hart and Burks is even more applicable and useful today. It’s far more applicable because business is highly interactive and not nearly as hierarchical today as it was in when the study was first completed.  Surprisingly, their research was first published in 1972, forty-three years ago. Not only is that study still relevant, but other studies have revealed that their study also remains highly accurate. 

Uniquely, the research revealed central tendencies in interpersonal communication. And, as Rod Hart puts it, “the law of central tendency is a law.” Rather than focus on so-called transcendent moments of interpersonal rhetoric, they focused on ordinary communication. it’s far more interesting and useful to “scrutinize real people who act like real people. They do it all the time, after all, so why not pay attention?” So, Hart and Burks paid attention to the regular, the repetitive and created a science of human behavior by focusing on central tendencies. So interpersonal success inevitably follows their science—whatever your business or profession.

Three communication tendencies
The research surfaced three communication tendencies for interpersonal communication. The first tendency, which you see often in business, is the “Noble Selves” tendency: the notion that people should not adapt to other people or to situations in any way that violates their beliefs, attitudes or values. That’s the nice way of talking about these people. But maybe you’ll remember these people if I remind you that many of these people are those that Bob Sutton refers to as “assholes” in his book on Asshole Theory.  Sometimes this is a commitment or a sickness of the individual, but more often it’s an angry practice growing out of lack of awareness and adaptive tools. Whatever. These people are difficult to work with whether they’re assholes—or, in other situations, the “righteous.”

The second tendency, which can be seen as “sucking up,” is what Hart and Burks called the rhetorical reflectors. These are people who present a different picture of themselves to every person and in every situation. They are careful to reflect the image that they think others want them to present.  This is not only true in business and the professions, but especially obvious in students. Students belonging to the most religiously fundamental groups have significant differences from students outside that same group. They found a positive relationship between rhetorical reflectiveness and fundamental religiosity as well as a negative relationship between the rhetorically sensitive and fundamental religiosity. 

3 Keys to Successful Career Change

Although the notions around career change have been in flux for a number of years, there is one identifiable thread running through the rhetoric of the past 50 years: always build on your old career and its well-developed competencies.

You won’t need all of your old competencies, but a significant number must be available to support your new career. Journalists love to report on the unique people who won’t follow that rule. But the number of people who build a successful career that ignores their previous competencies is miniscule. Analyzing the past can force you to define what’s transferable and what’s not. In the long run, the distinctions between the past and the future provide focus for gaining new learnings quickly and efficiently.

This approach has two significant advantages: it is not overwhelming—and it makes you immediately valuable to your (new) organization. I always assumed this was self-evident, but experience reveals that few really understand the process initially!

One of my mentees provides a superb example for successful change. About a dozen years ago, he got into a major financial firm right out of college as a client relationship specialist. An English major, his conversational and linguistic skills were superb. Though he did not initially recognize his giftedness, he almost automatically thought first in big pictures, then created or broke out process from that macro understanding. This unusual competency sometimes goes with a humanities degree, but is usually missing in those with technical and business degrees.

His use of that expertise was spontaneous and unconscious. Early on in the financial firm, he began using technology with his relational skills, the focus of the finance position. After just a couple years, he bumped up that elementary experience into making sense out of tech strategy, assessing internal tech needs--and working with technology folk. Pretty soon, though he’d never had any technical background in software, he began to understand technology process and strategy more richly. (You don’t need to know how to code to understand process and strategy). Soon, with articulate questioning and networking, he became adept at figuring out what various programs could and could not do. As a result of his curiosity and focus, he became an expert strategic and planning thinker. That led to project management in a leading tech firm. (Still no coding expertise.) But from that experience he recognized the value of Agile, got his credentials very quickly and was soon using Agile in his project management. Next, you guessed it, he got on the Scrum bandwagon and is now a Senior Scrum consultant. I suspect there’ll be still further vocational and growth moves.

His career development model is simple and straight-forward: develop by adding strategic tools.

Sure, this sounds like overly simple process. Yet, the model is fundamental to all career change. Surprisingly, no more than five to ten percent of business folk seem to have the understanding and discipline to follow the model. Indeed, my observation of several hundred individuals attempting to develop skills without anchoring growth in the past reveals ongoing, unnecessary limitations.

Why is that?

Edgar Schein of MIT has talked and written about this macro problem for years.  More recently, Herminia Ibarra has also been dealing with this same issue. They believe that when the gap between your present situation and the hoped-for new situation is too large, the more likely it'll be that you'll ignore or misunderstand the information in the new context. And the result will be—failure...

Why Is It So Hard to Learn?

There are at least ten or so reasons that tend to make learning difficult for most of us.

Less than 10% of professionals are agile enough learners to quickly process an experience and apply their lessons to new situations. That's a spooky statistic. In today's economy where innovation, skill development  and learning are the only means to circumvent  personal obsolescence, why is the number of agile learners so small? In other words, why is it so hard to learn? Max Bazerman of Harvard  suggests three basic obstacles to learning. In this brief summary I add eight more insights gleaned from both research and face-to-face experience with hundreds of clients. 

The need for balance
If you’ve achieved some level of professional success, the idea that your skills could be lacking won’t compute. In fact, as Bazerman reminds us, balance theory emphasizes that we want consistency when we organize our thoughts and think about our expertise. To maintain our cognitive balance—our need to believe we’re consistent--we are nearly certain to avoid hard or painful truths.

If it ain’t broke, why fix it?
Generally, most of us reach a level of competency between four and six years into our vocation—then we slow down and eventually stop learning. Partly, that’s because we’ve been praised in the past for our work prowess. According to reinforcement theory, we tend to continue behaviors (skills) that brought positive rewards such as raises and promotions. If your professionalism has rewarded you, you’ll tend to resist information suggesting that your judgment and your toolbox could be systematically improved. 

Mistakes were made, but not by me
You’ve probably relied on your way of doing things for years. When you receive negative feedback about your performance, that will mean that you’ve made some costly mistakes in the past—and that will be unsettling. Interpersonal studies suggest that getting negative feedback causes us to avoid the person who gave it, filter information to him in the future, and constrict our  thinking. It’s no surprise that most of us will try to discredit the truth about our deficiencies, and become impervious to self-correction.

Missing the big picture
When learning new competencies, some people are so wrapped up in the detail and concrete specifics of a new skill that they miss the big development picture. Our education, whether business, law, architecture or engineering is highly specialized—making us all "Incrementalists." As a result, we fail to fully integrate the new skill into our toolkit, thinking that learning is merely an item-by-item matter. Without integration, our learning results will be nothing more than mediocre, barely moving the needle.

10 Key Behaviors for Learning in Organizations

Learning behaviors are all tied together by just one thread: learning with other people.

Gaining new competencies through “deep learning” is not the same thing as the way you learned in school. Nor is it the same result that you gain from doing a lot of research on a problem and developing an understanding of the problem. Furthermore, there is no real correlation between understanding a problem and being able to resolve it. In contrast, deep learning lasts and is a way of being, a mindset and an orientation. It’s absolutely necessary to put deep learning front and center because the internet has increased close-mindedness and made profound, deep learning very difficult and sometimes impossible. In Chris Argyris’ well known HBR article, “Teaching smart people how to learn,” the author points out that success in the marketplace increasingly depends on learning (even more today than when he wrote this), but most people don’t know how to learn.”

What starts you on the way to learn a new competency is the experience of “constructive disorientation.” The strong sense that something’s wrong, not working, could work better—or just very frustrating. And you believe there must be a way to resolve that issue. That “something wrong” has your brain ruminating, focused on the issue and working hard. In short, frustration is the spark for learning, critical reflection it’s engine, and relationships are the fuel.

Of these three issues, the one that’s often ignored is the role of other people in making learning happen. There is a terrific amount of theorizing and research about learning with other people. Jon Wergin of the University of Nebraska has focused on all the major learning issues in his fascinating new book, Deep Learning in a disorienting world. Since this is the kind of book most business people, except for the HR folk, won’t pick up, here are the 10 key behaviors—with my brief notes added...