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

When Your Best Career Theory is Wrong. Dead Wrong!

As a research-based consultant, I’m used to getting my ideas tweaked by new research. After all, I think of myself as a fairly flexible, open guy, so a small adjustment to my theories and ideas is usually illuminating. But unknown to Harvard’s Rosabeth Kanter, she took a Shillelagh, a big club to one of my big ideas. Her blog, Why running a family doesn’t help you run a business, knocked me back on my heels. And I yelled a silent Aaargh!, knowing full well that she was quite correct and I was quite wrong. So there, I admitted it Prof Kanter.

Kanter lays out her case with panache, acknowledging the conventional wisdom first. Here’s her argument:

In theory, those years of family work at home could look great on a resume. Consider the skills required: setting priorities, training others, organizing complex logistics and schedules, and using interpersonal sensitivity to handle difficult people problems. Indeed, some advocates have argued that the time women with advanced degrees spend out of the workplace managing a family is valuable experience for managing back in the paid work world.

I agree it is valuable experience — if the paid job one returns to involves managing a handful of people who are vulnerable and can't leave. Otherwise, the operating skills for family manager are nothing like the qualifications for workplace professionals.

Her reasoning and...

Do You Have An Immunity to Change?

Humans differ significantly in their ability to make change.  As a personal coach to executives for more than thirty years, it’s obvious that these differences are the status quo. Desire and motivation aren’t enough—even when it’s literally a matter of life or death.

Some, it seems, have a profound immunity to change.  Often, they understand the need for change and they may even understand what the change might look like. But for some reason they seem stymied, and unable ...

Five Ways to Screw Up a Job Change

Since people are beginning to make a job changes, have started looking for a different position, or are giving serious thought to moving to another company, now's the time to call your attention to a superb HBR article on "bungling" a job change.

The article, written by Boris Groysberg and Robin Abrahams, reminds us that the average baby boomer will switch jobs 10 times according to the U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics (Gen-Y, 12 to 15 times, or more). It also calls attention to the fact that the worker as free agent will be a reality regardless of economic conditions--all of which means it's incumbent upon us to take greater control of our own careers.  And since there are times when most of us have to accept a less-than-perfect fit for financial reasons, it's very important to remember ...

What Happens When Your Theory No Longer Works?

All of us have our own theories about how relationships, careers and life are supposed to work. Typically, they are implicit, but they are just as powerful when we don’t recognize them. As I noted in a recent blog, theories sneak up on all of us. Our theories impact reality in profound ways that most never see, never think about or are even willing to believe. But our social theories profoundly influence how we think about ourselves, how we think about our world and how we act, even when a theory is now obsolete.

One of the most classic theories about work and pay was destroyed back in the 1930s by Henry Ford. The theory was that you should pay your worker as little as possible and expect 12 hours work a day. The old man looked at the Model T that he was making and trying to sell for $500 and decided that theory would no longer work. His market was limited by the poor salaries he paid his employees. Much to the chagrin of American business and Wall Street, Ford nearly tripled the salaries of his employees overnight, putting them on an eight hour day just so they could buy the car they built and have the time to drive it around. Wallah! There you have it. Ford became one of the richest men in the world almost overnite. . .

Update: Can You Change Your Personality?

In the popular mind, characteristics like introversion and extraversion are unchangeable. Although I’ve never explicitly pooh-poohed that interpretation, my career as counselor, university faculty and management coach long since brought me to the conclusion that personality distinctions like that are largely useless and often destructive. Yet people continue to believe that the personality is encoded in the genes, fixed, and unchangeable.

However, research now shows beyond a shadow of a doubt that personality is a flexible and quite dynamic thing. By personality, psychologists refer to those enduring, long-term patterns of thoughts, feelings and behaviors that distinguish one person from another. That would include, for example, increased levels of self-confidence, warmth, self-control and emotional stability. It also includes the temperaments, the introspective and extraverted. Although these changes are more predominant in young adulthood (age 20—40), the research has demonstrated that personality traits can change at any age. So when someone tells you “that’s who I am,” don’t take it seriously. That may well be just who they want to be. Or that they believe that they can’t make those changes. Or that they’ve never given thought to making real changes, and certainly that they don’t know how to make the changes of importance....

9 "Rules" for Successful Job Search

Recently I was engaged by a senior exec who had worked in a narrow, consumer products industry for years. He’d lost his job because of a buy-out and strategy change. Significantly unaware of the career implications of the changing economy, he also had no awareness of either job search realities or skills. I doubt that is unusual. It means coaching  and development of job search competencies from ground zero are required.

What follows, then, are those ground zero “rules” for job search in the 21^st century. They reflect my observations and the wisdom of highly successful managers and executives who’ve worked in everything from start-ups to leading multi-national companies. These are people who’ve moved from corporation to corporation over the past 15 years with little pain. They reflect a highly knowledgeable understanding of the flattened and networked impact of the information economy upon jobs. The degree of consensus on these “rules” for managerial positions and above is near 100%.

A caveat: If you’re in your first five years of your career after graduation, two or three of the rules will be a bit difficult to ...

Dan Erwin: Good Reads for the Intellectually Curious

Three of this week's Good Reads are oriented to personal development, while one gives us background on Janet Yellen, the most powerful woman in the world today. The last article, calling your attention to the 100 year anniversary of World War I, points to some recent odd fungal findings from old military hospitals (the fungus lives on!).

The Atlantic's Ann Hulbert on How to Escape the Community College Trap. What will it take to get a student through the two year process in just three years? This is a very important question for a lot of businesses. According to one successful program the answer is a lot of pushiness. In fact, as hulbert writes, for a student to graduate in two-and-one-half years, like Daquan McGee, is shockingly rare. But the Borough of Manhattan Community College has found a way to achieve the graduation objective. And this may be one way to narrow the gap between the haves and the have-nots.

Adam Grant on Why Men Need Women. I've been saving this opinion piece, but now that you're thinking about taxes is good time to pass it on. Grant is one of the best HR and personal development gurus in the country. And a lot of fun, as well. He answers his question ...

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. . .

The Strange Rejection of Career Competencies

Rejection may be too strong, perhaps rebuff. But it is weird how little, with the exception of the Harvard Business Review and Wharton folk, is blogged about the fundamental competencies of career success. Could it be ignorance? Or just needed insight on how to succeed in business? Or even that business people have got their basic competencies down pat?

To read most human resource blogs, you’d think that the key to personal success is somehow found inside the billion dollar works of the Mark Zuckerbergs, Sheryl Sandbergs, Sergey Brins and Steve Jobs of the world. Although those folk and their ilk represent great media successes, they are, in fact, highly unrepresentative of more than 98% of the successful business population.

. . . . Where is US economic dynamism?

Five Best Career Development Postings for February

In recent years, career development has become a fairly narrow niche as a major reading target. Thus, there are endless books on leadership, collaboration, power and influence, thinking and selling. Half of them are rather ho-hum. But once in a while I read a blog posting that comes up with a unique, highly relevant idea.  An obvious need, I’ve decided to remedy this problem by occasionally pointing to a few. Here are five intriguing posts.

Louise Altman in the Intentional Workplace, on Curiosity.  As Altman writes, curiosity has become a highly valued core strength. Science is discovering that curiosity turns on the brain and leads to creativity and innovation. The brain likes curiosity. It likes stimulation, variety and the new. What the elders of my childhood didn’t know was just how much brains love to learn.

Tom Fox in the Washington Post on Why Presidents need to be exploiters.  An unusual approach to leadership, there are plenty of business situations in which the model works. It reminds me of Rahm Emanuel's comment to never let a good crisis go to waste.

Andreas Dudàs in TalentZoo on How to become a successful leader. Although the recommendations are fairly generic, there's a useful statistical reminder of where the current workforce finds itself. Dudas argues for authenticity, but I wish he'd spell out the negatives to that competency. The naivete on the subject needs some work. Authenticity is very useful, but it's also a way to wreack havoc on your career. 

Charalambos Vlachoutsicos in Harvard Business Review Blogs on The high cost of suspicion. A thoughtful comment on working outside the comfort zone, the blogger illustrates his point by sharing an experience that reflects a common dynamic among managers operating outside their comfort zone. In an effort to reduce their perceived risk they make decisions that they are not really competent to make. . . . 

Dan Erwin in my own site on a Not-so-obvious-listening skill: the minimal encourager. I remain in a state of shock on the power of this blog post, still running with more than 25,000 hits. It's one way of dissecting listening, but it focuses on the use of active nonverbals. If you can explain why this is so popular, I'd love to hear your response. 

Flickr photo: Presidio grad school