Dan Erwin

The Secrets to Success Are Typically Ethnic

You read that title correctly. Success is often ethnic. You know the term. "Ethnic"--of or belonging to a population group made up of people who share a common cultural background or descent. And their strategy for success is very clear. It's all tied up with their model of questioning.

Now, I’ve always been fascinated by how words work--and what they can do to us. I’ve been especially intrigued over the past thirty years by questions—yeah, I’m a question nut! I actually have an entire shelf in my library on the discipline of questioning. My hobby is easily explained. Effective questions are a key to learning and growing. Which means that questions are how we make change. And inevitably, clients hire to me to help them make change.

So, I was glued to a column by the NYT’s Bret Stephens on a new book, The Secrets of Jewish Genius, which I took to be about creativity and problem solving. (FYI: I’m English and Scot--not Jewish.) I’ve long since learned that as soon as I begin to get into disciplines like economics, science, politics, psychology, psychiatry, human resources, fiction, music, etc. and etc., I start running into Jewish writers. Here’s just a brief list: Sigmund Freud, Benjamin Disraeli, Albert Einstein, Franz Kafka, Irving Kristol, Rudolf Serkin, Daniel Kahneman, Jeff Pfeffer, Abraham Maslow, Karl Marx, and Milton Friedman.

So, I was very curious about the answer to Stephens’ thesis question: “How is it that a people who never amounted even to one-third of 1 percent of the world’s population contributed so seminally to so many of its most pathbreaking ideas and innovations?”

Stephens deals with the “Jews are Smart” explanation, commenting that it obscures more than it illuminates. Instead, he chooses to deal with the question of why intelligence is matched by “bracing originality and high-minded purpose.”

The answer to his question is surprising: “Jewish genius operates differently (from other thinkers). It is prone to question the premise and rethink the concept: to ask why (or why not?) as often as how. . . Where Jews’ advantage more often lies is in thinking different.”

There are the two very, shockingly simple, important words that can add significantly to your creativity: why not?

In previous vocations, I made a fetish out of “what” and “how.” What do you need to do and how do you do it? What do I need to do for my clients (my congregation) and how do I pull it off with them (my congregation, students or clients)? It took me quite a few years to recognize that “why” also needs to be part of my problem solving. Why do I think this is important? Why is this necessary? Although I was very familiar with various questioning processes, including Bloom’s extensive Taxonomy, I intended to build my own taxonomy of questions that could be learned quickly by clients. Indeed, my agenda was the need for a simple taxonomy that could be easily taught and used when focused on behaviors. I learned that even smart MBAs from top schools, with background in decision science, had no obvious taxonomy for dealing with human behaviors. My simple taxonomy was a starting place that could be added to as experience required.

A Memoir: Unconscious Humanist

For the last fifteen or so years, many of my blog postings have been circling around the issues and tools of personal and career development. So, I’ve written about observable competencies, the specific abilities like managing your boss, dealing with difficult people, building coalitions, and even doing small talk. But in all my blogging I’ve never revealed my proprietary process, the specific actions I take to develop the observable competencies. Initially, because it was a clear competitive advantage distinguishing my service from the hundreds of psychologists digging around in the business sandbox. But secondarily because execs aren’t really interested in understanding the development processes. They were plenty interested in manufacturing processes, but not in the largely interpersonal or cognitive development processes. They just wanted to me bring these tools, the competencies unique to their needs and coach them.

The third reason, candidly, is that I’d been playing with my model for so many years that my process system was largely unconscious. Indeed, there’s a strong sense that I didn’t prepare for business, but my life prepared me for it. So, I didn’t choose my business: it chose me. Furthermore, I didn’t recognize until the summer of 2024 that all the sources for these processes, competencies and even my coaching lie within the humanities--until my close friend, Bill Bellinger, Distinguished Professor of Biblical Studies at Baylor University, asked me to write a paper on the usefulness of the humanities in life and career.

History
So begin with the fact that the process tools of personal development and ultimate career success are not only built bit-by-bit, but they continually expand through our use and experience with them. Much like learning to play the piano or any other instrument. The more you work with them, the more difficult compositions you can play. 

It’s pretty clear from years of experience and observation that the simple, most foundational process competency is analysis. The first of five: analysis, questioning, reflection, narration and creativity. And the five are clearly interrelated. Notice also, given the context, these process competencies can become observable business competencies. Narrative, for example, is often also used for selling services or products to customers. 

This bit-by-bit orientation to process competency has a personal history that goes back at least to my 4th grade fascination with kid-fiction--specifically detective stories. But about the same time, the orientation quickly lapped over into my piano studies, culminating between 1950 and ‘52, with a superb artist and teacher who completed her studies under the great Beethoven exponent, Artur Schnabel. She would demonstrate how to break out more difficult passages into small bits for analysis, sometimes just the notes of a single bar: one hand, then two hands. All this, making the compositions more obvious and thus, usually more playable. I used that model to explain how to listen to what’s being said while paying attention to the important subtexts that are not being said. An interesting form of simultaneous cognitive multi-tasking.

Years later, the organizational specialist, Karl Weick, while at Cornell, drew the same conclusion in a 1984 study called “Small Wins.”

Empathy: Supportive and Manipulative

The scientists of behavior have a lot to say about empathy and emotional intelligence. But review all that’s written by them about the subjects, they never get to the most fundamental how-to, the basic development processes of empathy and emotional intelligence. I couldn’t take what has surfaced over the years and actually lay out the developmental pragmatics. Until, that is, just the last month.

I’m not beating up on myself. Still, it’s personally frustrating that with all my critical work in the field, and my own expertise with emotional intelligence and the sub-category of empathy, I was completely blind to my own processes. The pragmatics were so habituated and so deeply buried in my past, that someone else had to tell me what the hell I was doing. My experience is a classic case of what’s known in chaos theory as the “butterfly effect,” sensitive dependence on initial conditions. Scientists have discovered that very small differences at the start of a complex process with numerous iterations create significant and unpredictable results. That’s how as a teenager I found the beginnings of empathy uniquely—and unconsciously--as a manipulative tool of self-protection. Affirming my mother, after her seemingly senseless weekly bouts of tears and anger with my father, with her version of the relationship twisting and turning over the years. My unconscious empathic learnings partially protected me so that she wouldn’t turn her uncontrollable rage at me. I decided years later, after her death and long-since distancing myself from her, that she was all about profound narcissistic insecurity, compounded by abandoned child syndrome.

My initial conscious understandings of empathy began early in grad school with work in persuasion and influence, a discipline overlapping empathy to a high degree. There, I learned to define what would become empathy in straight forward fashion: the ability to become aware of, sensitive to the feelings, thoughts, and experiences of another. It’s often broken out into three segments: understanding the situation of the other, feeling the same emotion of the other person, and then taking action in support—or to the disadvantage--of the other person. Compassion is a highly useful aspect of empathy, but not the only aspect. Empathy can also be used for self-protection and plenty of other objectives. There is a dark side to empathy, too. I’m quite certain that if you were to add up all my uses of empathy, the good far outweighs the bad. But on numerous occasions in business, I’ve used empathy as both a sales tool as well as for competitive advantage. No client has ever accused me of naivete.

My grad work during the late ‘seventies led me to understand what eventually became empathy as the ability to co-create a state of identification or alignment with another. In those studies, the focus is not just on the other person or just the message or just the sender. The definition implies that what’s inside the receiver is just as important as the source’s intent or the content of the message. So, in one sense all persuasion is self-persuasion. We are not persuaded unless we participate in the process of identification with the other. Empathy works exactly the same way. It just usually focuses on compassion.

But, identification with the other can be used for their good or solely for the empathic persuader’s good. Hannah Arendt, the famous (or infamous) U Chicago philosopher who wrote about the Nazi Eichmann and the Jews, argues cogently that compassion should not be brought into politics. My own business behaviors have been reflective of Arendt’s conclusion on numerous occasions. I needed her conclusion to manage my internal conflicts around manipulation. But that’s a subject for another blog.

Using empathy in business

I’ve used emotional intelligence and empathy for decades, but never really understood why the model sometimes worked so well for me. Of course, I was aware that some of us were rather successful in persuasion, while many others stumbled around. And if they couldn’t manage the process successfully, they usually left a business requiring persuasion. But I never thought to do a complete compare and contrast analysis between successful and unsuccessful empathy/persuaders.

Why Strategic Competency Is Especially Difficult to Build

Thirty years ago, I had one of those seminal experiences that are even more important and relevant today. I had been coaching a director-level research manager at a world renown company that has since been integrated into an even larger, international firm. I was essentially supporting the development of highly complex thinking skills.

My focus, at the request of the EVP of Research, was to assist his subordinate in development of strategic organizational thinking skills. These were not merely planning skills, but complex strategic thinking that might result in drastic changes for research, manufacturing and marketing.

Nine months later, when the coaching was nearly finished, the EVP called me into his office, expressing his deep satisfaction with my work. Then he made an unusual statement: “If you can develop these cognitive skills in others, I can keep you busy the rest of your life.”

I laughed and said no, that wasn’t possible. He was very surprised and wanted an explanation why not. I commented that a huge majority of business people were linear thinkers and couldn’t get out of that box to develop strategy, a non-linear competency.

The widespread lack of strategic organizational competency is still present today. For example, major research at Northwestern University finds that most business people are very poor at analogical thinking, an absolute necessity for macro strategy work. They simply lack the kind of educational background to make that possible. Though a lot of technology managers say they can do strategy, their expertise rarely stands up to serious scrutiny.

My First Experience with ChatGPT

. . . was enlightening. It confirmed my knowledge of artificial intelligence and reinforced the need for assessing trustworthiness of Chat content.

So that I’d be able to evaluate the tool, I asked a question in the center of my religious and theological scholarly expertise. I asked “what’s the Biblical book of Jeremiah all about.” The errors were immediately obvious to my scholarly eye—and there were plenty of errors. So, I want to talk about how to assess just a few of the elements of a product or service.

To assess the value of any product or service, you always begin with the fundamental proposal—which usually appears in its advertising or in the sales pitch. In argumentation, the proposal is typically called the “claim,” which is built on specific data and oriented to an objective.

AI development folk have already created development guidelines for human system interaction. Although the guidelines are exceptionally specific for AI development, I’m going to work from the more standard argument process which works across all contexts and can be applied fairly simply—and then added to for specific contexts like digital chat. My basic approach—the Toulmin argument model--applies to absolutely every context imaginable and makes it easy to understand the issues. Then, if you so desire, you can apply the context specific translation of guidelines.

The underlying approach for assessing an AI app is like any other product or service--whether for an auto, a new house, a frozen vegetable or even a condom. I happen to drive a Mercedes C300. The Mercedes proposal is very clear-cut: “we are the defining class since 1886.” The Trojan condom, in contrast, proposes that they are the defining “instrument of closeness.”

The Chat GPT, too, makes a very clear proposal: “we communicate with enterprise data across industries, languages, and specialties. . . driving a new era of convenience, productivity, and connectivity.” Although generative AI is a unique species, it’s spread is moving across industry, healthcare, natural language processing, space exploration and science.

The fundamental issue in all these AI products is trustworthiness.

The Unique Gifts of Reading

Back in 2020 I wrote that 'I've always wanted to say something very direct when an acquaintance or a client asked why I read so much, but I was always a bit too cautious to verbalize my real beliefs out loud.

But if a prominent, knowledgeable person  supports my beliefs publicly, I'll happily repeat them. I followed up then with a quote from General Mattis verbalizing my actual beliefs in the context of the military: If you haven't read hundreds of books, you are functionally illiterate and you will be incompetent because your personal experiences alone aren't broad enough to sustain sustain you. Any commander who claims he is "too busy to read" is going to fill body bags with his troops as he learns the hard way.  
Boy, have I changed my mind since then.

In a recent study, I retrieved tons of personal stories, revealing my profoundly unconscious growth as a result of my reading from as early as the fifth grade, I began learning basic "noticing" and "analytical" skills in the fifth grade by reading kid detective stories like Nancy Drew, the Hardy Boys and Sherlock Holmes. Some of these stories are really just "kid stuff," but phenomenally useful to this fifth-grade kid. 

I learned to question the elementary ethics that had been pounded into my head by my mother and in Sunday School by reading the works of Mark Twain. His Huck Finn was a show-stopper in my life, causing me to rethink, helping to decide what to hold on to and what to discard. Robinson Crusoe taught me that I could sometimes learn without help from others. And the Hardy Boys and Sherlock Holmes taught me the opposite--the value of associates in learning. And some of those books were not even "great literature."

The Secret to Great Reading

I would never have thought about the secret to literature as well as history and the arts except that recently I finished Mark Edmundson’s fabulous little book, “Why Read,” for at least the third time. The book has been so enlightening for me that this was my third actual copy of the book. I read my first copy, shortly after it came out in 2004, and marked it up, along with about two pages of notes in the front. Then six or seven years ago, I picked up Edmundson’s book on the humanities which included three books, “Why Teach? Why Write? And a second copy for me of “Why Read?” All three copies of “Why Read?” have sets of my notes that are reflective of the different perspectives that were shaping my life during just these last twenty years.

Surprisingly, this third copy has the most notes throughout the book and in the front pages. There are four full pages of notes in that copy and different responses throughout most of the pages. Clearly, this last read surfaced issues out of my past that were not yet clear in the earlier reads. I’ve had a very busy brain for the last twenty years. It’s had no off-switch.

Informative versus illuminating
What Edmundson explains so well is the distinction between writing that merely informs and literature which illuminates. The distinction is important. Writing that is informative focuses on data, facts, statistics, things known that provide the basis for reasoning or calculation. Illumination, in contrast, focuses upon change which can impact the individual, enhancing not merely their understanding, but their life.

Milestones of Growth Fostering Relationships

Every person who intends to exert leadership in his personal life, in business or any other vocation—even in the family--will intentionally focus on personal growth. In my field, research has shown us that effective business leadership growth inevitably requires mentors. Though true, that notion is plainly an understatement. The fact is that all living and all development takes place only with relationships. To put it still more directly, we experience growth because of our connections to other people. I can go through my years since grade school and well into my sixties, and still point to people that changed my life, impacts that would have to be considered as turning points, even milestones—a significant change in my life. Change that would never have happened without those connections.

The underpinnings of growth are inevitably acts of creativity built on relationships. Virginia Woolf puts it this way: Masterpieces (turning points and milestones) are not single and solitary births; they are the outcome of thinking in common, of thinking by a body of the people, so that the experience of the mass is behind the single voice. In his extensive and enlightening work, Ronald Burt points out accountability "flows through the formal organization of authority relations. Everything else flows through the informal--advice, coordination, cooperation, friendship, gossip, knowledge, trust." And that "people who have relations that span the . . . holes between people have a vision advantage in detecting and developing good ideas." 

I still have a lot of memory about my first real growth experience, a phenomenally unique milestone of detecting and developing new ideas while only in the 7th grade. The experience was actually initiated by a civics teacher, Mr. Fickes, a teacher whom I thought was pretty dumb.

Propositional versus Non-Propositional Swearing

Back on June 11, I posted a blog affirming that swearing is good for you, information that was drawn from Emma Byrne's book ("Swearing Is Good For You")--and personal experience. In that post I narrated my occasional strategic swearing and commented on its extreme usefulness. Part of the reason I'm so fascinated by the subject is that my rare experience of swearing around Pietists drove them nuts and they just didn't know how to deal with me as a result. So I suspect there are a lot more than religious pietists who also misunderstand swearing--even though it's a regular occurrence in many forms throughout the American culture and workplace.

To gain a better understanding of swearing, here's a bit more information. The beginning place is to understand that scientists and linguists make a distinction between propositional and non-propositional swearing. The distinction is useful.

Why Read?

I've always wanted to say something very direct when an acquaintance or a client asked why I read so much, but I used to be a bit too cautious to verbalize my real beliefs out loud. But if a prominent, knowledgeable person  supports my beliefs publicly, I'll happily repeat them. I have, however, gotten to the place over the past ten years when someone asks why I read the NYTimes, The Economist, a cutting-edge book like the brilliant work of retired Supreme Court Justice Stephen Breyer(subtitled "Why I Chose Pragmatism Not Textualism" [originalism])  or any top magazine or journal, I can be fairly direct. It usually comes out like, "look, there's no way you can become intelligently aware of what's going on in this world unless you read the Times or the New Yorker and The Economist." That's true whether or not you agree with the writer.

But here's General Mattis verbalizing my actual beliefs in the context of the military: If you haven't read hundreds of books, you are functionally illiterate and you will be incompetent because your personal experiences alone aren't broad enough to sustain sustain you. Any commander who claims he is "too busy to read" is going to fill body bags with his troops as he learns the hard way.

But here's General Mattis verbalizing my actual beliefs in the context of the military: If you haven't read hundreds of books, you are functionally illiterate and you will be incompetent because your personal experiences alone aren't broad enough to sustain sustain you. Any commander who claims he is "too busy to read" is going to fill body bags with his troops as he learns the hard way.

What Words Can Do To Us

A key to creativity. How 1/3rd of 1 percent of the world's population contributed so much.

I’ve always been fascinated by how words work--and what they can do to us. I’ve been especially intrigued over the past thirty years by questions—yeah, I’m a question nut! I actually have an entire shelf in my library on the discipline of questioning. My hobby is easily explained. Effective questions are a key to learning and growing. Which means that questions are how we make change. And inevitably, clients hire to me to help them make change. 

So, I was glued to a column by the NYT’s Bret Stephens on a unique book, The Secrets of Jewish Genius, which I took to be about creativity and problem solving. (FYI: I’m English and Scot--not Jewish.) I’ve long since learned that as soon as I begin to get into disciplines like economics, science, politics, psychology, psychiatry, human resources, fiction, music, etc. and etc., I start running into Jewish writers. Here’s just a brief list: Sigmund Freud, Benjamin Disraeli, Albert Einstein, Franz Kafka, Irving Kristol, Rudolf Serkin, Daniel Kahneman, Jeff Pfeffer, Abraham Maslow, Karl Marx, and Milton Friedman.

I’ve always been fascinated by how words work--and what they can do to us. I’ve been especially intrigued over the past thirty years by questions—yeah, I’m a question nut! I actually have an entire shelf in my library on the discipline of questioning. My hobby is easily explained. Effective questions are a key to learning and growing. Which means that questions are how we make change. And inevitably, clients hire to me to help them make change. 

So, I was glued to a column by the NYT’s Bret Stephens on a unique book, The Secrets of Jewish Genius, which I took to be about creativity and problem solving. (FYI: I’m English and Scot--not Jewish.) I’ve long since learned that as soon as I begin to get into disciplines like economics, science, politics, psychology, psychiatry, human resources, fiction, music, etc. and etc., I start running into Jewish writers. Here’s just a brief list: Sigmund Freud, Benjamin Disraeli, Albert Einstein, Franz Kafka, Irving Kristol, Rudolf Serkin, Daniel Kahneman, Jeff Pfeffer, Abraham Maslow, Karl Marx, and Milton Friedman.