Dan Erwin

Why Does “Weird” Work So Well?

When Tim Walz called Donald Trump and his worldview “weird,” it got terrific, immediate attention. It also launched a thousand memes. I suspect it may have also got him the job of Kamala Harris’ running mate. As a rhetorical specialist, a guy who’s always asking why some words and ideas work and other’s don’t, I was extremely curious about why “weird” worked so very well.

To no surprise, that brilliant Columbia linguist, John McWhorter, weighed in on the answer in a NYTimes article. He pointed out that, historically, the term has been around for several centuries and over time it has changed its meaning. In Shakespeare’s use of the term it meant “ghoulish” and “frighteningly odd.” Today it just means “peculiar.”

“Weird” is a part of the language that isn’t taught in our schools, but should be. The novel is usually omitted in grade school. That’s one of the reasons it stands out. It wasn’t in your grade school vocabulary lists. It’s like one of my favorite terms that new Americans don’t understand—“duh.” A word that’s used when something is said or written that’s disgustingly obvious—and often a take-down. Any fourth-grader would know that, but a new immigrant wouldn’t get it.

McWhorter points out what I suspect is the real power of the term “weird.” There’s no workable comeback, other than “no, I’m not weird.” And as you peobably know, some denials just don’t work.

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.

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.

How to Recognize Someone Is Using You

It was a seemingly innocent question. But actually, he was just using me.

On Easter Sunday, after spending a rare day alone at home, I decided to grab a small bite and a glass of wine at a local pub. Since I would be alone, I took along a book that I intended to finish. A terrific little volume by Mark Edmundson: “The Age of Guilt.”

I sat at the bar, slowly drinking my cab and enjoying a crabcake, all the while reading and marking up this fascinating book. One of the most intriguing and enlightening works I’d read in years.

My reading habits began in elementary school, developed while I was in seminary, blossomed while I was in the pastorate and a seminary faculty member—and exploded in my consulting business. Although I am a lot more than this, I am my books.

I take a lot of time marking my books and papers, and putting notes in the front of the books and also outlining my research papers notes on an added single page, all making important substance available immediately. I’d be much less a person without my books and my studies. No question but that my effectiveness in church ministry, seminary—and especially in business—was tied to a substantially developing knowledge base and—I don’t want to ignore this—an extensive experience in the performing arts that continually shaped and reshaped my decision making.             

“NAPOLEON:” More Ridley Scott

Over the holiday I saw Scott’s Napoleon. When I walked out of the movie, my daughter asked what I thought of the movie. I paused, and then said, “I don’t know.”

“That’s an unusual comment, “she responded, remembering that I have a PhD in critical tools.

I usually like Scott’s stuff, but when I thought about this movie, I finally decided that he missed his opportunity. The movie just didn’t make much sense to me. It had scenes of big wars and bonking attractive females. But there was actually no

The Zig-Zags of Creativity and Innovation

Given the choice between the myth of the natural genius and the sobering reality of hard work, popular culture usually opts for the myth.  ---BD Burrell

When you’re getting advice about creativity or reading one of the many books about the subject, you need to be careful—very careful—because many, if not most, perpetuate our highly Western, misleading and individualist cultural ways. That typically means that we’re going to have to go digging into our own mindset and belief system to deconstruct and reframe these wrongheaded beliefs if we want to really understand creativity and innovation.

In his marvelous book, Explaining Creativity, Keith Sawyer psychologist and jazz pianist, describes four key errors and summarizes their problems—all very useful for today’s organizational emphasis on innovation. His insights will liberate you from demanding, painful, unrealistic expectations. Admittedly, however, the truth will give you heartburn as well as a lot of often painful, hard work.

**Creativity is fun.  When you get into the state of flow (Mihaly Csikszentmihalyi) and peak experience, creativity is extremely positive and self-actualizing. But it takes a lot of years and training to achieve flow.

So as Sawyer indicates, the “fun” is extremely, uncomfortable hard work. What a few would consider the “flow” of creativity is more deathly boring or extremely stressful. Once more: creativity and innovation are just plain hard work.

As a preaching pastor and seminary faculty member (22 years) and also as an evergreen blog writer (10+ years), the demands of creativity have always been part of my professional life. Creative writing is a mix of stress and self-actualizing. For the last three months, I’ve been working on a major writing project—a single chapter on the creative use of the humanities. It requires a lot of research, reading, writing and rewriting. And a lotta smarts on positioning and rhetoric. Sometimes it moves very fast, and other times it’s very difficult to get the writing moving.  It’s a strange mix of personal delight and satisfaction along with a lot of stop/start, stop/start pain.

The Actual Truth About Creativity and Innovation May Not Be What You Think

Given the choice between the myth of the natural genius and the sobering reality of hard work, popular culture usually opts for the myth.  ---BD Burrell

When you’re getting advice about creativity or reading one of the many books about the subject, you need to be careful—very careful—because many, if not most, perpetuate our highly Western, misleading and individualist cultural ways. That typically means that we’re going to have to go digging into our own mindset and belief system to deconstruct and reframe these wrongheaded beliefs if we want to really understand creativity and innovation.

To be blunt, having been in a professional position that required creativity on a regular basis, by that I mean weekly, I’ve always thought that creativity is one of those terms and experiences that is often quite different than what many think about the subject. So, I was delighted to read the work of a well-respected writer on creativity, collaboration and learning, who not only agreed with me fully—but took my ideas even further, explaining the myths of creativity.

In his marvelous book, Explaining Creativity, Keith Sawyer describes four key errors and summarizes their problems—all very useful for today’s organizational emphasis on innovation. His insights will liberate you from demanding, painful, unrealistic expectations. Admittedly, however, the truth will give you heartburn as well as a lot of often painful, hard work changing a deeply held mindset..

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.

Six Resources on Creativity

Innovation and creativity, everyone says, are key to our nation’s success in the marketplace. While working through some new stuff on creativity and innovation, I stumbled, once more, across Robert Sternberg and Todd Lubart’s analysis of the resources for creativity. It has the intriguing title, "Buy Low and Sell High: An Investment Approach to Creativity."

The resources are a reminder of what it takes to get a leg up on creativity. More significantly and perhaps more usefully, the resources are especially programmed for succeeding as a worker in today’s business world.

1. Intelligence. This is not a reference to your IQ or to your capacities, but to your processes for planning, monitoring and evaluating your thinking. It’s more than a matter of gut feel, it’s reflecting on your decision process itself. The technical term is metacognition...

Words Are Magic

"Words were originally magic and to this day words have retained much of their ancient magical power." --Sigmund Freud

We all talk: sometimes to particular persons; sometimes to anyone who will listen; and sometimes to ourselves when we can’t find anyone to listen. In this blog, however, we’re only interested in one piece, one element of talk--and research: words--and how they work in any context. Word choice, perhaps more today than any other time in business, is a unique expertise, a technology made necessary by the knowledge economy. Writers understand the importance of word choice, but the notion that word choice is very important in business doesn't seem to get much play. There's little carryover from literature or, say...medicine. Of course, most people understand the necessary accuracy of words chosen by physicians, especially when making a diagnosis. Today, the smart, up-and-comer in business can facilitate his career with expertise in words. Words, you see, are still magic.

This is not solely because of the technology economy, but also because of newly described understandings of communication and modern rhetoric and how words work. The starting point of conversation is words. They are the symbols of talk, research and artificial intelligence, symbols that we attach, by consensus and tradition, to objects, experiences, ideas and relations that create responses in us and others. It’s very important, therefore, to recognize a number of inherent characteristics about words—and how they impact messages in conversation--and how they make a familiar experience or problem unique...sometimes for the good. But other times for the bad.

Five characteristics of words define both their potential and their complexity:  

Words are dynamic
Words do a lot more than merely convey information. Although the meaning of a word can change drastically over long periods of time, words are also tweaked in most conversations. Their meaning is associated with what one person is trying to get across and how the other is responding. So tweaking may emphasize values, emotions, defensiveness or empathy and clarify priorities, goals, strategies, commitments or success. That’s true for both sides of an interaction: initiator and responder.

A caveat: Although some believe that the dynamic nature of words means that talkers are free to use words any way they like and break the rules of proper English, that’s an absurd parody of “dynamic.”

"Words were originally magic and to this day words have retained much of their ancient magical power." --Sigmund Freud

We all talk: sometimes to particular persons; sometimes to anyone who will listen; and sometimes to ourselves when we can’t find anyone to listen. In this blog, however, we’re only interested in one piece, one element of talk--and research: words--and how they work in any context. Word choice, perhaps more today than any other time in business, is a unique expertise, a technology made necessary by the knowledge economy. Writers understand the importance of word choice, but the notion that word choice is very important in business doesn't seem to get much play. There's little carryover from literature or, say...medicine. Of course, most people understand the necessary accuracy of words chosen by physicians, especially when making a diagnosis. Today, the smart, up-and-comer in business can facilitate his career with expertise in words. Words, you see, are still magic.

This is not solely because of the technology economy, but also because of newly described understandings of communication and modern rhetoric and how words work. The starting point of conversation is words. They are the symbols of talk, research and artificial intelligence, symbols that we attach, by consensus and tradition, to objects, experiences, ideas and relations that create responses in us and others. It’s very important, therefore, to recognize a number of inherent characteristics about words—and how they impact messages in conversation--and how they make a familiar experience or problem unique...sometimes for the good. But other times for the bad.

Five characteristics of words define both their potential and their complexity:  

Words are dynamic
Words do a lot more than merely convey information. Although the meaning of a word can change drastically over long periods of time, words are also tweaked in most conversations. Their meaning is associated with what one person is trying to get across and how the other is responding. So tweaking may emphasize values, emotions, defensiveness or empathy and clarify priorities, goals, strategies, commitments or success. That’s true for both sides of an interaction: initiator and responder.

A caveat: Although some believe that the dynamic nature of words means that talkers are free to use words any way they like and break the rules of proper English, that’s an absurd parody of “dynamic.”

5 Top Blogs in the Year 2021

My top blog for 2021 is not a surprise. The numbers are way beyond any other blog--and just continue to boom. I have no trusted way of understanding why thousands continue to read this post, but I have a suspicion: 65% of my readers are in the 18 to 34 age group. This blog clarifies issues that have shown themselves to be important for this targeted group. Here are the five most-viewed blogs from last year:

    14 Intelligent behaviors: May 14, 2010. There's nothing new about companies wanting to find and keep the best talent. These are the behaviors they're always looking for.

    A not so obvious skill: the minimal encourager: March 3, 2010, Minimal encouragers are the subtle, nonverbal, and short verbal actions which encourage the speaker to express him/herself more fully.

    Why should keep your friends close, and your enemies closer, November 29,2012: One of the persons most relevant to to your success just might be your enemy. 

    Influence management: three big issues: May 14, 2009: Whether you are a manager or not, personal influence is always front and center.

    Carol Dweck on learning to fulfill your potential: April 16,2014. With her mindset theory, the Stanford psychologist, Carol Dweck, can help you confront your demons.

Here are three more blogs for the youngest work generation: