Dan Erwin

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

The Unusual Power of Fessing Up

As a freelance consultant, working with senior managers and corporate executives from California to New York and Latin America to Western Europe, both my personal and professional reputation were always very important to me. A consultant with even a questionable reputation always has a difficult time getting a job. As most of you know, there is no such thing as a secret in business. Information always surfaces over time, especially reputational information. Though that may not be quite as true for employees, the professional with integrity and an unquestionable reputation always gets better opportunities.

So one of the most useful identity characteristics I began developing in my early vocations and continued strongly in my later vocations was the ability to fess up when I screwed up. Even for the smallest failure or problem. Candidly, I looked for the opportunity to fess up. Because the act is unique and few have the guts to fess up, it is often a positive way of identity positioning. So, my language was always clear and direct. “ I screwed up . . . .” Or, “I was wrong in that conclusion. . . because. . . .” I need to say that far more often I was intuitively or logically correct in my decision making, so fessing up was a very small piece of my work pie—probably no more than approximately once a month over the years. But I was quite capable of making a lot out of the experience.

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.

So You're Actually a Research Expert. . . Who Gives a Damn?

Back in 2017, I wrote a blog on the loss of expertise, picking up on the expertise of Dunning-Kruger and the more recent response of Tom Nichols. Nichols warned that we are moving toward the collapse of any division between professionals and laypeople. Given my recent experience, we’re no longer “moving toward,” but we’ve arrived at that collapse.

A few weeks ago I was asked by a coffee crony, a professional in planning (not a classical research specialist) to look over a psychiatric study dating from 1970 on “Characterological Deterrents to Economic Progress in People of Appalachia.” Before I opened a page, I remembered my bias against much “psychiatric research," built on the fact that most of them are technically, merely medical professionals who work off models in their field. Diagnostic specialists, not research specialists. It was obvious from the get-go that the writer had no understanding of theory construction, had no competency in critical thinking, was unaware that by the time of his study the model had been discredited, was unaware that he was drawing suspect conclusions, had no understanding of his implicit assumption, an assumption that was identical to Adolf Hitler’s orientation to the Jews--the notion that certain people and races are inherently sub-human. BTW, the majority of PhD’s also lack significant background in theory construction. They just use the typical theory from their discipline for their own research.

Here’s where I got an ear-full. ..

To the Givers Go the Riches: The Hidden Dimension of Work—and Life Relationships

Today’s political world would often have you believe that it’s the “getters” who have success—not the “getters.” But that’s a short term bias. And admittedly a few politicos seem to have success on that basis. But what you’re seeing is the gross exception not the everyday reality. The percentage of successful “getters” is very small, even though that few get a lot of attention. American writers love to call attention to the exceptions: it makes for great reading and sells a lot of copy. 

Just common sense
The people who look at the big picture recognize that a few of the getters succeed, but they know it’s a damned few. And that a terrific percentage of “getters” are very unhappy, frustrated people down deep. It’s just common sense that the givers make the great contributions to our communities—not the getters. The problem with that statement, however, is that common sense has become a rare ingredient in most cultures. And for a number of documentable reasons common sense has become a rare commodity in today’s world. It’s that loss, too, that drives all the craziness, fake facts and conspiracy thinking we stare at or listen to nearly every day.

The major reason common sense has gone the way of the dodo bird is the unique siloing of the universe since WWII. We’ve got academic silos, business silos, industry silos, religious silos, political silos, class silos, economic silos, race silos--and most people talking to themselves. No wonder the crazies are able to stir up manure by the ton load. If you know your history and literature, you know that silos have always been around, limiting and rejecting a common worldly sense.

The example that often comes to mind is

The Big Issue Is Not Guns or Gun Control

I grew up with guns. My father had a locked cabinet full of guns: shotguns and a couple pistols. Since he went hunting much of the year during the last years of his employment and well into retirement, he was very familiar with their use. He was a farm boy from the Western Kentucky tobacco country and well-versed in their safe use. They were always locked up in a cabinet—and the locks were very sturdy. Not to protect his family, but to make theft very difficult for burglars. I used my grandmother’s 22 rifle on several occasions while I was in college at Murray State. I went hunting with my dad a few occasions but never carried or used a gun on those trips. My trip was solely for the purpose of spending time with my dad and listening to the howling of his “black and tans” chasing racoons or his beagles chasing rabbits.

Here are some key  findings about Americans’ attitudes about gun policy, drawn from recent surveys by Pew Research Center and Gallup (2021).

*Four-in-ten U.S. adults say they live in a household with a gun, including 30% who say they personally own one.

*Personal protection tops the list of reasons why gun owners say they own a firearm.

*Attitudes about gun violence differ widely by race, ethnicity, party and community type.

*Roughly half of Americans (53%) favor stricter gun laws, a decline since 2019.
*Americans are divided over whether restricting legal gun ownership would lead to fewer mass shootings.

Candidly, the basic issue is not primarily gun control, but governance. Dealing with policy has been shown to be a losing issue. Here, finally, is the research on who actually controls policy—or to restate the issue: who actually governs. We aren’t much of a democracy.

Although there are hundreds of studies on the subject of governance, the latest and best work is by Princeton and Northwestern scholars, political scientists and long-term experts on the issues. They work from a huge body of evidence—some quantitative (the statistics), some historical (to make sense out of the statistics), and some actually observational.

The authors of the study reveal that there are “four families” of research: elected politicians, the economic elites (Wall Street and major Hedge Fund directors), interest groups (tending to be millions of ordinary people with differing interests and personal drivers), and biased interest groups with differing targets.

What makes this study highly useful is the existence of a unique data set, compiled over many years, by one of the authors: Martin Gilens. The study is especially interesting to me because it is not focused on gun research, but on a related issue: who controls public policy?

Well, take a guess.

Political Intelligence Is a Lot More Important Than Emotional Intelligence

There’s no question but that the psychologist, Daniel Goleman, has had a great run with his emotional intelligence. The fad struck a chord among business people and has shown itself to be fairly useful. Furthermore, the constant emphasis on the emotional response of empathy has sometimes resulted in better business relationships, all of which makes for better team and cross-disciplinary relationships. When, that is, people have the soft skills to use the emotional insights surfacing. But that, of course is a more complicated, but very learnable and coachable set of issues.

However, it should be very clear that political intelligence is a lot more important for personal and organizational success than emotional intelligence.  By political intelligence in business, I refer to the ability to gain buy-in and/or support from people with differing or potentially differing agendas to achieve one’s own personal objectives and enable others to achieve theirs. The unstated fact about teams is firstly, that they hold together because they have a common interest in survival and success, and secondly, because they practice politics—not because they agree about “fundamentals” or “principles” or some such vague notion. That bottom line can, admittedly, be pretty dark. But bear with me. This is the kind of expertise that is often talked about in derogatory terms. And you may not recognize its real value and necessity until you have more responsibility than just taking orders and following through.

Far and away the most appropriate analogy for politics is sexuality. They are both activities with a number of unstated objectives that make more formal discussions unnecessary--and sometimes undiscussable. Granted, sexuality is a more widespread activity than political action. But the person who can live without either is either inhumanly sterile or an alien from another planet. Furthermore, in contrast to emotional intelligence, the basic characteristics of both politics and sexuality are absolute necessity and unpredictability. In addition, both politics and sexuality are activities in which the range of conduct is far greater than what we are willing to engage. But they both must be carried on to some degree or else both organizations and humanity will cease to exist..

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.”