Dan Erwin

Israel vs. Hamas Is Best Understood as a “Waiting Game”

Understanding social reality is especially important for managing long time career success. Though the term is not regularly used in business, reality structures are nothing more than a mental framework that helps people understand and interpret the world around them.  Over the years I’ve found that reality structures can differ between one corporation and another. The 3M reality differs significantly, for example, from the Ralston Purina reality. 3M is strongly oriented to research, while Ralston is strongly oriented to marketing. The consequence is that research behaviors get a lot of attention at 3M, and little at Ralston. You get my gist.
In this post, I want to introduce you to a major social reality that operates in many different contexts.

The “waiting game”
“Waiting game” is a social reality in which one or more participants withhold action temporarily in the hope of having a favorable opportunity for more effective action later.

Swearing Is Good for You

In a fascinating little book titled in this blog post, Emma Byrne lays out "the amazing science of bad language." The two blurbs on the back cover of the book are more than enough to gain a reader's attention. 

"A good book about bad language by a trash-talkimg woman? Sign me up! Swaring Is Good for You makes science feel downright celebratory." Mary Norris, best selling author of Between You and Me.

"I"m evangelical in my defense of swearing, not just on the grounds of freedom of expression, but because swearing is beneficial to us both as individuals and as a species. Is this book an attempt to justify rudeness and aggression? Not at all. I certainly wouldnt want profanities to become commonplace: swearing needs to maintain its emotional impact in order to become effective. So I'm not necessarily encouraging people to swear more, but I do hope they'll give swearing the respect it fucking deserves.  --From the Introduction.

The Bias for Doing . . .

And the Lost Art of Thinking

On numerous occasions as a management consultant, I asked execs about how much time they took to think about process, innovation and strategy. Often, the response was that they didn’t have time to think. A couple said that they were paying me to do the thinking. A compliment, but very unwise. And I provided a very deliberate rationale for refusing that business opportunity.

So how did we get to the place where managers don’t realize that thinking is part of their job?  
In a very thoughtful and fascinating article in the MIT Sloan Management Review, Duncan Simester pointed out that the bias for doing, not thinking, is built into business. Companies succeed by creating a successful business model—and then scaling it massively. Massive scaling requires a “finely tuned system with highly standardized processes.” So, getting promoted requires “almost a singular focus on execution.

In other words, it requires action more than thinking.” So guess what? It’s inevitable that we focus on what we get rewarded for. And in business, that’s execution.

Anger Intelligence Is the Most important Competency. . . Not Anger Management

There’s a genuine distinction between anger intelligence and anger management. Some have a few, healthy anger management skills, but it seems to me that very few people have anger intelligence competencies. Indeed, I suspect most have never thought about anger intelligence. It is however, a historical study.

Anger is usually viewed as a disrupting, destructive emotion, especially in business — unless, of course, you’re a well-placed executive without those limitations. The religious typically view anger as bad stuff, something we should set aside and, to quote St. Paul, never go to sleep with. Paul, however, never kept his own rule. So like most generalities, there are exceptions. Indeed, there are times when anger is strategic, and also times when it’s simply not useful to set anger aside, much less forgive the target of your anger.

To be clear, studies have shown that anger evolved as a means to help us express feelings of being undervalued. Showing anger signals that if we aren’t treated fairly or if we don’t get treated fairly, it’s going to cost the other person(s) either harm or benefits. It’s that emphasis I want you to consider.

No Yoda, But a Collage of Mentors: Part 4

Question any leader or executive about their success and eventually they’ll tell you that their mentor played a big role. Today, however, there is no Jedi-Master Yoda, wise and powerful, taking on people and unlocking the paths to business immortality. The onus is now yours to find numerous mentors, build the relationships, learn from them, weave the skills together, and create your successful identity. No single master, but a collage of mentors. 

Finding your mentors
You’ll normally rub shoulders with skills mentors, people willing to help and mentor, during your first week at a company. It’s important from the outset to find the more capable people. Relational mentors, in contrast, are more difficult to locate. But you should watch interactions both within and outside your discipline, looking for potential mentors. Relational experts tend to be excellent facilitators, know how to question without making people defensive, have a lot of language at their fingertips, can read people well, create a motivational atmosphere and readily engage in team problem solving. As you become a good “noticer of mentors” you’ll have a leg up on your competition. 
 
Locating career and strategic mentors is a much more difficult game...

The American Apocalypse: A Premature Obituary

America’s rule of the globe is coming to an end. Destroyed, we’re told, by China. Fear is a terrific motivator—at least in the short term. So plenty of economists and business people go about earning their stripes with apocalyptic warnings about our soon demise. But, actually, that notion and its underpinnings are all nonsense.

Fear gets to us even when reason suggests otherwise. A few decades ago, the alarmism was all about the Japanese and their booming economy. And you know what happened there. Still the fear is a great vote-getter for some opportunistic politicians.

But Harvard’s Joseph Nye has put a dagger in the hearts of those who like to propagandize about our soon demise. You may not know Nye, but “all roads to understanding American foreign policy run through Nye.”  He’s the one who pioneered...

Just Get On With It

One thing better managers understand is that they get rewarded for what they do. Not what they plan. The Hungarian Nobel Laureate Albert Szen-Gyorti made this point in one of the greatest--and most hilarious--stories of the 20^th century.

The experience happened during military maneuvers early in the 20^th century. The young lieutenant of a small Hungarian detachment in the Alps sent a reconnaissance unit into the icy wilderness. It began to snow immediately, snowed for 2 days, and the unit did not return. The lieutenant suffered, fearing that he had dispatched his own people to death. But on the third day the unit came back. Where had they been? How had they made their way? Yes, they said, we considered ourselves lost and waited for the end. And then ...

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. . .

An Intriguing New Role for Climate Change: Threat Multiplier

"Tribes are killing each other over water," said Defense Secretary Kerry in a recent interview. Most of us, with just a half-hearted attempt at informal research, are well aware of the local and national implications of climate change. It's incontrovertible that low-lying ocean-front homes and business on the East Coast are in trouble. But when the Pentagon gets in the business of assessing the problem, that's a different matter.

Here in the Midwest, Insurance companies, food companies and pet food companies have been adjusting strategy and acting on the assumptions and implications of climate change for years. Yeah, that's right--years. Grain buyers at Ralston Purina, the largest dry pet food company in the world, were making assessments and long-term purchase agreements based on climate change issues nearly twenty years ago. Of course, firms like that have meteorologists on their payroll. They recognize that smart grain planning is a significant competitive advantage. Knowing that climate will significantly impact their business, they can't afford to play the political games of climate skepticism to please the stupid and rack up more votes.

Pentagon report
As reported by Coral Davenport, the well-known energy and environment reporter, "The accelerating rate of climate change poses a severe risk to national security and acts as a catalyst for global political conflict," according to a military-research organization.

The impact study is lengthy and detailed:

Climate change-induced drought is leading to Middle East and Africa conflicts over water and food resources. That also includes coastal areas in eastern India, Bangladesh and the Mekong Delta in Vietnam. The consequence of that, which is already in play, is increased refugees.

A recent report also indicated that many arable areas of Africa have now been reduced to desert. Not just water, but also food are at issue.

The military is frustrated by the problem, and already planning for sea-level changes and storm surges around coastal areas for their own installations. Norfolk, Virginia, for example is the world's largest naval base and also home to nuclear submarine construction. That would impact jobs, and it would eventually have to go.

But the most significant issue the military will have to deal with is that "climate change is an active, driving force in starting conflict." There's a reason that many terrorists come from water-starved and food-starved areas of the globe.

Of course, the skeptics and crazies are still around. But as David Titley, a meteorologist and co-author of the military report, responded, the facts are indisputable: "The ice doesn't care about politics or who's caucusing with whom, or Democrats or Republicans."

I suspect that more and more it'll be a great time for architects, engineers and the construction industry. There's going to be a lot of rebuilding. And sustainability will factor into projects in unheard of forms.

Dollarphotoclub: Thomaz Kunst

Still Another Corporate Stumble on IT Workers

Back in March last year, I wrote about the inadequate recruiting practices of many organizations. It's becoming clear that as often as not the problem isn't so much the reputed skills-gap, but the barriers that organizations create for themselves. 

In a front-page article, the Star Tribune's Adam Belz nailed it. Although the skills-gap exists within pockets of the American workforce, he wrote, corporate transitions have revealed that firms are slow to hire and manage the tech workers they need. Of course, many institutions are convinced, wrongly, that their approach can't possibly be wrong. It's no surprise that many consultants with relevant expertise are slow to speak to execs until the problem surfaces through corporate analysis or frustration. You learn after a while that many execs take their time about accepting expertise from the outside. Although I see less and less of the "not invented here" syndrome, it still exists in some corporations. Understanding how to recruit tech people is especially important when non-technology firms hired more than half of the 400,000 computer and math jobs created over the past five years. But, as my Minnesota friends would say, "there you go." 

Belz did his homework. In a survey of more than 122 firms with 559 openings, he found that though organizations are quick to pin the problem on the shortage of people, more often that's not the problem. Indeed, survey responses found that firms are sticking to overly-specific job descriptions, pay too little, might have bad reputations for a place to work in IT, or plainly, don't know how to recruit.

Consultants in the know indicate that firms have antiquated thinking. They buy a new system and then rigidly look for someone with the specific skills of the software rather than considering someone who could quickly learn the necessary expertise. Implication? Firms lack understanding of the developer or the marketplace.

Some firms, one consultant said, also lack a strategic approach to consulting and spend their time filling out task tickets. Not too wise. But significantly, developers have little interest working for firms lacking a strategic orientation.

Still another piece of the problem, as I alluded above, is that major job growth is not in traditional technology and computer related firms, but in health care, transportation and warehousing, public administration and education.

Belz spoke to a number of mid-sized, non-software firms that are experiencing significant job growth in technology. Firms that are more successful in their recruiting of IT people look for those who know how to figure out programming and are quick learners.

What's all this mean? If you're an IT person, you're going to look for a firm that offers development opportunities,  pays well and lacks rigid-specific recruiting expectations. Small and mid-sized firms better pay attention to the IT consulting headhunters. Many of them have their head screwed on right and can help companies recruit and train more effectively.