My Advice About Taking Advice - A Tricky Subject

When you're looking for advice or information about any subject, be it business related or otherwise there are a few pitfalls to look out for.

We live in a world where information is king. It's everywhere and it's never been so easy to find or consume.

However, such prevalence of information isn't always good and comes with it's own set of problems. Some are unique and they've only arisen in the last decade or so.

I thought it'd be a good idea to share my own experiences of some of the difficulties you might encounter when taking advice or consuming information. It'll hopefully improve your business mindset a little too.

Conflicting Information

I recall a particular example of some conflicting business information which I received in the past and how confused I was at the time.

A while ago I read The E-Myth by Michael Gerber for the first time. It's a great book which made my Top Ten Business Books of All Time.

He was talking about how you should employ the cheapest employees possible. The less they know when they join your company the easier it will be to train them to do things your way. Fair enough I thought.

A few months later I read a book about Steve Jobs (head of Apple) which was saying that he always employs the best, most talented and consequently the most expensive people. Also fair enough I thought.

However, we have quite a big conflict here which I found confusing. That's until I gave more thought to the context of piece of information.

Michael Gerber was talking about entrepreneurs creating a system which is so thorough that it can literally be run by anyone.

No offence to McDonalds employees but they'd be a good example of employees following a strict system which doesn't require a lot of education or innovative thinking. This was the type of situation he was talking about.

Steve Jobs on the other hand runs Apple, which is a cutting edge, pioneering, innovative company. Many of his employees need to be the best in their field and educated to a high level.

To develop innovative new products which push the boundaries doesn't involve simply following a system, it involves the creativity to develop new systems.

The totally conflicting business advice finally made sense to me after I'd given it more thought. So the point is, the context of the information needs to be considered first.

This ensures that high school kids don't end up running departments within Apple and McDonalds doesn't employ the worlds greatest thinkers to sell burgers.

Enclosed Communities

Another trap I've fallen into when looking for good advice is to join a single community, be it an online forum or newsgroup (in the old days).

The problem with an enclosed community like this is that people take advice and give advice all in the same small environment, with some using it as their only source of information on a given topic.

Imagine a beginner entering a forum, listening to the advice and over time learning more and more until they're then qualified to give advice to a new generation of beginners.

This is how small niche communities like forums often work. It all seems well and good but can you see a problem with this yet?

The problem is that the same information is recycled over and over by lots of different people.
So who actually goes out of their way to find another source of information to check that the original advice is actually correct?

Quite often it's no-one. So if that information is wrong it's too late because it's already been taught to hundreds of people who in turn have re-taught it to hundreds of other people.

I've seen this happen in some fitness newsgroups I used to frequent.

The point here is not necessarily to double check all information, because a lot of information you kind of know must be correct. It seems like it should have been obvious in the first place if you'd given it much thought.

An example might be: "quantify and set time limits for your goals". You wouldn't need to double check this is true because it makes sense. You may not have thought about it before but it seems almost obvious once it's been said.

The point is to not rely on one source of information for anything really important, like specific figures you're basing a new business idea on.

Even if everyone in a small community is saying they're correct, it's very risky to base your livelihood on them. Double check such important information with a completely different source.

Information Diet

One of the biggest problems nowadays, as we enter the information age isn't incorrect information, it's the sheer volume of it.

I could write a whole series of articles on information diet and information overload and at some point I intend to.

For now it's enough to know that however tempting it is to consume every bit of information you find interesting or useful, it's simply not possible and it's not productive and it's not conducive to a good business mindset.

You need to filter out your information to what's most important and stay focused on a small subset of the information you could potentially consume.

To take this one step further, use Just in Time Learning so that you only learn about what's required for your current task.

As I've said before new ideas and new trends are always tempting, but simply write them down somewhere, clear your mind of them and concentrate on your current task. Consume only the information you need to complete it.

I do intend to write more about information diet as I consider it a very important topic at the moment. Fifteen years ago before the internet became mainstream information overload wasn't an issue, but nowadays it certainly is an issue.

Giving advice about taking advice is as you can imagine a little tricky, but I felt it important to share my past experiences so you can benefit and don't have to learn the hard way.

I hope you enjoyed reading this and I appreciate it was a little longer than I'd have liked but I always get carried away when writing about something I'm particularly passionate about.