When Smart People Disagree, Who Do You Listen To?

Survival of the fittest! Or so Darwin proclaimed. Those organisms that successfully adapt to their environment, thrive. Those organisms that don't, die off. This article will demonstrate how acquiring more information about your environment can help you thrive in life. More specifically, this article will talk about a seemingly simple subset of feedback: getting advice from others.

5 Feedback Rules To Die By

1. Pick the right people. Over the past few months we've gotten feedback on the business plan for Extreme Entrepreneurship from successful publishers, venture capitalists, consultants, professors, students, entrepreneurs, and so on. Each has been very successful in their niche. Each has given different advice!

   When giving feedback, people can only respond based on their experiences (real or perceived). An individual who got straight A's at a prestigious college and then went on to have a great career will probably tell you that choosing the right school and getting good grades are crucial. An individual who drops out (Bill Gates, Michael Dell), gets kicked out (Ted Turner), or chooses not to go to college (Richard Branson) will likely tell you that success doesn't depend on college. Are both sides wrong? Is one right?

   In the end, I'd argue that both can be valid now as they worked for somebody in the past. However, advice from somebody who has no direct experience with that you're trying to do can be risky. Would you take beauty advice from a blind man? Therefore, I'd recommend getting your advice from people who've achieved what you want to achieve or at least tried and learned from it. Better yet, try to get advice from somebody who has achieved more than you think you ever could! Let them be a beacon to you of what?s possible.

2. Pick different people. Getting advice from many people can be extremely valuable. However, it can also be detrimental. If I get advice on a publishing company, I want to get feedback from people who've experienced it from different angles (publisher, consultant, funder, etc.) as well as with differing degrees of success. Each will give you another piece to the puzzle. The classic poem below illustrates the importance of this concept. It is called "The Blind Men and The Elephant", by John Godfrey Saxe (1816-1887) and is based on an old Indian fable:
   

   It was six men of Indostan
   To learning much inclined,
   Who went to see the Elephant
   (Though all of them were blind),
   That each by observation
   Might satisfy his mind

   The First approached the Elephant,
   And happening to fall
   Against his broad and sturdy side,
   At once began to bawl:
   ?God bless me! but the Elephant
   Is very like a wall!?

   The Second, feeling of the tusk,
   Cried, ?Ho! what have we here
   So very round and smooth and sharp?
   To me ?tis mighty clear
   This wonder of an Elephant
   Is very like a spear!?

   The Third approached the animal,
   And happening to take
   The squirming trunk within his hands,
   Thus boldly up and spoke:
   ?I see,? quoth he, ?the Elephant
   Is very like a snake!?

   The Fourth reached out an eager hand,
   And felt about the knee.
   ?What most this wondrous beast is like
   Is mighty plain,? quoth he;
   ? ?Tis clear enough the Elephant
   Is very like a tree!?

   The Fifth, who chanced to touch the ear,
   Said: ?E?en the blindest man
   Can tell what this resembles most;
   Deny the fact who can
   This marvel of an Elephant
   Is very like a fan!?

   The Sixth no sooner had begun
   About the beast to grope,
   Than, seizing on the swinging tail
   That fell within his scope,
   ?I see,? quoth he, ?the Elephant
   Is very like a rope!?

   And so these men of Indostan
   Disputed loud and long,
   Each in his own opinion
   Exceeding stiff and strong,
   Though each was partly in the right,
   And all were in the wrong!
   

   So, in the end, getting a diversity of experiences from people with some level of experience with what you want to experience can be extremely valuable. Taking only one point of view is limited. One's job is to put all the advice together in one world view.

3. Take Action. Many successful ideas were perceived as failures at first. At some point, you must take action for the advice to have value, even if some people tell you it sucks. Realize that a full picture of the elephant can never be attained. Furthermore, realize that the picture will be even more inaccurate second-hand. At some point, you just have to directly experience the elephant to know the elephant.

4. Take Time into Account. When taking advice from people, be aware that the environments change over time. Therefore, the laws learned in one environment may not be applicable to another. If you walked down a busy city street with bell-bottoms and an afro today, you'd probably get a lot of remarks. Forty years ago this might have been completely normal. In the same way that clothing rules change, other rules about career, school, and culture change - some more quickly than others. When getting feedback about evolving environments, you're essentially asking the blind men (see poem above) to give feedback on an elephant that is constantly change form.

5. Beware of Bias. As mentioned earlier, people can only tell you what they know. However, a more realistic expression might be, "People can only tell you what they think they know." I'm sure you have those friends whom exaggerate everything. If they tell you that a cashier was extremely rude to them and told them off, it might just mean that he/she forgot to say thank you. Realize that people see the world differently than you and have differing levels of conscious/unconscious investments in seeing things in certain ways. Also, realize that you are biased too! Don't discount or accept ideas because they feel a certain way when you first hear them!! Take time to mull ideas over and even throw them back at other mentors to see what they think.

To begin your journey on better feedback, begin by challenging what you've been told in the past! Is your parent's advice timely? Does your teacher have first-hand experience with what you want to accomplish? Secondly, take action. Lastly, enjoy!

Posted at July 30, 2004 08:05 PM | TrackBack