Who do you take advice from?

Simple question – right?  I find the following types of people out there who are dishing out advice.

• People worth listening to
• People not worth listening to

But how can you tell who’s who?  I’ll share a few thoughts from my recent travels.

I had the opportunity to hear Diane Hessan, the CEO of Communispace speak at the Business Innovation Factory yesterday.  She was fantastic.  I’ll share one part of her speech, just to focus on her experience and authenticity.  Dianne explained that she tries out lots of ideas and technologies herself.  She wants to know and understand by experience.  This way, she’s not just repeating what she read in a book, but that she’s validating what she understands.  In one story she related how she was about to sell her product/service to a client, and the client said that he was not sure that things would work.  Diane turned to him and said “I think you may be right, what would you like to do?”  At that moment, her sales-person was kicking her under the table.  But Diane knew what she was doing — she was being authentic.  She was telling the truth.  The result was that the client proposed an option which turned out to work — and changed the Comminispace business model, for the better.

I admire this kind of honesty.  And the world rewards it.  She is the kind of person you take advice from.  She is not just “retweeting” what someone else said.   And she will not tell you what she does not believe to be true.  Moreover she learns what she knows by doing, not just talking about stuff she read.  When you encounter someone who reads the literature, experiments, is honest with you, and is insightful — you have found someone you should take advice from.

Unfortunately I have to contrast this with someone else I recently heard. The details are not important, and I really don’t like to go negative.  But I want to share this since it is important for you to select consultants you can trust.

I heard a social media analyst give a talk about the social media marketplace.  She is an analyst — with a fancy title,  so my expectations were high.  After her intro, she spoke about Twitter and it’s growing relevance.  And she shared some very well known examples.  Nothing new here.  I get a DM from someone in audience “do you question a social media analyst’s opinions of Twitter if they only have 25 followers?”  Zing.  What a snarky remark.  So I checked.  Yup, she had 25 followers and 28 people she followed.  Most were people in her firm.  She had a couple of updates — a twitter newbie.  OK, it sure did seem that she was just repeating something she read somewhere.  There was no new insight here.  But, hey, we all start from somewhere.  Let me give her the benefit of the doubt.  Maybe her analytical skills compensate for her lack of experience.

Then more talk about other social media examples — all the good old stories from the echo chamber.  I’m waiting to hear something new — and alas, a story I had not heard before about a successful social-search site that connects you to the music you like. It’s called Contoso/Rocks FAST / Backstage — and there’s a screen shot of it.  Hey, I’m not familiar with that site, but something is strange here.  Contoso is not a real company — it’s the pretend company that Microsoft uses for testing software.  And FAST is the Norwegian Search engine that Microsoft acquired a short while ago.  This is not a success story — this is a slide-ware story.

I was very disappointed.  Here was an analyst who did not check her facts, she took a slide from a demo deck and pitched it as if it was a real success.  Clients demand more.  They are paying good money for analyst guidance.  They can read demo-decks too.  Where was the critical thinking? The fact checking?  What exactly do they get when she provides an advisory session or a consulting gig?

For the most part I have found the analyst community to be filled with amazingly talented, smart, and insightful people.  But there duds out there there too.  

My advice to you — select wisely.  Make sure that the people you turn to for advice — be they consultants, analysts, vendors, partners, or whomever — are adding new insight into your decision processes.  Check to see if they practice what the preach.  Don’t be fooled by those who are easily fooled.  Demand value for the money you are spending.

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Tagged as: analysts, expert, social media