I mentor alot of startups. This is exactly how I work. Also the peer to peer coaching i did with Joel from Buffer uses similar principles. we only asked each other prodding questions but never gave an actual answer. It was all about leading them to a discovery that could work for them.
I devised the system and iterated it with Joel. It was originally inspired by the "toyota way" but i've just read up on the socractic method which is very much like what we did. It's all about getting to the root cause of a problem and finding a way to eliminate it. The key thing is the discovery has to come from the person being questioned.
It's a fixed fee per session. Some start-ups like to have a session every week/2 weeks, others prefer to do it on an ad-hoc basis. The pricing scales based on the size of the start-up.
If you'd like a free session as a trial you're most welcome. There's no obligation or commitment necessary.
>It's good practice to not give out advice unless someone specifically ask for it.
Most times people just want to chat or vent. As engineers and hackers we tend to want to "fix" things, to come up with solutions. Most of the time people don't want unsolicited solutions or to be told what to do, they just want someone to listen.
> "Members don’t give advice; they speak from priorexperience, letting you draw your own conclusions on how to best proceed.”
I can totally relate from when I was teaching programming or explaining math related stuff to other people. Telling what to do is like giving the solution right away: they will solve the problem but without making the mental connection for it to be able to reproduce the reasoning.
As a wannabe teacher, I just try to make sure people I teach encounter bugs, or make wrong computation, or biased proofs. He forgot a semi-colon? Good, let the compiler throw an error at him so that he actually gets negative feedback; if he does not understand what the compiler says, I'll help him get it and, when he fixes the typo and get the source to compiler, he'll get the positive feedback for himself.
There is a common bias when teaching. You don't expect to be waiting, so you try to drive people's thinking in the right direction. But good teachers make sure you don't give up in front of an error. Great teachers make you want to get errors.
Algrith, it was not exactly business-related, but I think it connects someway.
tl;dr: teaching is about catalyzing the process of encountering errors, not avoiding them
I remember a class back in tech school. The teacher sent us off for a break, mangled the insides of our work computers, and had us fix them. I think I got a loose video card. Someone else had to reassemble the whole thing.
We learned a lot from experience and observation. This was the same class where we had to plan a new server room together even though the course was aimed at desktop support. And the same teacher who had us break our Fedora installs just to see if we could fix them. That was where I got comfortable with Linux.
I didn't seem to find any imperatives even saying that you should follow the same method. So, in essence, he is doing exactly what the article says: telling his experience (about telling experiences instead of giving advice), and letting the readers figure it out if they will take any action based on that by themselves.
It's confusing that you don't understand the difference of a blog that you have to click on and choose to read vs a personal interaction or meeting where you can't leave.
I don't think this guy was being an asshole for offering advice when people sought him out as an expert. Perhaps he is being more tactful with his new approach, but he definitely wasn't being an asshole imo.
Though I agree, I think many people mistakenly interpret direct suggestions as being commentary on the junior-person/company Y's flaws and might be seen as more aggressive (asshole-ish)than having a senior-person/company X point out their own flaws. That makes X seem more humble, and more importantly, depicts success in the face of struggle as more attainable. I really think that's what provides the most benefit from his new approach; successful person/company X is not some mysterious deity that simply exists, it is the product of actions taken throughout the same process junior person/company Y has recently faced, is facing, or will face. Junior person/company Y may make, or have already made, different decisions or actions at various steps and, for better or worse, will be different because of it.
That's all very well, but often people haven't thought of whatever you might tell them. By saving them from possible offence[1] you're limiting what ideas they have available to use. When I was running a startup I was more than happy to hear the same advice and ideas over and over again from mentors because just occasionally you got something that was new that you'd not considered before. That was far better than being saved from listening to people who might be suggesting things I'd already considered.
Advice and ideas that came from proven and experienced people were often better and more useful but only because that meant I didn't have to spend so much time researching them to see if they might work for me or figuring out the potential pitfalls - the ideas themselves were no better or worse than if they'd come from someone "unqualified".
Regarding the 'impostor syndrome' problem, that doesn't really enter into the equation if the person listening to your ideas and advice is sensible. No one just blindly goes and does what someone outside of their startup tells them to do, regardless of how much respect they might have for that individual.
[1] Anyone who gets offended by someone offering well-meaning advice is an idiot and probably wouldn't have listened even if that advice was based on a mountain of prior experience.
If they ask for advice that is one thing; if it is offered "For free" it can be a huge pain.
Honestly; I've founded many different businesses over the past 20 years (of varying levels of success), and I get really tired of people telling me everything I'm doing wrong.
If I wanted to hear what I'm doing wrong, I'd call my parents or talk to the wife.
> If I wanted to hear what I'm doing wrong, I'd call my parents or talk to the wife.
Interesting because I think generally the experience is quite the opposite. Parents & spouses (never had one) tend to be over encouraging and much less critical. So I can see how you found that redundant since the critiquing was coming from another source in your life.
That's the basic intent behind Non-Violent Communications. Stating opinions and experience is fine, but when you start speaking for someone's (or their company's) interests, you end up crossing a line that causes the recipient to react negatively.
Nobody wants to be told what they are doing is wrong. They must choose to figure it out on their own.
When running a business; "wrong" is open to interpretation. There are a million things to do and you can't do all of them so you have to balance your time with other priorities.
It seems unlikely that after 10 minutes someone would understand your situation enough to be able to judge.
It's not advice at that point though - it's essentially brainstorming. I can't speak intelligently about if something is going to work for your startup or not because I have just heard about it 10 minutes ago. I can throw out random ideas and suggestions but in my experience that is much less valuable than sharing what has worked for Adzerk.
The basic idea I'm getting is that advice is meaningful and actionable when it comes from a place of domain expertise and prior experience.
"You should allow people to log in using Twitter" doesn't mean as much from someone that doesn't have experience or knowledge of running a system that uses Twitter to log in.
It might be a valuable idea, but it is an idea rather than advice.
> That's all very well, but often people haven't thought of whatever you might tell them.
I don't think the point was, "Don't tell them about things that might help them." I understood it more as, "Tell them things, but do it in reference of what worked in your experience. Then let them decide whether that might work in their experience."
Before: "You should try (this thing). It's awesome for (whatever it does) because (x, y, z)."
After: "At (my place), we use (this thing). It's been great for us at (whatever it does) because (x, y, z)."
Basically, you're removing the implicit assumption that you know better than the person you're speaking with about what would work for their business.
>Basically, you're removing the implicit assumption that you know better than the person you're speaking with about what would work for their business.
Bingo. I feel that that from a psychological perspective the way you word advice can dictate how well it's received.
"I think you should do X", or even worse "You're doing that wrong, you should be doing X" isn't generally something that people digest hearing that well.
"I've done X in that exact situation and it worked really well for me" can be much more palatable.
Sure, a person who can discuss how, in his experience, it's been possible to get clients to pay for X by doing Y, which to some extent overlaps with your domain Z is potentially offering you much more valuable insight than someone who simply asks "have you considered doing Y?"
But the usefulness of the insight you're able to provide is an essentially separate issue from coming across as a jerk who blithely insists they can fix others' business. It's possible to discuss your experiences with Y in great detail and still be that jerk (because you come across as assuming that experience must be relevant and your way of doing it was right), and conversely possible to have no experience of Y whatsoever other than reading an article on it and still be asking a very reasonable question
If someone thinks you're an asshole for simply for asking whether they'd considered a Salesforce integration, they're almost certainly the asshole.
I have the same problem. I'm an asshole. I pray every day that I won't get anyone angry.
Last in date: I subscribe to a coworking space, and on Sunday I couldn't find the IP of the printer. The next Monday when the agent gives it to me, I immediately write it on a label on the printer, to help the next guy who would have the problem. She hates me since then.
Previous one. Accepted in a (young) incubator. I sat there and there's a cold stream of air in my feet. On day 3, I asked the president (they're just 6 volunteers) to take care of the heating (Well, members participate 350€ to the fees so I feel entitled). I has ass-kicked out and she discredited me to other colleagues.
So yes, I give advice, tell opinions, take initiatives, have requirements and more generally feel entitled when I should. It really is hard to balance between taking the room that you're entitled to while not hurting others. If you have experience to share, I'm listening.
That could have been her job. Also it's not my printer, I'm not supposed to change anything. Of course I'm half guessing since she didn't talk much with me after that first day.
The situations you describe.. I would have acted the same and cannot imagine anyone getting offended over it (as per experience from comparable situations). Did you find out why exactly you caused problems and what their feelings were and why?
People can be hurt when they are made to feel incompetent or looked down upon, for example. Sometimes they have a bad day. Maybe it was the precious new printer and you put an ugly sticky label on it without asking (some people are like that with 'their' stuff).
If you understand what exactly the problem is/was, you're half-way to fixing it and/or doing better next time.
(Note that I'm living in a hippy scientist bubble where you have to work hard to make people take something personal, so I'm playing on the easiest level.. (plus, young woman bonus))
But some assholes do claim to care. It's a clever way of avoiding blame, by saying "I don't _want_ people to get angry, so it's not my fault when they get angry at the horrible things I say or do."
The worst are assholes that know they are assholes and make no attempt to change, only warn you that they are in fact an asshole. Assholes are only tolerated, never respected.
I'm assuming you're referencing Jobs as an example of the type of asshole I'm referring to and not the exception. I doubt a single person respected Jobs because of his assholeness. They might re-brand it as being "passionate" or "disciplined" or "uncompromising" but most first hand accounts of his interactions were anything but positive.
People tolerated him because of his recent success but history was not always so forgiving to his brand of leadership.
Slightly off topic, I have a very dear friend who calls me up all the time to talk about his constant life drama. It seemed to me for a long time he was framing the conversation as looking for advice, since when advice was given the conversation seemed to move along rather well.
The thing about advice is it almost requires you to invest yourself a little in the other person's problem and advice starts turning into involvement, which can be frustrating when the other party doesn't follow the advice, as my friend almost never does. Over the years I found that he'd typically ignore good advice, get himself into trouble, come back for more advice/a way out of his disaster and then repeat until I was getting way too involved in his business. Which left me in a foul mood and our friendship on the rocks.
It's tempting for the receiver to take that advice/involvement as most people are looking for a little bit of help through problem areas.
But I've learned from him that it's often better to not get involved at all in other people's business, even if it's just advice,...no matter how tempting it is. They have to make the mistakes and learn from the experience themselves. And if they can't learn from that experience, maybe they shouldn't be involved in doing whatever it is they're doing.
This is really hard to do though, especially for engineer types who view the world as a sequence of problems. There's a lot of pop-sociology that men like to fix things and women like to talk about things, which is used to explain the constant need for guys to give advice, and often results in relationship counseling like "just listen to your girlfriend/wife, that's all she wants, she's emotionally processing".
I think it's a bit too gender biased so I've taken that idea and reworked it to "most people just want to vent or verbally process their issues". Just listen to them, nod a bit, if you have a similar situation try and and talk about it too, but don't focus on how you solved it, just dialog. For many people, it's about ordering their thoughts so the solution presents itself to them.
For my friend, he's started to realize where lots of his life faults are, and is slowly coming to the realization that they aren't good long-term things to carry around. He's looking at lots of digging to get himself out of some bad problems he's gotten into, so he keeps looking for an easier alternative/other way out. But letting him talk things out helps him see that he's really only got one choice, and it's going to take a long time to do it.
It is gender-biased, since generally everyone is emotionally processing in some way or another. It's just that, typically (but not always), men have a habit of "fixing the problem" as a way to avoid emotional processing.
Before you can solve a problem or take action, you first have to accept that there is a problem and action needs to be taken. That acceptance is an emotional thing. It isn't a product of reason or intellect. It's not so much that men do not emotionally process, but rather, people who are not in tune with their emotions and suck at it will try to use reason to talk themselves into acceptance. And it never works.
For people who are more in tuned with the heart of things, watching someone like that is like watching someone going around and around in circles, using the wrong part of their consciousness. Furthermore, the only way to be in tune with your emotion is to acknowledge and experience those emotions. You cannot force someone to fully experience something. The powers of human denial and aversion are very creative.
However, once you've emotionally accepted that there is a problem and action needs to be taken, it is from there that reasoning and problem solving skills allows you to quickly get stuff done.
Mindfully listening to someone as they speak allows them to feel safe to touch those emotions within themselves. It's called "holding space". And this practice requires you to stop "waiting for the other person to speak". You are simply witnessing someone work this stuff out.
There have been countless times when I wanted to go up to an attractive woman and just start talking to her. But, I feared rejection. So usually I sit there, mulling over about it while watching her from the corner of my eyes. (Which is really creepy for the women). My mind comes up with any number of scenarios, reasons, narratives to try to get me to go talk with her. Or, perhaps, I try to come up with worst case scenarios.
I recognize now that, those thoughts I come up with are ways for me to avoid feeling fear that is arising in that moment. It was much more comfortable coming up with ideas or thinking about things than it is to touch that fear of rejection. I'm used to thinking.
These days, the attitude I have is simply that I'm being friendly, and there's no expectation of that. I'm making an invitation to be friendly and leaving it at that superficial chit-chat. Someone might decline the invitation, and that's ok.
To get to that point though, I've made deep dives into the fear, into the things this touches.
Being able to chit-chat with strangers is nice. What is nicer is when I come to a technical decision that involve things like cutting out code I've vested a lot of effort in, because it does not work. Rather than trying to come up with why it does not work, I now know how to emotionally accept that this needs to happen. Then I cut it away and move on to getting it done.
I must not fear.
Fear is the mind-killer.
Fear is the little-death that brings total obliteration.
I will face my fear.
I will permit it to pass over me and through me.
And when it has gone past I will turn the inner eye to see its path.
Where the fear has gone there will be nothing.
Only I will remain.
After I hear it or say it, I feel icy cold and extremely rational. I'm aware of emotion, but it fades into the background and I'm "freed" of it to make decisions and think through complex problems.
> I have a very dear friend who calls me up all the time to talk about his constant life drama.
There exists a certain type of person who believes deep down that this behavior serves as the basis of friendship. And more, that anyone not willing to listen is not a friend.
The sad part is that without the drama, they wouldn't really know how to connect to others. To someone who enjoys the notion of seeming supportive, compassionate, these ne'er-do-wells offer a unique opportunity to give constantly - one gives time, attention, advice, support, and it just disappears down a deep, dark well.
This is where "assistance" crosses over into "enablement". The most compassionate thing you can do is cut such a person off, and force them to deal with their drama on their own. They may feel isolated at first, alone, friendless. They will feel helpless and unable to solve their problems. But that feeling of helplessness is their primary problem - and it's not true. The human mind, every human mind, is powerful. In the depths of their despair, they can and will discover their agency in this world, and more often than not will emerge from their isolation with a newfound strength with which they may be able to participate in a relationship, rather than just consume the goodwill of others.
It may seem like self-serving advice, as listening to someone endlessly speak of their fears, doubts, injustices, etc is frustrating and annoying. But it is far worse for them - you only endure it on occasion, but this litany of negativity is constantly rolling around in their head. The real motivation of talking to you is that talking to you will get the words out of their head and make them stop. They aren't looking for advice, just the chance of a brief respite from the incessantly negative thinking. This is the same way in which drug users start using the drugs just to get a brief respite from the pain of not doing the drug. And the solution is the same: stop using, go through the horrible pain of withdrawal, and claim your dignity as human being. Then rejoice together, as real friends do.
Giving advice doesn't make OP an asshole. In fact, listening and making adjustments to a life strategy is one of the hardest things to do on a personal level, in my opinion.
Glad to see you are blogging again and quite effectively at that. This was at the top spot on HN this morning.
Heh. Some people I follow on twitter often get people responding to their jokes and intentionally non-factual tweets with "Well, actually…". Which led to their labeling this practice "#ACTUALLY" and the people who do it "#ACTUALLY twitter".
I really dig how people are starting to nail the social tone-deafness and misplaced pride in trivial knowledge this involves. It doesn't mean you're smart, it means you're dumb in a way you probably don't even grasp.
This is one of the reasons I decided to start up this blog again. I stopped blogging largely because I learned how much I didn’t know and felt I had no right to be telling others what to do when there are more knowledgeable people out there.
Thanks for that. I never started blogging although I wanted to, because whenever I write a blog post, I feel it's kind of obsolete already, because it has a view point that's too limited, too narrow. I "outgrew" my blog post in the moment I finished it.
Maybe by framing it as stories and experiences, they get more valuable.
I believe I learn nothing from failure, and a ton from success. When something fails, I don't know if it was a bad idea, bad execution, bad timing, the wrong people, etc. When something works, I generally learn a ton and it inspires other good ideas.
It is not until you have racked up a bunch of failures and successes that you realize an idea braindump isn't particularly helpful. When someone starts offering a braindump of ideas, I generally assume the person just hasn't had a bunch of success and failures that are relevant.
I think the author's change is natural, as you can't say "Here is what worked for us..." until you have actually had some wins.
I like some kinds of advice. I am a very recent founder who knows very little about a lot of things. But sure, there are two types of advice that annoys me, for one I learned to have patience for the other I learned to ignore.
I learned to be patient with who knows absolutly nothing about my business, my sector, my technology or startups in general. Friends of friends and relatives in general. It is good to have patience because most of time they give you ridiculous ideas (because they know nothing of your business), but every few times you realize you got a very interesting idea, something that you would never thought, precisely because they have a completely different background and experiences.
But the type of advice I learned to ignore are the ones from "experts". Such as the case of the OP. They are usually founders and mentors, both experienced and newbies. The problem is that they think they know what is your problem, and they know what would be the solution. And worst, usually the solution comes with a lecture about how you suck on doing something you obviously should be doing, ie, following a famous advice from a famous person: "get out of the building", "do something people want", recently the "do things that don't scale".
TL;DR If the advice comes from some random person and starts with "What if.." or "Have you tried...", be patient, you will hear a lot of nonsense, but sometimes it will pay off.
But if the advice comes from someone who think they are better than you on what you are doing, and starts with "You are not doing X right.." or "you must do <famous advice> more", forget it, it is BS.
Do you mind explaining why you think such advice is BS? I assume there are at least some people who are exerts, or who have experience, who're worth talking to?
Not with a 10 minute talk.
The point is the one the OP learned. Talk about their own lessons learned. When you read Paul Graham and Steve Blank you read someone who has passed through a lot and spent a lot of time thinking about it. So when you read one of these essays you can understand how that apply to your business. Is the same when you start a conversation with someone and he says "When I tried to sell to big corporates I did this and worked and I did that and that didn't work".
That is a good thing to listen to from an expert. I should have maked explicit in my comment that I thought it was a great thing to do from the author.
But the key point is that is always BS when the person you are talking to thinks he knows better about your business than you. And that there are some obvious thing you should and you aren't doing it that will fix your startup. This could happen with random people too - the same way an expert can be humble as the author new attitude - only is more common with experts.
I think the objective answer of why I think is BS is that an arrogant interlocutor, almost by definition, lacks empathy. If someone is sure about what your problem is, it is probably because he didn't actually listen to you, he is picturing you as a straw man and giving advice to it.
The objective answer of why I think is BS is that an arrogant interlocutor, almost by definition, lacks empathy
This is an interesting formulation, and I think there is something to it. "Fake" experts are (all to often) merely people with "too much self-esteem" and too little comprehension of context. "Expertise" is too often a crutch for those looking to assert some sort of claim to social rank or status. Or, polish their "brand" for future 'business opportunities'.
The flipside of the analysis, however, is the juxtaposition of "objective" with "lacking empathy". Both are two ways to de-emotionalize a subject, and it is a good rule-of-thumb to ask if what you are seeing is one or the other. Also, to make sure you have enough resolution to distinquish the two variations. After all, it is quite common empirically for people to become emotionally attached to home-grown ideas,[0,1] and this is in fact quite common with startup founders [2].
What is juxtaposed here are insiders and the outsiders both of which are fighting for credibility and influence. And ultimately, the prize of "being right". There are times when having high-powered incentives and/or low-powered incentives either work or don't work in bringing to bear a new light on the subject.
Ultimately one needs to be a ~visionary (not run of the mill), or truly from left-field.
[0] "Not invented here syndrome"
[1] There is an emprical behavioural bias about "switching" opinions, even on trivially important positions, provided that the information on the position has bee made public to a peer group.
[2] Which, if unchecked, classically leads to the installation of a new CEO.
This is why I always try to make a business case when filling out feedback forms. If I don't understand the business enough to know the ugly details of implementing the suggestion, I'm probably wasting their time with something they already rejected for non-technical reasons.
If you mean a form for user feedback, I think that's a different case. The point of a company soliciting user feedback is for them to gather information about what people who use their product want, so that they can make better decisions. The baseline presumption with user feedback is not normally that you should build whatever any user suggests, but that you should treat requests as raw data that needs to be aggregated, considered, filtered, and prioritized.
When I use a product, whether it's a blender or a website, the producer's business goals aren't really my problem. If I communicate to them at all as a customer, my only relevant area of expertise is how I use their product. (And possibly how I would like to use their product, if it were improved in some way I would prefer.)
I find something similar with parenting advice. When another parent says "you should do this" or "you're doing that wrong", as if they know your kid better than you after a five minute conversation, their advice is essentially useless [0]. They don't actually understand the situational dynamic, they're just imagining something that's vaguely similar and then giving advice based on their imagination.
But when they say "here are the things I tried in this circumstance, and here's how they went" then they're reporting their actual experience (rather than imagining yours) and you are able to take their actual experience and apply lessons learned to your actual experience.
[0] in aggregate -- while any given piece of advice may be helpful, other advice may be the opposite, and there is no reliable way to determine which is which.
I like the term "Idea Fairy" - people who toss ideas that cost you time to analyze and refute, but who don't actually provide anything like time or money to implement them. It is good to keep an open mind, but if you pay too much attention to too many Idea Fairies, you'll never get anything done.
I've not had this experience personally. The odd start-up maybr but if i generally dont know the answer i'll be very honest about the advice i give. Most people i've mentored it's been either that they've never even heard the idea before or they've heard it but want someone to confirm it to stop them from going insane from their own doubt.
Mentoring isn't just about knowledge expertise it can often be about helping people gain perspective.
Last week I had a call with a new start-up founder. I didn't tell him anything new but the fact that i was able to be there for him to bounce ideas with him and help remove doubts or confirm trains of thought was invaluable for him and he wants to come back for more.
The talk "How I learned to stop fixing and start facilitating" from DareConf 2013 [1] really describes the core issue here very well.
No matter how much you want to, you just can't always fix things for people in the small interactions that you have with them.
And even fixing it for them isn't actually helpful unless you'll be there in the long run to take that responsibility for them.
That's why, even though it's hard and will make you feel less powerful, all you can do in these small moments is facilitate.
It's about not asking the question "How should (s)he fix this?" but "What can I do in this amount of time we have together to have the greatest positive impact on you?"
123 comments
[ 2.5 ms ] story [ 180 ms ] threadeg: I'm curious about your method, could you give me an example or two of a prodding question?
A simple example would be:
Person A: I have to fire my new employee, i dont feel i can do it
Person B:
- Why do you need to fire him? - Can someone else do it? - What would happen if you didn't? - Is it the method of firing, the person, or you?
etc etc
But obviously the questions adapt based on the responses.
Does that help? Happy to explain further via email or on skype if you like. Contact details in profile
Hope that helps?
If you'd like a free session as a trial you're most welcome. There's no obligation or commitment necessary.
Contact details: krmmalik.com/me
It's good practice to not give out advice unless someone specifically ask for it.
The only time I break this rule is with my parents. Most people will not feel any gratitude if your advice turns out to be good.
They will, however, mentally blame you if it turns out to be bad advice, whether justified or not.
Most times people just want to chat or vent. As engineers and hackers we tend to want to "fix" things, to come up with solutions. Most of the time people don't want unsolicited solutions or to be told what to do, they just want someone to listen.
> "Members don’t give advice; they speak from priorexperience, letting you draw your own conclusions on how to best proceed.”
I can totally relate from when I was teaching programming or explaining math related stuff to other people. Telling what to do is like giving the solution right away: they will solve the problem but without making the mental connection for it to be able to reproduce the reasoning.
As a wannabe teacher, I just try to make sure people I teach encounter bugs, or make wrong computation, or biased proofs. He forgot a semi-colon? Good, let the compiler throw an error at him so that he actually gets negative feedback; if he does not understand what the compiler says, I'll help him get it and, when he fixes the typo and get the source to compiler, he'll get the positive feedback for himself.
There is a common bias when teaching. You don't expect to be waiting, so you try to drive people's thinking in the right direction. But good teachers make sure you don't give up in front of an error. Great teachers make you want to get errors.
Algrith, it was not exactly business-related, but I think it connects someway.
tl;dr: teaching is about catalyzing the process of encountering errors, not avoiding them
We learned a lot from experience and observation. This was the same class where we had to plan a new server room together even though the course was aimed at desktop support. And the same teacher who had us break our Fedora installs just to see if we could fix them. That was where I got comfortable with Linux.
Advice and ideas that came from proven and experienced people were often better and more useful but only because that meant I didn't have to spend so much time researching them to see if they might work for me or figuring out the potential pitfalls - the ideas themselves were no better or worse than if they'd come from someone "unqualified".
Regarding the 'impostor syndrome' problem, that doesn't really enter into the equation if the person listening to your ideas and advice is sensible. No one just blindly goes and does what someone outside of their startup tells them to do, regardless of how much respect they might have for that individual.
[1] Anyone who gets offended by someone offering well-meaning advice is an idiot and probably wouldn't have listened even if that advice was based on a mountain of prior experience.
Honestly; I've founded many different businesses over the past 20 years (of varying levels of success), and I get really tired of people telling me everything I'm doing wrong.
If I wanted to hear what I'm doing wrong, I'd call my parents or talk to the wife.
Interesting because I think generally the experience is quite the opposite. Parents & spouses (never had one) tend to be over encouraging and much less critical. So I can see how you found that redundant since the critiquing was coming from another source in your life.
It took 10 years for my mom to stop asking when I was going to get a "real" job.
Nobody wants to be told what they are doing is wrong. They must choose to figure it out on their own.
It seems unlikely that after 10 minutes someone would understand your situation enough to be able to judge.
"You should allow people to log in using Twitter" doesn't mean as much from someone that doesn't have experience or knowledge of running a system that uses Twitter to log in.
It might be a valuable idea, but it is an idea rather than advice.
I don't think the point was, "Don't tell them about things that might help them." I understood it more as, "Tell them things, but do it in reference of what worked in your experience. Then let them decide whether that might work in their experience."
Before: "You should try (this thing). It's awesome for (whatever it does) because (x, y, z)."
After: "At (my place), we use (this thing). It's been great for us at (whatever it does) because (x, y, z)."
Basically, you're removing the implicit assumption that you know better than the person you're speaking with about what would work for their business.
Bingo. I feel that that from a psychological perspective the way you word advice can dictate how well it's received.
"I think you should do X", or even worse "You're doing that wrong, you should be doing X" isn't generally something that people digest hearing that well.
"I've done X in that exact situation and it worked really well for me" can be much more palatable.
But the usefulness of the insight you're able to provide is an essentially separate issue from coming across as a jerk who blithely insists they can fix others' business. It's possible to discuss your experiences with Y in great detail and still be that jerk (because you come across as assuming that experience must be relevant and your way of doing it was right), and conversely possible to have no experience of Y whatsoever other than reading an article on it and still be asking a very reasonable question
If someone thinks you're an asshole for simply for asking whether they'd considered a Salesforce integration, they're almost certainly the asshole.
Last in date: I subscribe to a coworking space, and on Sunday I couldn't find the IP of the printer. The next Monday when the agent gives it to me, I immediately write it on a label on the printer, to help the next guy who would have the problem. She hates me since then.
Previous one. Accepted in a (young) incubator. I sat there and there's a cold stream of air in my feet. On day 3, I asked the president (they're just 6 volunteers) to take care of the heating (Well, members participate 350€ to the fees so I feel entitled). I has ass-kicked out and she discredited me to other colleagues.
So yes, I give advice, tell opinions, take initiatives, have requirements and more generally feel entitled when I should. It really is hard to balance between taking the room that you're entitled to while not hurting others. If you have experience to share, I'm listening.
(Note that I'm living in a hippy scientist bubble where you have to work hard to make people take something personal, so I'm playing on the easiest level.. (plus, young woman bonus))
These two statements are in conflict.
An asshole doesn't care if they offend, irritate or otherwise cause problems.
People tolerated him because of his recent success but history was not always so forgiving to his brand of leadership.
The biggest problematic with advice is that you gave them against information you have received. Vision is much more than a few sentences.
Outsiders' short-term advice are most of the time contradictory to long-term vision.
The thing about advice is it almost requires you to invest yourself a little in the other person's problem and advice starts turning into involvement, which can be frustrating when the other party doesn't follow the advice, as my friend almost never does. Over the years I found that he'd typically ignore good advice, get himself into trouble, come back for more advice/a way out of his disaster and then repeat until I was getting way too involved in his business. Which left me in a foul mood and our friendship on the rocks.
It's tempting for the receiver to take that advice/involvement as most people are looking for a little bit of help through problem areas.
But I've learned from him that it's often better to not get involved at all in other people's business, even if it's just advice,...no matter how tempting it is. They have to make the mistakes and learn from the experience themselves. And if they can't learn from that experience, maybe they shouldn't be involved in doing whatever it is they're doing.
This is really hard to do though, especially for engineer types who view the world as a sequence of problems. There's a lot of pop-sociology that men like to fix things and women like to talk about things, which is used to explain the constant need for guys to give advice, and often results in relationship counseling like "just listen to your girlfriend/wife, that's all she wants, she's emotionally processing".
I think it's a bit too gender biased so I've taken that idea and reworked it to "most people just want to vent or verbally process their issues". Just listen to them, nod a bit, if you have a similar situation try and and talk about it too, but don't focus on how you solved it, just dialog. For many people, it's about ordering their thoughts so the solution presents itself to them.
For my friend, he's started to realize where lots of his life faults are, and is slowly coming to the realization that they aren't good long-term things to carry around. He's looking at lots of digging to get himself out of some bad problems he's gotten into, so he keeps looking for an easier alternative/other way out. But letting him talk things out helps him see that he's really only got one choice, and it's going to take a long time to do it.
Before you can solve a problem or take action, you first have to accept that there is a problem and action needs to be taken. That acceptance is an emotional thing. It isn't a product of reason or intellect. It's not so much that men do not emotionally process, but rather, people who are not in tune with their emotions and suck at it will try to use reason to talk themselves into acceptance. And it never works.
For people who are more in tuned with the heart of things, watching someone like that is like watching someone going around and around in circles, using the wrong part of their consciousness. Furthermore, the only way to be in tune with your emotion is to acknowledge and experience those emotions. You cannot force someone to fully experience something. The powers of human denial and aversion are very creative.
However, once you've emotionally accepted that there is a problem and action needs to be taken, it is from there that reasoning and problem solving skills allows you to quickly get stuff done.
Mindfully listening to someone as they speak allows them to feel safe to touch those emotions within themselves. It's called "holding space". And this practice requires you to stop "waiting for the other person to speak". You are simply witnessing someone work this stuff out.
There have been countless times when I wanted to go up to an attractive woman and just start talking to her. But, I feared rejection. So usually I sit there, mulling over about it while watching her from the corner of my eyes. (Which is really creepy for the women). My mind comes up with any number of scenarios, reasons, narratives to try to get me to go talk with her. Or, perhaps, I try to come up with worst case scenarios.
I recognize now that, those thoughts I come up with are ways for me to avoid feeling fear that is arising in that moment. It was much more comfortable coming up with ideas or thinking about things than it is to touch that fear of rejection. I'm used to thinking.
These days, the attitude I have is simply that I'm being friendly, and there's no expectation of that. I'm making an invitation to be friendly and leaving it at that superficial chit-chat. Someone might decline the invitation, and that's ok.
To get to that point though, I've made deep dives into the fear, into the things this touches.
Being able to chit-chat with strangers is nice. What is nicer is when I come to a technical decision that involve things like cutting out code I've vested a lot of effort in, because it does not work. Rather than trying to come up with why it does not work, I now know how to emotionally accept that this needs to happen. Then I cut it away and move on to getting it done.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fear_is_the_mind_killer#Litany...
I must not fear. Fear is the mind-killer. Fear is the little-death that brings total obliteration. I will face my fear. I will permit it to pass over me and through me. And when it has gone past I will turn the inner eye to see its path. Where the fear has gone there will be nothing. Only I will remain.
After I hear it or say it, I feel icy cold and extremely rational. I'm aware of emotion, but it fades into the background and I'm "freed" of it to make decisions and think through complex problems.
Just reciting the Litany has never worked for me, but that has more to do with obscurations from my own mind.
There exists a certain type of person who believes deep down that this behavior serves as the basis of friendship. And more, that anyone not willing to listen is not a friend.
The sad part is that without the drama, they wouldn't really know how to connect to others. To someone who enjoys the notion of seeming supportive, compassionate, these ne'er-do-wells offer a unique opportunity to give constantly - one gives time, attention, advice, support, and it just disappears down a deep, dark well.
This is where "assistance" crosses over into "enablement". The most compassionate thing you can do is cut such a person off, and force them to deal with their drama on their own. They may feel isolated at first, alone, friendless. They will feel helpless and unable to solve their problems. But that feeling of helplessness is their primary problem - and it's not true. The human mind, every human mind, is powerful. In the depths of their despair, they can and will discover their agency in this world, and more often than not will emerge from their isolation with a newfound strength with which they may be able to participate in a relationship, rather than just consume the goodwill of others.
It may seem like self-serving advice, as listening to someone endlessly speak of their fears, doubts, injustices, etc is frustrating and annoying. But it is far worse for them - you only endure it on occasion, but this litany of negativity is constantly rolling around in their head. The real motivation of talking to you is that talking to you will get the words out of their head and make them stop. They aren't looking for advice, just the chance of a brief respite from the incessantly negative thinking. This is the same way in which drug users start using the drugs just to get a brief respite from the pain of not doing the drug. And the solution is the same: stop using, go through the horrible pain of withdrawal, and claim your dignity as human being. Then rejoice together, as real friends do.
Glad to see you are blogging again and quite effectively at that. This was at the top spot on HN this morning.
http://tirania.org/blog/archive/2011/Feb-17.html
I really dig how people are starting to nail the social tone-deafness and misplaced pride in trivial knowledge this involves. It doesn't mean you're smart, it means you're dumb in a way you probably don't even grasp.
Thanks for that. I never started blogging although I wanted to, because whenever I write a blog post, I feel it's kind of obsolete already, because it has a view point that's too limited, too narrow. I "outgrew" my blog post in the moment I finished it.
Maybe by framing it as stories and experiences, they get more valuable.
It is not until you have racked up a bunch of failures and successes that you realize an idea braindump isn't particularly helpful. When someone starts offering a braindump of ideas, I generally assume the person just hasn't had a bunch of success and failures that are relevant.
I think the author's change is natural, as you can't say "Here is what worked for us..." until you have actually had some wins.
I learned to be patient with who knows absolutly nothing about my business, my sector, my technology or startups in general. Friends of friends and relatives in general. It is good to have patience because most of time they give you ridiculous ideas (because they know nothing of your business), but every few times you realize you got a very interesting idea, something that you would never thought, precisely because they have a completely different background and experiences.
But the type of advice I learned to ignore are the ones from "experts". Such as the case of the OP. They are usually founders and mentors, both experienced and newbies. The problem is that they think they know what is your problem, and they know what would be the solution. And worst, usually the solution comes with a lecture about how you suck on doing something you obviously should be doing, ie, following a famous advice from a famous person: "get out of the building", "do something people want", recently the "do things that don't scale".
TL;DR If the advice comes from some random person and starts with "What if.." or "Have you tried...", be patient, you will hear a lot of nonsense, but sometimes it will pay off. But if the advice comes from someone who think they are better than you on what you are doing, and starts with "You are not doing X right.." or "you must do <famous advice> more", forget it, it is BS.
That is a good thing to listen to from an expert. I should have maked explicit in my comment that I thought it was a great thing to do from the author.
But the key point is that is always BS when the person you are talking to thinks he knows better about your business than you. And that there are some obvious thing you should and you aren't doing it that will fix your startup. This could happen with random people too - the same way an expert can be humble as the author new attitude - only is more common with experts.
I think the objective answer of why I think is BS is that an arrogant interlocutor, almost by definition, lacks empathy. If someone is sure about what your problem is, it is probably because he didn't actually listen to you, he is picturing you as a straw man and giving advice to it.
This is an interesting formulation, and I think there is something to it. "Fake" experts are (all to often) merely people with "too much self-esteem" and too little comprehension of context. "Expertise" is too often a crutch for those looking to assert some sort of claim to social rank or status. Or, polish their "brand" for future 'business opportunities'.
The flipside of the analysis, however, is the juxtaposition of "objective" with "lacking empathy". Both are two ways to de-emotionalize a subject, and it is a good rule-of-thumb to ask if what you are seeing is one or the other. Also, to make sure you have enough resolution to distinquish the two variations. After all, it is quite common empirically for people to become emotionally attached to home-grown ideas,[0,1] and this is in fact quite common with startup founders [2].
What is juxtaposed here are insiders and the outsiders both of which are fighting for credibility and influence. And ultimately, the prize of "being right". There are times when having high-powered incentives and/or low-powered incentives either work or don't work in bringing to bear a new light on the subject.
Ultimately one needs to be a ~visionary (not run of the mill), or truly from left-field.
[0] "Not invented here syndrome"
[1] There is an emprical behavioural bias about "switching" opinions, even on trivially important positions, provided that the information on the position has bee made public to a peer group.
[2] Which, if unchecked, classically leads to the installation of a new CEO.
When I use a product, whether it's a blender or a website, the producer's business goals aren't really my problem. If I communicate to them at all as a customer, my only relevant area of expertise is how I use their product. (And possibly how I would like to use their product, if it were improved in some way I would prefer.)
But when they say "here are the things I tried in this circumstance, and here's how they went" then they're reporting their actual experience (rather than imagining yours) and you are able to take their actual experience and apply lessons learned to your actual experience.
[0] in aggregate -- while any given piece of advice may be helpful, other advice may be the opposite, and there is no reliable way to determine which is which.
Mentoring isn't just about knowledge expertise it can often be about helping people gain perspective.
Last week I had a call with a new start-up founder. I didn't tell him anything new but the fact that i was able to be there for him to bounce ideas with him and help remove doubts or confirm trains of thought was invaluable for him and he wants to come back for more.
Is that advice you would ignore or should I instead show you experiences or link to other sites who do something similar?
No matter how much you want to, you just can't always fix things for people in the small interactions that you have with them.
And even fixing it for them isn't actually helpful unless you'll be there in the long run to take that responsibility for them.
That's why, even though it's hard and will make you feel less powerful, all you can do in these small moments is facilitate.
It's about not asking the question "How should (s)he fix this?" but "What can I do in this amount of time we have together to have the greatest positive impact on you?"
[1] http://2013.dareconf.com/videos/wachter-boettcher