The Science of Bullshit
In a world awash with nonsense advice, where can you turn for proper guidance?
There is no shortage of advice on how to do well. We all receive barrages of 'good' advice daily. This is especially prevalent on social media, with LinkedIn probably being the apogee.
This constant advice-feed is mostly harmless, but also fairly useless. Good advice on how to achieve real success in the real world (never mind the difficulties in properly defining both of those terms) cannot easily be distilled into simple catch-phrases. True wisdom captured in a short phrase such as Voltaire's "If you can make people believe an absurdity, you can make them commit an atrocity", is rare. Let's face it: life is complicated.
So, yes, much of the rest is, uh, well, bullshit. There is enough bullshit around for academia to have taken an interest in it. Harry Frankfurt's seminal analysis from 1988 was, in many ways, a first serious look at this phenomenon.
Victor Moberger also makes for interesting reading.
Not that any of these analyses have made much of a dent in this phenomenon though. From Deepak Chopra's pseudo-profound harmless stuff, to QAnon at another extreme, with other social media posts in between, and with AI perfectly positioned to further fan this dumpster fire, bullshit reigns supreme in 2024.
Now, the above pertains to us as individuals.
What is the situation with respect to us as groups of people? How do organisations get good advice and good guidance? Where can we get this? What types of advice should we get from whom? How do we ensure that such an advice-investment is a wise investment.
We here at Cherryflava, recognise the 'who-to-turn-to' difficulties. We see it as our duty to inject some truths into these debates and and to answer these questions.
This post is the first of many this year where we will highlight the factors that underpin questions such as "do we need consultants?", "when do we need them", "who will provide which types of insights?" - and so forth.
Make 2024 the year of outperformance
Jon Cherry is a strategic growth facilitator who works with organisations to build brands and ventures that deliver outperformance.
Get in touch to discussWe will do this by using our book on Sixty60's success (which you can download here) as the underpinning. And we will do so by providing many additional perspectives on the concepts discussed in the book.
Previously on Cherryflava:
Jon Cherry