Acronym

Pictured at right are two business books we have here in the office. I haven't read either of them, so I can't speak to their literary value, but they do make for some good juxtaposing, don't they?

They illustrate an idea that came to mind as I worked on a feature about really bad advice for the March issue of Associations Now:  

For any piece of advice, there is a completely opposite but equally reasonable piece of advice.

Consider these words of wisdom you've likely heard before:

Of course, I'm not the first person this has occurred to, as a quick Google search revealed. But I bring it up because understanding advice is vital to association leaders, for two reasons:

• Any person, CEO or entry level, will seek, receive, and offer both good and bad advice throughout his or her career.
• Associations, in many ways, are in the advice industry. Your members come to you and to each other to exchange knowledge and learn from others in the profession-—to offer each other advice.

But if every piece of advice has a perfectly reasonable opposite, is all advice a sham? And if advice became worthless, wouldn't associations be in trouble?

Maybe these are silly questions, and I won't claim to have any answers to them, but I do want to point to some more in-depth thoughts on this topic from some people much smarter than I:

"The Dirty Secret Behind Writing Advice." Writer's Digest publisher and editorial director (and blogger) Jane Friedman opines that, despite making a career in advice for writers, some of the best skills can never be put into words and passed on. Some skills are just innate. "I can't teach the exceptions or pleasing eccentricities (or what can boil down to a matter of confidence or nuance)," she says.

"It's Less About Theory and More About Thinking." Association executive and consultant Jamie Notter argues that our constant thirst for outside input actually reduces our critical thinking. "What if we had to explain more of our choices and specifically could NOT cite best practices as the rationale? This requires more thinking, and in the end, I just don't think we collectively value deep thinking enough to make room for it in our organizations."

"A Piece of Good Advice," a feature from Associations Now that fellow Acronym blogger Scott Briscoe, CAE, wrote back in 2007. He offers "an advice strategy" for association leaders that has some great points, but he also cites a psychological study that "demonstrates that people have a tendency to misuse advice and make worse decisions as a result," which puts some scientific evidence behind Jamie's thoughts referenced above.

"Trust in all sources of media declines." We couldn't get through this topic without coming around to social media. The 2010 Edelman Trust Survey showed that trust in a lot of sources of information has declined in recent years. Most notably, trust in "friends and peers" declined significantly (see the slide at 0:58 in the video). This is a new development as the speed of social media continues to increase. While Twitter allows you to pass along 50 links in a day, your followers know you can't have read every single one of them well enough to know they're worthwhile. And how much good advice can you fit into 140 characters, anyway?