Who gets to make decisions?
As you traverse through life, you would be in situations where you would need to make decisions as a group or rely on others for advice. People would naturally try to influence the outcome of your decisions. Hell, the world is full of people who want to tell you what to do. They would say, use this or that programming language, or this or that operating system, or this or that programming methodology, try this or that technique, be machiavellian, be nice, follow christ, meditate, smoke weed. Who do we listen to?
Me of course :D, nah, I ‘m being facetious, but really who do we listen to? In some situations, it doesn’t necessarily matter the outcome of the decision and too much care shouldn’t be given to such decisions since they represent a negligible risk. For instance, the decision on whether to meditate or not? Worst case scenario, you lose 20 minutes of your time without feeling a sense of wellbeing afterwards, hence for such decision, a flip of a coin would suffice. Other decisions aren’t to be taken so lightly, their execution will result in less than favorable lasting outcomes.
Not because a decision is critical means that it is difficult, but our focus should be on critical difficult decisions. Whether to smoke crack is critical but an easy decision, limit upside and huge downside; I will go with a no on this one. Questions like what OS to use or what should be our priority on the next product or should we target a different market or should we even be entrepreneur or should we get a PhD are difficult decisions. Ask a million people and there would be no clear decision on how to proceed. Who gets to make these critical difficult decisions?
You do. Really, the books, blogs posts, comments aren’t taking risks by giving you advice. But how do I choose which advice to follow? Normally, experience of the individual on the subject would be enough to make a decision on whether to go with the person’s advice or not. If Warren Buffet said to buy stocks in Tesla Motors, it is reasonable to assume it is correct decision. If Jay-z shows up with an artist and said he/she is the next superstar, it would be a good bet to start working with said artist if you were an artist. If PG(Paul Graham) said to invest in Airbnb, you get the point. But you already knew this.
The problem arises when the inexperience give advice and try to shroud said inexperience in vitriolic and/or condescending arguments. Let me qualify that statement by saying inexperience at the subject at hand. But, chess the inexperienced might be correct. Yes, well if the inexperienced wants to be taken seriously, they need to have skin in the game. They need to stand to lose something in the event of the failure of the execution of their advice. The easiest way for them to get skin in the game is to take a bet based on the effectiveness of their advice.
The main point is avoid advice given by the inexperienced without potential for substantial lost if their advice fails. In general, avoid advice where people giving the advice wouldn’t be held accountable or stand to lose substantially from the decision.[Maybe I should add that to my list of hacks: investigate projects where people with significant experience has backed financially.]
[Lol, there goes half of my audience. Not really, most of my advice falls into the non-critical category or critical but easy decision.]
