I recently watched a young CEO assemble an advisory board. Six people. All smart. All experienced. All were willing to help.
Several months later, he was more confused than when he started.
One advisor told him to raise money immediately. Another said to stay lean and bootstrap. One pushed for enterprise customers who would pay well for the data collected. Another insisted on focusing on the present customer profile and nothing else. One wanted to focus upon investors, letting most all else slide until the next fundraise. All wanted to change the investor deck to suit their preference. The coachable entrepreneur just kept changing the deck in real time during advisor meetings.
Every piece of advice was smart. Every piece was well-intentioned. And together, they paralyzed him.
The problem with most advice isn’t that it’s wrong. It’s that it’s not wrong enough to ignore, but not right enough for your specific situation.
[Email readers, continue here…] Good advice in the wrong context is worse than no advice at all.
That CEO’s advisors weren’t giving bad guidance. They were giving answers to questions he hadn’t asked, sometimes for problems he didn’t have, in contexts that didn’t match his business.
The enterprise data advocate had built enterprise companies. Of course he pushed enterprise data. The present-customer-focused advisor stressed building the existing business at the expense of the later enterprise data customer. Each person was solving their own past, not his present.
Brilliant people offering conflicting wisdom. And coachable CEOs try to synthesize incompatible strategies. Everyone means well. Nobody helps.
The best piece of advice I ever got came from a board member who said: “Before you take anyone’s advice, including mine, ask yourself three questions.”
First: Does this person understand my specific constraints? Your advisor who built a B2B SaaS company might give terrible advice for your marketplace business. Context isn’t just important. It’s everything.
Second: Is this advice based on their experience, or their assumptions? “You should definitely…” usually means “When I did this…” The best advisors say “Here’s what worked for me in this situation. Here’s what might be different for you.”
Third: What decision am I trying to make right now? Most worthless advice comes from answering the wrong question. If you’re trying to decide whether to hire a VP of Sales, and someone tells you about their fundraising strategy, they’re not helping. They’re just talking.
I’ve given worthless advice over the years. Usually when I am too confident that I understand someone’s situation. The advice that actually helps? It comes when I ask more questions than I answer.
One CEO told me the most valuable thing I ever did for him was to tell him to ignore half of what his advisors were saying, including some of my own advice. “You don’t need consensus,” I said. “You need clarity on what problem you’re solving right now, and one person who’s solved that specific problem.”
He cut his advisory calls by 60%. Kept three advisors he listened to. Stopped trying to reconcile conflicting guidance. Made faster decisions. Grew faster.
Here’s how to filter advice:
Listen for specifics, not generalities. “You should focus on product-market fit” is worthless. “Here’s how I knew we had product-market fit: these three metrics moved in these specific ways” is useful.
Watch for people solving their problems, not yours. If every piece of advice sounds like their biography, they’re not advising. They’re reminiscing.
Ask “why” more than “what.” Anyone can tell you what to do. The valuable advisors explain why it might work in your specific context—and when it won’t.
Beware consensus. If ten advisors agree, they’re either right, or they’re all solving the same imaginary problem. The best advice often comes from the one person who sees your situation differently.
Most importantly: Your job isn’t to collect advice. It’s to make decisions. Advice is an input, not an answer.
The CEO with six advisors eventually figured this out. Later, he told me: “The best advice I got was permission to ignore most of the advice.”
Your advisors aren’t responsible for your success. You are. Their job is to give you perspective. Your job is to decide which perspective matters.
If you’re drowning in conflicting advice, you don’t need more advisors. You need fewer, better questions.
