Beware the snake oil salesmen

Let’s start at the beginning. With the growth of the internet, social media and an ever increasing access to the global stage, more people than ever before have a platform to share their experience, knowledge and opinions with minimal effort.

It’s incredible, because we can now be exposed to diverse levels of experience and backgrounds, although maybe we still don’t take full advantage of that, but that’s a topic for another edition.

This also means we are exposed to so much more content without filters and without a way of knowing what is valuable, what is hype and what is purely one talking out of one’s ass…

We need to be aware. We can compare a lot of this content to snake oil salesmen in the old west. Supposed “doctors” that went from town to town selling miracle medicine that could cure every ailment from fever to paralysis to blindness.

Just like being cautious of fake news, we have to deal with opinions and content created by people who just have no idea what they’re talking about. Let’s be clear, I’m not saying the diversity of thought isn’t valuable and that the norm needs to be challenged. Hell, I’ve made a career of challenging the status status quo and not accepting that we should follow a standard approach or “miracle” framework.

But let’s look at each of the scenarios that I’ve seen and how to potentially balance all the opinions and content out there.

Overload of hype!

In this scenario, someone either shares out a video, does a talk, writes a book or some other form of publication, where they describe how they or their company did something that had astronomical impact on their organisation or the industry.

I don’t want to detract from what many of these trailblazers have accomplished and how they are definitely impacting the industry as a whole, but I do suggest a bit of contextualisation.

In most of the cases presented, these folks are talking about a very specific context and stage of their organisation.

If there is one thing I’ve learnt oh so well in recent years, it’s that replicating a success isn’t as easy as having following a formula, but rather seeing what worked in that formula and how it can/should adapt to different organisations.

Are we going to create a new role or do away with an existing role, just because someone suggested that’s the way to do it? I guarantee, that in some organisations, we have too many roles, in other organisations have too few… context is key.

What many of those trailblazers could also be leaving out is that they are actually talking about a solution based on assumptions or a vision of what they believe and not something that has been completely validated.

In other cases, they’ve mis-diagnosed the problem and/or the solution that worked, which is even more dangerous, because they’re sharing advice about the wrong aspect.

My suggestion is to never follow blindly. Take a step back and see what value you can extract. Analyse what could be the potential impact if you followed the same direction and/or the pitfalls, considering your reality and the current stage of your org.

These folks have incredible ways of looking at the world, but they’re also human and they could be steering you in the wrong direction without realising it.

Now the one that scares me even more are those that create content without foundation…

Hey! Look at me, I’m an expert because…

This is by far the worst scenario for me. In this case, the content is created by folks who have very little knowledge or experience about the topic being discussed, but they present themselves and their content as a subject matter expert, creating noise and confusion.

Let me start off by saying that the fault doesn’t lie completely at the feet of these “experts”. As an industry, we’re constantly incentivising people to get noticed and stand out from the crowd. We tell them one of the best ways is to create content, which it still is, but only when done properly.

I will still advise folks to write, because it helps them show who they are, how they think and ultimately it trains the way they convey their thoughts and thinking.

“Hugo… you’re getting confusing. How can we blame these content creators and keep incentivising them at the same time?”

That’s the interesting part, when these content creators put on the hat of “experts” and present their content as such. They don’t present the content as a personal experience where they learnt something while going through processes X, or had their AHA! moment in situation Y.

We want to you to show your work, your learnings and your questions, not faked advice. Let’s look at some of the wrong approaches I’ve seen.

Re-hashing existing content

One of the most common approaches, is for the content creators to re-hash already existing content that has ultimately been written more extensively and with better structure but industry experts. Often, this creates content that might be read by inexperienced folks and taken as expert advice, but usually with much less structure or solid baseline.

Please don’t do this. Approach the topics as a young academic researcher. State what makes sense to you, what you didn’t understand and what you don’t agree with. Justify each of these points of view.

I also suggest presenting how your going to go about validating, refuting or experimenting with these topics to learn and grow as a professional.

This approach will give the readers a notion that it’s a very personal experience and that your current opinions are based on still unformed knowledge, and that’s okay. It can also give potential recruiters a notion of how rigorous you approach things.

Create waves/Click bait

One of the more popular approaches right now is to get noticed by challenging an existing framework or suggesting that something is dying or some other tactic to create shock, outrage and get attention.

They do say there is no such thing as bad publicity, but there is such a thing as bad content.

I’ll be honest, in most if not all of these situations, the argument is created with such a weak foundation and with such a limited notion of what they are disparaging, that it’s such a feeble argument.

Congratulations, you’ve gotten tons of attention and you’ve gone “viral”, the problem is that it’s slowing down the evolution of the industry. All the time spent arguing these weak points is time people aren’t focusing on the right things.

Debating is important, but not if it just goes in circles. The worst part is when the answers to most of the arguments have been exhaustively explored already and just a bit of research would save all of us countless hours.

If you’re not an expert, don’t pretend to be. Has someone done a much better job at explaining a topic? Then reference their work.

Going back to the snake oil salesmen

Obviously the miracle medicine was a scam, but they played to people’s gullibility and lack of knowledge. They took advantage of the fact that it was hard to refute their promises. But we now live in an evolved and more informed society, right?

I have a theory that because of the overflow of content, we’ve actually become much like folks in the old west and we need to depend on the so called experts and hope they’re not leading us astray or swindling us.

I’m not saying that all the content and all the hype is a scam, but just like the miracle “doctors”, we need to be objective and maybe just a little sceptical in consuming the content.

Equally, the content creators have to reflect on the content they create and ask themselves whether they are closer to the miracle “doctor” or Dr. Quinn — Medicine Woman (Sorry for the old reference, but it’s an old show and she was a real doctor).

At the end of the day, just because we can create content, doesn’t mean we should. Just because someone talks about something that seems inspirational, doesn’t mean it’s a new religion (or cult) worth joining.

Reduce the noise.

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Originally published at https://hugofroes.substack.com.