Flirting with Business Education: The One Way You Are Being Duped And One Way To Fix That


Business content today is like the lure of a temptress.  It flirts with peoples minds and offers little tangible. Most of it can be wrapped into "5 Ways you are hurting / lacking and 7 ways of fixing / doing it right ".  You read it and you have satisfied the  lure and then you move on to the next headline.  You may be spending 5 hours a month flipping thru magazine or website but at the end, each time you continue with your work just like you did before.  This only feeds the media frenzy and the whole self help apparatus but you as an executive have only lost time.  This reminds me of the current obesity crisis.  The food industry insidiously pulls you to feed on food like "things" (aka chemicals) and that results in your greater desires for more of the same, not knowing that you have hurt yourself rather than gained from what you just consumed.

This degradation is the result of the system that has been created by the modern day pied pipers of content believe in their preaching, like the original Stephen of Cloyes, who preached for a crusade by children and led to the death of tens of thousands of children.  But very much like him they know little about it.  There is little experience or research or depth of content.  There are sales coaches and content writers who have not sold worth a cent.  They have not even done any empirical research but they write with impunity and the audacity of the lords of medieval ages.  

THE PULL IS TOO STRONG AND NUMBERS MATTER

This phenomenon is seen not just with the innumerable content sites that have sprouted unabated with little barriers to entry, but has also infected the major established players. McKinsey, HBR, WSJ, NYT all of them have sprinkled the golden dust of "5 ways and 7 ways".  The pull is too strong and numbers matter.  You can always find a major cover page or the home page with one such article at least.  It is a testiment to marketings understanding of the human psyche.  Not that people do not know that processed food is bad for you by design but most are not ready to abandon it.  Like I said the pull is too strong.  The health consequences are well known.  Diet soda is a drug and so is sugar. The diseases are a part of life unlike they were before.  Fortunately, the consequences of reading junk content is not as sevier.  At best it has an opportunity cost and at worst you may still continue to wonder why your progress is worse than you'd like it to be. 

However, the opportunity cost is huge.  What you are capable of doing is infinite - literally.  You have an equipment that is amazing by any standards.  Properly used, you will find that it can do amazing things. Gandhi failed at the bar exam so many times and so did Einstien in high school.  But that is another story. Getting back to the content, I think we need to demand quality - validity and reliability and actionability.  Let us show where we spend time on the web - junk food isles or the local produce.