Page 107 - Benjamin Franklin\'s The Way to Wealth: A 52 brilliant ideas interpretation - PDFDrive.com

49 BE READY TO LISTEN

Businesses spend a great deal of money on consultancy but that doesn’t
mean they act on the advice they’re given. Franklin could have been
speaking for every consultant out there when he said ‘We may give
advice, but we cannot give conduct’.

DEFINING IDEA…
It is better to give than receive—especially advice.
~ MARK TWAIN

In The Secrets of Consulting Gerald Weinberg established what he called the
first and second laws of consulting. The first is that clients are not rational
and although they have a problem (otherwise the consultant would not be
there) they will never admit it. The second is that no matter how technical
the problem may appear at first glance, it will ultimately prove to be a
people problem.

Be honest, doesn’t that sound just a little bit familiar? Nobody likes to
admit to problems, essentially human ones, so even good advice is painful
to act on. In particular, there’s one refusal to act on advice that is so
widespread it has its own name; founderitis, or Founder’s Syndrome—the
negative symptoms which can arise when a company founder has difficulty
letting go and allowing the business to grow beyond his or her original
dream.

The classic symptoms of founderitis include disrespect for new practices or
formalised planning (the stock in trade of consultants), a disinclination to
delegate and, above all, a resistance to advice from specialists. It’s an
understandable side-effect of the amount of personal investment it takes to
get a new enterprise off the ground—the business becomes your baby and
you are reluctant to give it up or to be told by someone else that they are
better qualified to care for it. Except that, again like kids, businesses have a
tendency to grow up and they change and evolve as they do so.