Of What Use Was the Rule?

There is a line in No Country for Old Men that is memorable.

“If the rule you followed brought you to this, of what use was the rule?”

It is a brutal question because it does not only challenge the outcome. It challenges the whole logic that produced it.

I think about this often when I see the growing universe of consultants, coaches, advisors and transformation experts claiming they can help CEOs and boards navigate difficult decisions.

Some clearly can.

But the question I always come back to is simple: grounded on what?

Because helping a CEO is not the same as commenting on leadership. Advising a board is not the same as having an opinion on governance. Supporting a transformation is not the same as facilitating a workshop with energetic music and colourful post-its.

At some point, advice needs to be grounded in lived consequence.

Have you carried a P&L? Have you made trade-offs with imperfect information? Have you tried to transform a business that did not particularly want to be transformed? Have you seen a beautiful strategy become messy the moment it touched people, incentives, politics and execution?

Warren Buffett once joked that Wall Street is the only place where people arrive in Rolls-Royces to get advice from people who take the subway.

It is funny because it exposes something real.

There is nothing wrong with external advice. The right external perspective can be hugely valuable. CEOs and boards need challenge, pattern recognition and sometimes someone from the outside who can say what everyone inside the room is carefully avoiding.

But credibility does not come from sounding intelligent.

It comes from knowing what the opinion costs when it has to be executed.

The market is full of people selling maps to places they have never been.

Before following one, it is worth asking who drew the map, and what it cost them to learn it.

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