Is good advice scalable?

As participants in the advice-giving business, we pay attention when various experts expound on significant trends affecting firms such as ours. This morning, Venture Beat carries a piece by "Minitrends" author John Vanston entitled, "9 emerging minitrends to watch."

In the article, one of Mr. Vanston's minitrends is "New approaches to giving and receiving advice.", about which he writes:

"Individuals and organizations commonly seek expert advice when making important decisions. In providing such advice, large consulting firms with large, multidisciplinary staffs, well-structured processes and procedures, huge computer capabilities, and long-standing reputations have traditionally had a major advantage. However, the ever-increasing power and ubiquity of information gathering, processing, and communicating technologies, small and medium-size consulting groups are often able to give more focused, timely, and user-friendly advice than the larger firms."

We are indeed flattered that smaller firms such as ours are apparently the beneficiaries of this trend, simply by virtue of our size.  Over the years, though, we have often observed that the size of one's firm and the quality of his advice have very little in common.  On any given issue or problem, the insights and other personal qualities of the advice giver sitting with the client that makes the difference.

It makes sense, then, to recognize that advice and implementation are two different things.  Picking the right design for a building and actually getting it built don't require the same experience or skills. Likewise, making difficult choices at the top and bringing them to life throughout an organization call for different kinds of "consultants", if you will.  It is a distinction made by David Maister, our favorite observer of the professional services and consulting businesses, between projects requiring "brains" versus "arms and legs".

Unlike many other things in business, good advice isn't scalable.