What's the right rôle for good advisors to play? Should they predict the future, or instead try to enhance the listeners' understanding of the forces which drive future events? The latter, obviously — but that tends to be frustrating to the customers, and charlatans are likely, in the short run, to trick many people by offering simple answers, point solutions, falsely precise forecasts.
It's tough to take a long-term view and work to provide tools for better thinking. Tough, but essential if one hopes to give honest advice. Sometimes there's only room to present a single "if", as in "... if X continues, then Y ...". But then at least the audience can begin to look at cause-effect relationships, systemic factors, and the root sources of uncertainty.
Tuesday, April 27, 1999 at 16:51:06 (EDT) = 1999-04-27
(correlates: NanoRadians, MyJob, DeschoolingDemythologized, ...)