As someone who produces useful free and paid information for a living over the last 20+ years I naturally take a less than healthy interest in what else is being published each month.
That means flipping through an incredible quantity of online and offline material including magazines.
Specifically, I look for…
1. Patterns of topics, issues, challenges and frustrations/problems that the information targets
2. What transformations people that buy this information are looking for
3. How useful and applicable the information is to the target audience (not fluff or theory but actual, practical information)
4. What credentials (in the real world not just academia) the writers have
One of the magazines in the business segment I always flip through, but can never quite stomach is the Harvard Business Review.
For years I truly did try and give it a chance…maybe there is a nugget in these pages somewhere…perhaps next month’s issue will be more relevant…could I be missing something?
I can truthfully say I have never gotten a useful, applicable tip, technique, strategy or insight from that magazine in all of the months I flip through (and yes I have read some of the articles multiple times, it really seems to make no difference other than to erase a few more precious minutes of my life).
My experience spans high levels in both Entrepreneurial camps (owning my own business), small corporate start-ups (with <30 people) and huge corporate life (>60,000) – the information seems equally useless to all 3 segments.
But today…I must change from ignoring the content to screaming out loud about their recent tabloid-like coverage of one person’s absurd opinion that”low self-confidence” produces more successes in business.
Seriously!
Does this guy even understand what self-confidence means?
Not really…what he describes as self-confidence leading to someone being “deluded” and “arrogant” – my experience tells me exactly the opposite…that people who lack self-confidence often cover this deficiency by covering up (deluding) themselves of what is really going on and keep people at bay with arrogance and politics at the expense of listening and being adaptable.
The fatal flaw in this argument is that the very people who “appear” self-confident and rise to the top of companies are often far from being truly self-confident. Instead, they cover up their lack of confidence with behavior that over-compensates for their insecurities…and that is what is deadly to business (as well as life in general)
True self-confidence comes from within and empowers us to be confident enough in our ability to handle any situation that we can face the truth, face reality no matter what that reality is.
With self-confidence we can listen to others and even promote those around us who are better in areas we are not…would someone with low self-confidence really take that risk?
Look, there is no way to categorize this piece of writing as tabloid drivel, a blatant attempt by the magazine to create buzz through deliberately putting out controversial content that is not based on any morsel of fact!
Really…is that where the HBR has fallen to?
What are your thoughts…am I being too hard on them?
