May
18
12 Sins of Gurus, Period
May 18, 2006 |
Via David Maister, I came across this post by Uri Baruchin which lists the 12 Sins of Marketing Gurus. I suspect anyone familiar with the software development methodology wars will recognize several of those sins. Not all; for example, there are very few significant ideas in IT that can be summed up in 12 pages. But I’ve certainly heard my share of sweeping generalizations, sweeping negations, and fundamentalism in my time.
Surprising? No. There’s a key difference between a guru and an expert, and the listed sins are all part of the guru job description. The purpose of a guru is not to educate, it’s to create enthusiasm for an idea or set of ideas, and to not incidentally convince you that the guru is the one true explainer of that idea. It is, in short, to evangelize. And “this can be a good idea under the right circumstances” isn’t much of a sales pitch. It’s certainly not as good as hearing that the guru has the solution to all of your problems.
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