The Altitude of Good Advice

Hi, 

This week is two stories, an idea, and a plug. 

Let’s jump in. 

Yesterday, I went with my buddy Trey to his physio appointment. He is currently 2 months post surgery on his knee, and he is two weeks into his rehab. 

I went to the appointment thinking I was going to help film some clips. What actually happened was I learned about the body, talked philosophy, and deepened my understanding of how to give good advice. 

Let me set the scene for you: A random building in Tacoma. Like it’s in the same parking lot as a radiator shop. We walk in and it is the only appointment in the entire building for the time slot. 

Trey gets up on this table, and the physio starts to contort Trey’s body around to try and find the areas that don’t have the proper range of motion. 

I would say pretty normal so far. 

Then, Trey and Josh (the physio), start to talk about the connections each joint, muscle, and ligaments have. They start to talk about the body as a system. I am not a kinesiologist so I won’t do the conversation justice, but the point was he was looking at Trey’s body as a network of interconnected systems. 

The workout that followed was all focused on discovery. Discovering the line where pain starts, the amount of trust Trey has in his body, and discovering a path forward. 

It was the perfect blend between coming to the appointment with a plan and discovering how that plan can be carried out based on the reality of circumstances. 

It made me think of this idea: The altitude of good advice. 

There was no moment where Josh got too close to the problem or too general. The thing I took from the experience was the fact that he kept the appropriate distance from the problem to actually be able to give good advice. 

Story number 2: This is one that I have told before. When we were starting The Hero’s Journal, we enlisted help from a very sharp marketer. Let’s call him Zach (that was his name). Early on we had this issue… everything ended up under the purview of marketing. Logistics? Marketing. Product design? Marketing. The office space? Marketing. 

This wasn’t because Zach was being territorial or a bulldog. It was something that I don’t think I could understand at the moment, it was a recognition that everything in the business was interconnected, and because marketing was our biggest lever, thus everything became marketing. 

In the same way that Trey’s rehab could end up being all about his knee, the business could become all about marketing. 

This would be an example of being too close to the problem. 

Inversely, if every conversation ended with “the business is a living organism, we must all work together in harmony.”

That would be an example of being too far from the problem. 

What you need is the correct altitude in order to see the problem for its specifics, and see the network as a whole. 

So how do you give good advice? 

This is where holistic medicine comes in. A great consultant understands that they are coming in to learn of the symptoms, and then get understanding about the greater problem. 

The solution is only as important as its impact on solving the greater problem. 

Cutting off your foot, solves the problem of foot pain, but weakens the system. 

What does all this mean? 

When you are trying to solve your own problem or advise on someone else’s problem, you need to seek understanding of the whole system while not getting too far from it or too close. 

In business, you need to understand all of the verticals so that you can collaborate with each department to make the business as a whole better. 

In life, you need to continue to grow as a person so that you have additional context that will allow you to provide valuable insight that isn’t just from your personal experience. 

Plug: Trey and I just dropped a podcast, give it a listen: How Basketball Can Change Your Life / Episode 001

Happy Consulting, 

Kyle