If you didn’t focus your camera properly before you took a picture, should anyone really be impressed that it’s in high-definition? HD cameras and smart phones are easy to come by. No training is needed. You open the box, point, click and upload. But if you don’t know what you’re doing and the image is blurry, it’s hard to come across as a professional photographer. It’s far easier to upload blurry ideas.
Anyone can type “leadership quotes” into Google, then copy and paste lines into Twitter. Anyone can read a Wikipedia article, scan for the most basic ideas and write a blog post about it. Anyone can string a few of these blog posts together to produce an eBook or webinar. Add some nice graphics to your website, insert a hashtag in your social media posts and you will appear to be an expert to anyone who has not researched the subject more than you did.
Only someone with a shallow understanding of a complex subject can announce that it’s not really complex at all. Can you name a president, prime minister, or retired general who teaches leadership skills in a two-hour seminar? Where is the eBook on the magic of positive thinking penned by Bill Gates? If anyone can be a best-selling author in 90 days, then why is the course being offered by someone you’ve never heard of before?
Look past the hashtags, followers, likes and tour dates. Go to Google and look at the subject yourself for ten minutes. Count how many other people are pumping out the same high-definition platitudes with only slight variations in how the words have been dressed. Then look at the sources they are all quoting. Browse Wikipedia. Pick up a book by someone who has invested years in a subject instead of hours. Don’t let anyone rob your life’s bandwidth with high resolution snapshots of blurry notions and commonplace ideas.
