The subject of my wonderful friend, Ed Roberts, came up today. Ed died in 1995 and I wrote an obituary the following year. You might enjoy reading the obituary I wrote. It is important. I wrote it because I knew the world would never understand who Ed was and why he was the most influential person of the 20th century.
What I remembered today was a lesson Ed Roberts taught me, inadvertently, about giving business advice. The first lesson about advice I learned in my late 20’s, which applies to all of life: Never give something unless it is requested. That applies to everything. (Gifts for birthdays, holidays and when visiting are implicitly asked for by custom.) It certainly applies to advice; wait for a request.
Sometime in the 1980’s Ed asked for help. He was running the World Institute on Disability which he and Judy Heumann had created. He was dissatisfied with his ability to get work done.
I went to Oakland and did my standard due diligence research on his office operations. I found three or four changes Ed could make that would increase productivity. Normally I would expect the boss of an organization to put in a few extra hours of work to implement my recommendations.
Ed was in a wheelchair with a motor that also pumped air into his lungs. He could only move two fingers. After work Ed would go straight into his iron lung at home.
I was stunned when I realized that I always gave advice that required extra work by people for whom extra work would pay off generously.
That was not possible for Ed. He couldn’t do extra work.
I rethought my advice. I came up with small incremental changes in the way Ed worked that would result in long-term changes.
An example was having his staff post a daily and weekly list of projects they were all working on. That example created more esprit de corps and common effort with a better sense of priorities and deadlines.
From that I learned to think of business advice that didn’t require extra hours and extra work for the boss.
That remains good advice for a business consultant.