Article · · By Innam Dustgir
Whose Advice Deserves Your Attention?
When you build a business, advice comes from every direction. Someone thinks you should expand. Someone else says you are moving too quickly. One person recommends hiring, another recommends automation, and a third believes you should change the business model entirely.
Some of that advice will be useful. Some will be well intended but unsuitable. The difficult part is knowing which deserves to influence your next decision.
As a founder building from Pakistan, I want to remain open to different perspectives. But I also believe the responsibility for a decision stays with the person who has to carry it out and live with the consequences.
That makes evaluating advice part of the job.
Start With the Decision You Actually Need to Make
Before asking someone what they think, be clear about the problem.
“Should we grow?” is too broad to produce useful guidance. “Should we hire another delivery manager before accepting more clients?” gives the conversation a purpose.
The second question allows you to discuss workload, management capacity, costs and service quality. It also makes it easier to recognise advice that does not address the issue.
A useful habit is to write down the decision, the main constraint and the outcome you want before seeking opinions. Otherwise, a conversation can leave you with more possibilities and less clarity.
Ask What Makes the Advice Relevant
Experience deserves attention, but its relevance needs examination.
A strategy that worked for a large company with substantial funding may be difficult for a smaller business to sustain. Advice from a product founder may need adjustment before it applies to a service company.
I would rather understand the conditions behind a recommendation than hear a confident promise about the outcome.
What resources did it require? What went wrong during implementation? What would make the person recommend a different approach?
Those questions turn a broad opinion into something you can assess.
Separate the Recommendation From the Evidence
Consider a simple example: someone recommends replacing a manual reporting process with new software.
Before choosing the software, establish what is actually failing. Are reports late because information is scattered? Are responsibilities unclear? Are people collecting numbers nobody uses?
Each problem calls for a different response. Buying a tool before understanding the cause may simply move the confusion into a new system.
For me, a useful recommendation should connect three things: the problem, the proposed change and a reason to expect improvement.
If that connection is missing, more investigation is needed.
Test Advice Before Making a Large Commitment
Many business decisions allow a smaller trial.
Instead of changing a process across the whole company, try it with one team. Instead of buying an annual subscription immediately, test whether the tool solves the problem during a limited evaluation.
Define success before the trial starts. Depending on the decision, that might mean faster turnaround, fewer corrections or less time spent preparing a report.
Also decide when to review the result and who will make the final call.
A trial becomes much more useful when it has a clear question to answer.
Keep a Record of Your Reasoning
A short decision note can prevent a surprising amount of confusion.
Record what you decided, why you chose it, which assumptions remain uncertain and when you will review it.
Later, if the outcome disappoints, you can examine the reasoning rather than rely on memory. Perhaps the advice was unsuitable. Perhaps the implementation was incomplete. Perhaps an important condition changed.
These are different lessons, and they should lead to different responses.
Stay Open, Then Take Responsibility
I do not think a founder needs to have every answer. I do think a founder needs a reliable way to evaluate the answers being offered.
Ask precise questions. Look for relevant evidence. Test what can be tested. Give people room to challenge your thinking.
Then make the decision, explain it clearly and remain willing to revise it.
The value of advice is in the quality of the action it helps you take.
Originally published on LinkedIn