Sometimes it takes wisdom and experience to recognize what previously-given "vague" advice actually means. Not just in business, but in everything. EG, it took

Sometimes it takes wisdom and experience to recognize what previously-given "vague" advice actually means. Not just in business, but in everything. EG, it took me years of training/yoga before I really understood what is meant by "engage the core" or what my grandma meant by "if everyone jumped off a bridge, would you" (I mean the words made sense but it took a while to really see people following the herd towards destruction to realize how important and hard resisting it is. I think the value of these things is not necessarily in giving you answers but in helping you realize there's some sort of gap. Even though "engage the core" doesn't tell me what it means (I suspect you can't just tell someone how to do it) - it does make me aware that "this is a thing I don't know" - which led me to explore the topic and more importantly, recognize when it happened ("oh! this is it, I need to cultivate more of this") For the purpose of this article, it's helpful to distinguish between the "what" and the "how." ie: "reach out to customers" is helpful if it at least makes me think about "am I doing that? do I have reason to think I am doing it enough and well?" For someone for example who comes to a business from a technical angle first, an honest reflection may lend them to realize "no, I don't actually have a history of working with customers and don't know how to do it." And that's a great on the "what" level. Once you see that gap and become open-minded to it, you can find paths to the "how." For example if I was in those shoes, I would ask myself two questions: (1) who do I know who is good at X (eg dealing with customers) - can I pick their brain on what this means and (2) how do I find 2-3 books/courses/something that can give me a foundation in it? Going from "I never thought about customers" to "I recognize the gap, I found a trusted advisor and I built some basic knowledge" is the value-add of this type of generic advice.