Recently, an acquaintance, whom I shall call Ken, shared with me an article he had written. The article was a review of a non-fiction book telling the story of a widely known scandal in the start-up scene. Ken sent me the link, with a cover asking me to check it out because it was “relevant” to a topic I was researching on start-up failures.
I read the article. At first, I was not sure what part of the article Ken was referring to. Yes, the story itself was relevant. However, the details had been widely covered by publications such as the Wall Street Journal so there was little that I, or everyone else, didn’t already know.
The contents of Ken’s article consisted of—not so much a review of the book author’s skill in telling the story—but in Ken’s re-telling of the story in his own words, with metaphors and adjectives (“like Icarus,” “grippingly”). It looked like Ken had written a Book Report instead of a Book Review.
It was not until I got to Paragraph 5, where I got Ken’s original input. In that last paragraph, he wrote three sentences about his takeaways from the story, but did not go elaborate further.
I read the article a few times. In fact, I had read Ken’s article when he posted it publicly in this forum, with a cover saying that it dealt with the "dangers" of having an amoral “career advisor,” which is a topic of interest for me. Lured by such promise, I read the article but did not find any meaningful mention of the role of a career advisor until one sentence in the last paragraph—the link being tangential at best. I opted not to say anything at that time..that is until Ken sent me the article directly asking me check it out as it was also relevant to start-ups.
This is the part where perhaps I should have kept my mouth shut. Ken advertises himself as as a career advisor and I thought he might appreciate some feedback. So, I wrote back:
“Constructive feedback:
- you dedicate 80% of the review to recounting the story (that most of us know) in flourish language which is nice but doesn't really add anything new.
- you don't get to the point you are trying to make until the last paragraph. I am assuming the point being that of "moral compass"
- when you get to the point you are trying to make (paragraph 5), you dedicate only one sentence to each takeaway to make a superficial statement without going into any depth.”
Ken replied with one-line: “I would call that destructive criticism...”
And that was that.
I had met Ken recently and considered doing business with him, which included promoting him as an example of a good career advisor. Needless to say, it is not going to happen.
The truth is that I read Ken’s article several times and tried very hard to find content that was original or that I could promote. I thought that, as a person who gives advice and who is obviously looking for more exposure, Ken would appreciate feedback that could help improve his writing. I was wrong.
I am not sure where my relationship with Ken stands now (Ken - if you are reading this, I said I was sorry!). To make the best the situation, I thought that I would share this story and an article about the difference between constructive and destructive criticism. Until next time, I will work on the art of keeping my mouth shut.
Enjoy!