In the past few months, I’ve seen two different situations where “experts” publicly assailed an individual or a company because of a decision that they felt made no sense or was downright unethical. The problem with both of these situations was that the “experts” weren’t privy to many of the key details driving the decision. Why weren’t they privy? Because it wasn’t their decision, and the people making the decision had no reason at all to fill them in on the details.
The latest incident involved Danny Sullivan from Search Engine Watch. As everyone will attest, Danny was Search Engine Watch. He founded it and was always the leading face of the company.
On August 29, Danny announced that he was leaving Search Engine Watch because he and owner Incisive Media had “been unable to agree on terms to renew [his] contract.” Immediately, industry folks blasted the decision as shortsighted and many claimed that Incisive just didn’t understand how valuable Danny was.
Last Friday, though, we were granted some insight into why Incisive didn’t make more of an effort to keep Danny. Turns out, they knew they were going to be purchased soon and didn’t have any real motivation to dilute their equity by keeping him around.
This should be a lesson to all of us to be really sure we know all the facts the next time we decide to criticize anyone. Even when it seems very obvious (like with Danny), it’s often not, and we end up with egg on our face. We’ve all been there.
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