I came across this advice from Eric Schmidt about handling email, which, sort of, makes sense.
“Respond quickly: There are people who can be relied upon to respond promptly to emails, and those who can’t. Strive to be one of the former. Most of the best — and busiest — people we know act quickly on their emails, not just to us or to a select few senders, but to everyone.”
Well, it absolutely makes sense if you're at the very tippy top of a large organisation and what that organisation mostly wants you to do is make decisions. If, in fact, you're a bottleneck.
But it reminded me that most of the business advice you get is from people who are at the top of organisations, and they're by definition not typical. I presume, for instance, that Google and Eric Schmidt have jointly adapted such that he only has to send short, quick emails.
Advice derived from looking at succesful people is very often to behave in a way that only the powerful can get away with. There should be more advise for the less powerful.