The LinkedIn Era of Instant Wisdom


There’s something almost comical about LinkedIn’s wisdom factory. The moment an ad catches fire - good or bad —like Cadbury’s Not Just a Cadbury Ad, which featured Shah Rukh Khan promoting small businesses—it sparks a frenzy of insights and human truths. Marketing folks (and even those far removed from the field) pounce on the opportunity, dissecting its brilliance, speculating on its success, and anointing it a case study of our times. It’s as though every marketer is on call, ready to declare the causality behind virality.

On the flip side, a campaign misstep—like current Jaguar’s rebranding ad—draws an equally feverish response. It becomes a post-mortem free-for-all, with LinkedIn lit up by a chorus of “I told you so,” blaming everything from misjudged social cues, the brand director’s sex orientation to poor corporate strategy. Whether it’s Nike’s market dip or Trump’s election triumph, there’s no shortage of listicles, each purporting to unpack the ‘10 reasons’ behind these outcomes.

But let’s face it—causality isn’t always that neat. Indian mythology often reflects this wisdom. Take the tale of the Mahabharata: was the war caused by Duryodhana’s greed, Shakuni’s manipulation, or Yudhishthira’s dice game? Or was it a mix of them all? Life, much like epic tales, is complex, non-linear, and often unpredictable.

Yet, in the rush to sound insightful, we often ignore this messiness. Our LinkedIn posts package life’s complexities into tidy narratives, leaving no room for randomness or serendipity. It’s as if we’re uncomfortable admitting that some outcomes are, well, random.

Worse still, we shy away from predicting the future. Uncertainty makes us nervous, and wrong predictions can haunt you in the digital age. So, instead, we excel at post-facto rationalisation—safe, polished, and always correct in hindsight.

This obsession with causality comes at a cost. It turns us into spectators of the past rather than architects of the future. Why debate endlessly about why an ad worked instead of discussing what it could inspire next? Why analyse election results when we could focus on shaping policies that matter?

Curiosity becomes the first casualty of this causality parade. Instead of asking the ad creators, the campaign strategists, or even the consumers themselves, we fill our feeds with assumptions and overconfidence. The humility to say “I don’t know, but I’ll find out” is often replaced with the arrogance of certainty.

In our eagerness to sound profound, we lose sight of the bigger picture. The truth is, causality is rarely definitive. The only certainty is uncertainty—and perhaps, the courage to embrace it.

Sometimes, understanding doesn’t lie in the “why” of the past but in the “what now” of the future.

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