There’s a big difference between an example and an analogy. The most insightful teachers do not give you examples; they give you analogies. And there’s a reason why.
Examples are one-offs that worked in the scenario of that example. They may or may not be replicable in other scenarios. If a marketing ploy worked for person A, it may or may not work for person B because many other variables are different.
An analogy, on the other hand, is a generalization. The very nature of an analogy makes us do two things: a) we believe in the analogy because it’s true and b) we research into how this analogy can be mapped to our process. This research leads us to figure out our own executive approach to applying this analogy to our work.
Collectively, owing to the misplaced, misinformed “scientific way” of our people, everyone shuns or makes light of any advice or thought that’s given with an analogy instead of an example. “Show me the data,” we all scream. “Tell me the numbers.”
Analogy is generalization. And for a lot of reasons, everyone’s afraid of generalization. There’s this mad rush to be politically correct, to be specific, to avoid generalizations and associations. Fear, may be?
The greatest thought leaders — even in science — weren’t afraid to find general principles. People used analogies to drive science towards where it is today.
In the context of business, examples can be very bad to look up to. What worked for person A may never work out for person B even if both of them run similar companies.
All this is not to say that examples and data are bad. But they can be very, very misleading in a psychological way.
When we spot an advice based solely on examples, we must look for genaralizations, analogies and such. These will help us find out “why” the example worked and how we can understand it in its natural context. This will help us formulate our own principles that we can test for.