By Hiran de Silva
Signposts are supposed to guide travellers. But what if the signpost is beautiful, polished, persuasive… yet pointing entirely the wrong way?
Imagine coming across a signpost on a country road. It is beautifully crafted—the colour you like, high-quality paint, perfect typography, solid, confident, reassuring. You trust it.
You follow it.
You feel certain. Confident. Motivated.
But you never arrive at your intended destination—because the signpost was never pointing to your destination in the first place.
Maybe it was moved. Maybe the person who installed it didn’t care which way it pointed—only that it looked authoritative. Maybe it was designed to lure attention, not deliver accuracy.
If you knew that, what would you make of that signpost?
What would you make of the person who built it?
And more importantly: what would you make of the travellers who trusted it simply because it was attractive?
When Signposts Aren’t Meant for You
There is another kind of misleading signpost—a perfectly accurate one that is simply interpreted by the wrong person.
Consider the drive up the M11 motorway to Stansted Airport. You stay on the motorway. That’s the correct path.
But on the slip road before the airport is a sign that reads “Stansted Airport,” guiding those who accidentally exited back toward the motorway.
The sign isn’t meant for you—but many literal thinkers panic when they see it from the main road:
“Oh no—we should have turned off!”
But that signpost is not for them. It is for the traveller who has already left the correct path and needs help returning.
The problem is not the signpost.
The problem is the interpretation.
This is how many people interpret signposts on social media.
The Problem With Social-Media Signposts
In the Excel world, the dominant signposts are:
- View counts
- Likes
- Comments
- Trending topics
- Click-through rates
These have become the navigation system that directs millions of learners.
But here’s the hidden truth:
Social-media signposts do not point toward your destination.
They only point toward the content creator’s incentives.
High-traffic metrics are not indicators of whether the content:
- helps you solve real business problems
- gets you closer to enterprise-level competence
- prepares you for management-level work
- aligns with real world workflows
- teaches you to think technically or strategically
- leads to better career outcomes
Views measure click-ability, not usefulness.
Likes measure momentary enthusiasm, not capability.
Comments measure entertainment, not transformation.
In other words:
The signpost’s beauty has nothing to do with where it leads.
The 100,000-Views Fallacy
Let’s take a typical example:
A YouTube video on “How to Build a Database in Excel” with 100,000 views.
That number—100,000—feels like a strong indicator.
A powerful signpost.
Surely, you think, with 100,000 views, this must be good.
But:
- 100,000 views tells you nothing about whether the method works in real enterprise environments.
- 100,000 views tells you nothing about whether the method scales, reconciles, consolidates, or survives audit.
- 100,000 views tells you nothing about whether the method gets you to the destination that real business challenges require.
In fact, the 2% “like rate” (2,000 likes out of 100,000 views) tells you that most people abandoned it early, unmoved or unimpressed.
But even likes tell us nothing.
Because liking a signpost is not the same as reaching the destination.
How to Test a Signpost: An Empirical Method
Let’s say we want to test the real value of one of these high-traffic Excel videos.
Here is how to do it.
Step 1 — Show the video to a group of Excel users.
They watch it. They may enjoy it. They may admire it. They may follow along.
Step 2 — Give them a realistic business challenge.
Not a follow-along recipe.
A real business challenge where:
- a relational data model is required
- a hub-and-spoke solution is appropriate
- data consolidation, reconciliation, or upload is essential
- Excel must work with a database
**Step 3 — Ask:
“How would you solve this problem using what you just learned?”**
This is where the truth emerges.
The results will be predictable:
- Most will not even know where to begin.
They liked the signpost, but the signpost did not point to the destination. - Many will assume Excel cannot do it at all.
They believe relational databases require IT involvement. - Some will misinterpret the question
and simply replay the video recipe step by step, even though it has no relevance to the business challenge. - A few will understand the destination
but correctly note that the video’s technique cannot get them there. - An even smaller minority—those with enterprise experience—will say:
“I know how to do this. Excel can do it via a relational database, but not in the way shown in the video.”
What does this reveal?
The signpost and the destination have no relationship.
The signpost only measures attractiveness, not accuracy.
Following a Recipe vs Solving a Business Problem
There is a fundamental difference between:
- following a cookery lesson
- solving a business challenge
One is procedural.
The other is conceptual.
One is step-by-step.
The other is architectural.
One requires memory.
The other requires understanding.
You can follow a recipe without understanding why anything works.
But you cannot solve enterprise problems that way.
Yet most social-media Excel teaching is recipe-based.
It’s a series of steps:
Click this. Tick that. Press OK. Put this formula here.
This drives high engagement—because it is digestible. It is comfortable.
It provides emotional satisfaction.
It is the beautiful signpost.
But it does not build capability.
It does not teach people to:
- evaluate a business requirement
- design a scalable data architecture
- choose the right tool for the right challenge
- understand why data separation matters
- recognise when a relational database is needed
- build solutions that meet management needs
A recipe cannot teach those things.
A signpost cannot replace a map.
Negative Comments Are the Most Valuable Metric
On LinkedIn I ran a small poll:
“Which metric would you trust when evaluating content?
- Views
- Likes
- Positive comments
- Negative comments”
Almost nobody chose negative comments.
But here’s the truth:
Negative comments are the only metric that contain insight.
- They ask “Does this actually work in the real world?”
- They challenge assumptions.
- They point out design flaws.
- They come from people with real experience.
- They test applicability, not appeal.
Yet content creators often dismiss these comments.
Or respond with hostility.
Or give dumbed-down answers.
Or simply ignore them—because they threaten the algorithmic illusion.
Positive comments are mostly fan-mail.
Likes are reflexive.
Views are advertising revenue.
Only the negative comments contain actual information about whether the signpost is pointing toward the destination.
The Final Question for the Reader
So we return to the traveller, standing at the signpost.
You want to reach a destination:
real enterprise competence,
real business impact,
real transformation,
real value creation.
The world is full of beautiful signposts that point to nowhere.
So I leave you with the question that matters:
What metrics will you trust to guide you—
if your goal is to actually reach the destination?
If not views…
If not likes…
If not positive comments…
Then what?
Your answer to that question determines whether you stay in the swamp
or reach your intended destination.
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