The most successful people I know are straight shooters who tell it like it is. Even the mild bullshitters I know are struggling to make anything happen.
VCs will not hand over tens of millions of dollars to someone they know is a liar or habitual exaggerator. Sure, they don't always find out in time. But I really haven't seen that strategy work out.
There is no benefit to telling a good story unless you actually have a good story.
The most successful people I know are straight shooters who tell it like it is.
Once you're successful, you can be that way. I think it's pretty rare that people get successful as "straight shooters". Telling the truth makes you a bearer of bad news a lot of the time. I know, because I've been described as "pathologically honest", and often it doesn't end well.
You can "speak truth to power" if you wish. Power already knows the truth. So the only thing you do, by doing so, is identify yourself as a threat, now that they know you know. And the last thing power wants is an epidemic of truth-knowing (i.e. a morale problem).
I've found that a lot of people will use "telling the truth" to rationalize a lot of negative behavior. We can all easily mistake our own uninformed opinions for "the truth". One way to learn the difference is to notice when "telling the truth" causes you to be misunderstood often.
The successful people I'm referring to were not bullshitters before or after their success. Bullshitting really not a success trait. It's a wannabe trait that ends up losing.
What I think works is being totally forthcoming about problems, risks, etc. in the past and present, but maybe being a bit optimistic about future possibilities. i.e. "This quarter our sales were down 10%, but we think it was due to reason x, and we have strategy y in place to address that. We will be monitoring closely and adjust as needed.".
You don't want to say "there wasn't a problem", but you also don't want to say "sales went down, we have no idea why, we're just going to continue" or "sales went down, we're doomed."
VCs will not hand over tens of millions of dollars to someone they know is a liar or habitual exaggerator. Sure, they don't always find out in time. But I really haven't seen that strategy work out.
There is no benefit to telling a good story unless you actually have a good story.