You Negotiate Commodities, But You Seize Opportunities
Over and over in business you'll see people avoid decisions they don't deeply understand (e.g. the average VC knows nothing about gaming, the average PHB knows nothing about databases, the average techie knows nothing about your market), and to paper over their ignorance and demonstrate they are in control and providing value they'll suggest a change to something they think they understand (advisor shares, the design of the front page, your pricing relative to a bowl of ramen).<p>This rarely works well, particularly when the two decisions are in fact related.  One coping mechanism is being able to ignore advice (if you haven't taken their money, you can probably ignore their advice).  Another is having a list of knobs people can twirl which are off the critical path (salaryman survival skill #1: distract the boss with rearranging a Gantt chart which can't kill anyone).