Be an expert, Avoid the curse
A friend commented recently that I should check out Newly Corporate, a group blog about Gen Y's who are new to the corporate world.
Dan has a recent pair of articles on expertise in the business world that I found interesting. These are 5 Ways to Establish Yourself as an Expert and The Curse of Knowledge. In the first, he talks about some methods to get your name out there as an expert:
- Provide answers.
- Get published.
- Get a patent.
- Print it and hang it on the wall.
- Learn the market.
And in the second article he talks about making sure that you (the expert) aren't so far removed from the early days that you forget what it is like to be a non-experts. When you forget what it's like, it becomes very difficult to see things from their perspective and thus help solve their problems.
Neither of these are earth-shattering ideas, but they are consistent with what I've read elsewhere. Interesting to see the ideas being promoted to people who are relatively new to business. It just reminds me how important it is to become "known" for some type of skill and expertise as soon as possible.
2 Comment(s)
An expert?
Now why would we want to have faith in an expert? BSE? That may not ring any bells unless you live in the UK.
Experts were people with lots and lots of knowledge which they clung onto for dear life and then attempted to explain in terminology and phraseology that would bamboozle even Nikola Tesle. Surely the advent of the Internet has enabled or at least provided the opportunity for many people to find information for themselves rather than being dependent on the views of a few so-called experts? Granted, it takes more than searching amongst the unfiltered detritus in cyberspace to make you aware of different perspectives and competent in the field. But the snag about ivory towers is that ivory has been banned and is best left on the tusks of the animals to which it originally belonged.
Another significant flaw with many experts is their all too frequent inability to share their expertise, except for the inner circle or circles and which they operate, since those outside of these cannot understand the distinctive lingua franca they develop.
I think we should all be satisfied with being good at something or even very good. Whenever I hear the word expert as I remember an explanation I was once given:
x = the unknown quantity
spurt = a drip under pressure
I have to wonder whether or not being an expert is all that great of an idea if you want to get ahead later in life. Experts seem to get stuck at a certain level in the business after awhile and then have to become consultants. Which is great if that is what you want. But it seems like most of the people who are truly successful at Corporate Life aren't really experts, at least not in the way he's using the term.