I had an
interesting insight while watching Episode II: Attack of the Clones (I
had a hankering to see Yoda kick some butt, OK?!?). The definition of expert
is someone that just does whatever it is they do; they don’t think about it.
Everyone else is just learning. What drove this home for me was when Anakin
heard of his mother being taken and how everyone else had failed or died looking
for her, Anakin started out after her without any planning whatsoever. *That’s*
an expert. Of course, he had The Force and the rest of us have to live with an
average amount of midichlorian, but he’d done what I’ve seen other experts do,
too: unconscious competence.
The reason that this is such an insight for
me is that for my entire life, I’ve always felt that there were special people
in the world that just know what they’re doing. These people worked in companies
or were members of a profession and by their association with those
organizations, I felt that they must be experts. I mean, how could someone be a
member of professional for any length of time and not strive for mastery of the
professional? It was watching Anakin that it finally sunk in that mere
association is not enough; most organizations, no matter how high their
standards, do not stop non-experts at the door. Experts are the ones inside the
organizations that rise to the top, that stand out, that set examples for other
members. Expertise is the thing that separates a moderately smart person
studying up on a topic for a while from someone that really understands
something down to their bones. This is what separates me catching up to my
financial advisor after 6 months of study from a *real* money manager. That’s
what separates a new computer science graduate from me.
That’s not to say
that I couldn’t be better than some “real” money managers one day or that the
new college grad couldn’t be better then me on day one. What it does say,
however, is that encountering a true expert is a rare thing. Because of that
rarity, I believe that most reasonably intelligent people can, with study and
practice, get good at practically anything that they set their mind to. This
means that I can, with a reasonable amount of study and practice, check the work
of my financial advisor or my accountant or a plumbing contractor and come up
with things that they don’t. I know that this is true because I’ve done it (not
with the plumbing though, I’m practically clueless there : ). The amount of
study I needed to catch up with my professional service provider doesn’t make me
an expert, of course, because it’s highly unlikely that either of them is an
expert.
So, now that I’ve settled the question of whether membership
in a profession makes one an expert (it doesn’t), that leaves two questions:
-
How do you recognize expertise? I know it when it occurs in something that
I’m familiar with, e.g. computer goo, but what about in a discipline where
I’m not versed?
- How do you obtain expertise? I’ve got this down to
a science for programming APIs, but can these techniques be applied to
other disciplines?
Comments on my continued quest for expertise welcome.
