This has been a difficult post to write, not least because it's a very important subject. But significantly, the distinction between experience and expertise, between mere competence and professional expertise, is deeply flawed. Conversations about a person’s experience surface on the tube, on blogs, in print and at the workplace. In short, the rhetoric of experience is familiar, recurring and deeply lodged in most people's minds, but with little expressed clarity.
What's most troubling about the experience mindset is that the majority of business professionals seem to believe that with enough experience, the development of expertise is inevitable.
Rainmakers, for example, regularly face this kind of situation:
My firm (Zema) has developed a new product for a competitive market. The potential client tells them that she’s staying with her current firm. Why? They have ten years of experience with that firm. Zema has intimate knowledge of their competitor and its product. Furthermore, extensive testing shows Zema's product to be far superior to the competition. Yet, lacking experience with Zema, the potential client will not consider its product much less its service.
In today’s economy experience has become a sacred cow, a mental model immune to tampering or criticism for fear of public outcry. In the most recent presidential election, journalists of every stripe consistently drew negative conclusions about a candidate's lack of experience in a given area as though experience was the only criterion of significance. Track down the rhetoric of experience, the uses of the term, and you will find that business people inevitably make experience a, if not the, decisive factor in coaching, network building, decisionmaking, recruiting and innovation.
So what’s the problem with the experience/expertise dichotomy?
Obviously, we know that you can't develop expertise without experience. All experts have more practice in their background than novices or the merely competent, and practice is the equivalent of experience. But here’s one missing caveat: expertise requires a lot more than practice or experience. Indeed, I believe that experience often means very little for a number of reasons.
To begin with, the sheer amount of practice does not inherently predict expertise. The fact of the matter is that you can lock in bad habits through practice. Study after study shows that without effective feedback and coaching the possibility of developing expertise is nearly non-existent. In other words, all experience is not created equal.
Instead, research proves that expertise requires an extended period of concentrated effort (practice), plus self-reflection, guidance and feedback from a capable coach. Indeed, studies show that after gaining competency in the first four to six years after college most professionals quit learning. That's true not only of businesspeople, but also lawyers, architects and physicians (yikes!). So, if your expert has ten years of experience, there is a high probability that he or she hasn't learned much in the last five years and you're getting dated input. Expertise can be a literal matter of life or death.
Still further, the potential quality of experts varies significantly from company to company. For example, a marketing specialist from your local retail firm will inevitably lack the marketing expertise of a Proctor and Gamble marketer. All experts are not created equal.
And not all experts can coach equally. What this means for you Gen-Yers is that you need to recognize that many experts will not be sensitive to your level of knowledge. Studies show that when the knowledge differences are extreme, the expert lacks sensitivity to the novice’s knowledge base and often fails to communicate necessary knowledge. Searching for top-level or cutting-edge expertise may not be all that smart. Some experts simply can’t coach Gen-Yers.
Finally, we know that people with great expertise are often close-minded, unaware of changes in their field and tend to ignore situational differences. As I suggest to my architectural clients, if a firm has built 35 firehouses over the past twenty years using two or three different models, that firm is liable to use the same two or three models for their future projects. The failure to upgrade one's ideas, innovate and adapt to a new client's needs is palpable. As everyone knows, engineering close-mindedness has significantly and negatively impacted General Motors and Chrysler. Some experts wear blinders.
What does this mean for a Gen-Yer?
I’ve written this blog as a cautionary statement about business expertise and managerial experts. My experience has been that Gen-Yers look for experts for a couple reasons. In many instances they’re looking for someone to coach and mentor them. They believe in my emphasis on coaching as an efficient means for gaining professional knowledge and growth in their work situation.
Also, Gen-Yers, like all of us in our early years, may well be searching for professional role models. They want a network of mentors who can assist them in navigating the professional world and determining the most appropriate values. In short, they want the support of professionals they can emulate in their own development.
As a result, Gen-Yers, take these precautionary steps in your search for expert mentors or coaches.
First, the knowledge of your own personal goals, your strengths and weaknesses as well as your relational skills can be tremendously useful to others who are trying to help you. While you may not be very clear about your own abilities, you have to start somewhere. Your self-awareness will evolve with managerial and mentor feedback.
Second, it is critical to think through your career context even in the early years. It makes no sense to build a network of various experts that is inappropriate for the work you want to do. You’ll want mentors that can assist you with the organizational structures and support you in whatever political actions you may intend to take. So figure out the kind of help you’re going to need early on, recognizing that it too will evolve.
As you set out to enlist needed experts, be sure to do your interpersonal homework. Engage in some intelligence gathering. Talk to their colleagues about their expertise and their coaching and mentoring interests and abilities. And figure out what you can offer in pay-back. Although few mentors will ask, I’d offer to help them better understand your generation and its ways of thinking and working. If, like many of your generation, you’re savvy technologically, I’d propose that you educate them and even assist them in the development of internet sites.