So, You Think You Are An Expert

I just read a very good article which was published in the Harvard Business Review back in 2007, entitled The Making of an Expert.

Many appraisers and specialists that I have met think they are experts in an area, and I include myself in the category.  Many probably are, many more probably are not, although that does not mean that with more time and study they can't truly become an expert.

What the Harvard Business Review states is that many factors go into becoming an expert, and there are also many myths to being an expert and who is actually an expert.  Being an expert, according to the article goes far beyond talent and skill.  Much of what the article supports in becoming an expert is time, sacrifice, patience, deliberate practice, time (usually a minimum of 10 years) and coaches and mentors.

The article lists 3 tests on determining expertise, 1) it must lead to performacne that is consistenly superior to that of the the expert's peers, 2) real expertise produces concrete results, 3) can it be replicated and measured in the lab (although the article admits measuring some expertise is difficult, perhaps in the appraisal profession income, consistent publications, expert witness wins etc).

Overall a very interesting article that links well to our profession of appraising and to other allied fields in the fine and decorative arts.

The Harvard Business Review reports

The journey to truly superior performance is neither for the faint of heart nor for the impatient. The development of genuine expertise requires struggle, sacrifice, and honest, often painful self-assessment. There are no shortcuts.  It will take you at least a decade to achieve expertise, and you will need to invest that time wisely, by engaging in “deliberate” practice practice that focuses on tasks beyond your current level of competence and comfort. You will need a well-informed coach not only to guide you through deliberate practice but also to help you learn how to coach yourself. Above all, if you want to achieve top performance as a manager and a leader, you’ve got to forget the folklore about genius that makes many people think they cannot take a scientific approach to developing expertise. We are here to help you explode those myths.

The HBR article continues with Things to Look Out for When Judging Expertise.

Individual accounts of expertise are often unreliable.

Anecdotes, selective recall, and one-off events all can present insufficient, often misleading, examples of expertise. There is a huge body of literature on false memories, self-serving biases, and recollections altered as a result of current beliefs or the passage of time. Reporting is not the same thing as research.

Many people are wrongly believed to possess expertise.

Bear in mind that true expertise is demonstrated by measurable, consistently superior performance. Some supposed experts are superior only when it comes to explaining why they made errors. After the 1976 Judgment of Paris, for example, when California wines bested French wines in a blind tasting, the French wine “experts” argued that the results were an aberration and that the California reds in particular would never age as well as the famous French reds. (In 2006, the tasting of the reds was reenacted, and California came out on top again.) Had it not been for the objective results from the blind tastings, the French wine experts may never have been convinced of the quality of the American wines.

Intuition can lead you down the garden path.

The idea that you can improve your performance by relaxing and “just trusting your gut” is popular. While it may be true that intuition is valuable in routine or familiar situations, informed intuition is the result of deliberate practice. You cannot consistently improve your ability to make decisions (or your intuition) without considerable practice, reflection, and analysis.

You don’t need a different putter.

Many managers hope that they will suddenly improve performance by adopting new and better methods—just as golf players may think that they can lower their scores with a new and better club. But changing to a different putter may increase the variability of a golfer’s shot and thus hinder his or her ability to play well. In reality, the key to improving expertise is consistency and carefully controlled efforts.

Expertise is not captured by knowledge management systems.

Knowledge management systems rarely, if ever, deal with what psychologists call knowledge. They are repositories of images, documents, and routines: external data that people can view and interpret as they try to solve a problem or make a decision. There are no shortcuts to gaining true expertise.

Source: Harvard Business Review