The problem with experts

At a recent family holiday gathering, we happened to be discussing how crazy family life gets at times -- you are halfway through cooking something and realize you don't have the ingredients on hand, so you need to improvise. Some of the men in the group described how they always get everything out first before starting, which ironically I also do. Some of the females commented this was unnecessary as they had done it thousands of times, so it was easier to get stuff as needed. They have a pretty good sense of where stuff is and what they have on hand -- 99.9% of the time it works pretty well.

Perhaps this is a general difference between men and women -- women are generally better at multitasking. But I think there is also another factor at play -- with food preparation, the women in our families are experts, and the men are amateurs. Experts are very good at what they do. They don't need a process to prop them up. However, in the cooking example it is more difficult to scale these methods to their husbands or children.

The real value in expertise is in scaling it. Do we document what we do? Can we make it easy for others to follow? Can we make it easy to find the things we need? Can we create processes that reduce errors and blockers? In the kitchen, these differences between the amateurs and experts are mostly amusing and not all that critical, but in business and product development it is. Experts need to be creating and contributing to platforms. This is the difference between a sustainable business and a few talented individuals. Unfortunately, many experts don't personally feel they need a platform, so have little motivation to contribute to one.

When you hire, expertise is important, but so is Platform Thinking.