A slight twist on my normal Hacking Academia video intended audience: today's "On Expertise" video is targeted more at the myriad industry, government and other sector workers who are interested in getting expert advice and wonder how to find and assess it.

It's not a comprehensive guide but covers a few concepts that I've observed to be particularly important to consider in your expertise-seeking journey:

👉 what sort of expert do you need, and do you really need the world's leading expert (a relative claim) or do you just need an expert with a level of expertise sufficiently above your own to help you take that next step in understanding or strategizing?

👉 ELOQUENCE DOES NOT INDICATE EXPERTISE. But experts (for most types of expert interactions) should be good communicators, especially in written, verbal and visual forms. Anyone bright and quick at picking up things can, especially in this ChatGPT age, pick up a topic quickly and sound good in a 30 minute keynote talk or a 45 minute panel. 

👉 In fast moving / newish fields, you will encounter a lot of experts whose claim is based on expertise adjacency - they've switched from a different but related field / domain, and only picked up this particular expertise area relatively recently. A lot of the experiences from those other fields do usually transfer: the trick is to be aware for the gotchas: the concepts that definitively *do not* transfer and hence where they're starting fresh. Expertise adjacency is a necessary part of the game, because some of the new fields or domains have only been around for a few years rather than an entire career.

👉 Expertise in the aggregate can make up for (or be more cost effective) than sourcing the "uber expert in all things you need": sometimes you will still get benefits from the uber expert because they will connect concepts that the committee or panel in aggregate may not

👉 An expert can help you vet an expert: your pet expert doesn't need to be exactly in the same field to be useful in this manner

👉 A simple test of deep expertise for many areas is a multi-hour, intensive discussion (pref with your pet expert in tow). You will quickly tell the difference between superficial knowledge and genuine deep knowledge and experience. Superficial experts will run out of reliance on superficial catch phrases like "garbage in = garbage out" - these are helpful at entry level but not so much in any deep discussion.

👉 For the experts: aim to make yourself increasingly redundant: empower the people you're helping! It's really satisfying...

YouTube: https://youtu.be/pFkikdTAZoM

#HackingAcademia #expert #expertise