Expertise
Think about a few experts that come to mind.
Your brain categorizes them distinctly and with a singular area of knowledge for which they have an extensive perspective.
The word expert, by definition, represents a level of authoritative knowledge or skill in a particular area.
This is the end state of expertise.
The process of building it is oftentimes anything but singular.
Building expertise involves the exploration of many disciplines that may not, at the outset, seem directly related.
As a leader, you seek to develop the expertise of your team in order to enable greater performance.
The logical error is to confine someone’s development to something overly constricted.
If you want to develop a great barista, understanding farming or chemistry may be equally valuable to knowing the ins-and-outs of an espresso machine.
On the other hand, maybe trigonometry will be the unlock to their long-term expertise.
Expertise is a state that is best generated through disparate paths converging over time rather than a singular, isolated track.
And on the seventh day they rested and had coffee,
- Morning Cup