Life rewards expertise. Judges earn more than factory workers (mostly), society respects experts (we award them AO’s and AM’s simply for doing their job) and it appears to make sense to seek out experts to solve your problems – who wants to use GP, when you can have the ophthalmologist look at your eye problem. Universities market expertise as the secret to success, and it appears they are right for individual careers.
However, the question is: are experts good for society as a whole and your business?
- Problem 1: Experts are very good at arguing their point of view. If you knew what they did, it would be unlikely that you would speak to them. However, the same thing that makes them have value (the knowledge imbalance) is the same thing that makes them dangerous. You see, if you don’t understand their field, how can you judge whether they are giving you the best answer, let alone understand their argument?
- Problem 2: Experts specialise. Which means they learn more and more about less and less – and as the saying goes – “eventually they know everything about nothing”. Their point of view is inherently biased. And the more expertise they have, the more their point of view is biased.
So why is this a real problem?
Consider…
- The Global Financial Crisis: A huge variety of experts over decades, designed the financial markets, products and controls that global financial markets worked with. Turned out that greed wasn’t good. Bugger.
- Iraq: The experts argued successfully that the ‘Weapons of Mass Destruction’ were in Iraq. The war will have cost America directly around $700 billion by the end of this year, with 15,00 soldiers dead, over 30,000 injured (and who knows how many civilians in trouble). Turned out though that the WMD where actually in North Korea. Bugger.
- The Government: We had a decade of prosperity that was apparently due to the excellent financial management in Australian. Turned out that this was just an impact of globalisation and ‘a rising tide lifts all boats’. Bugger.
- Medicine: Even our highest profile surgeons aren’t always getting it right. Unfortunately, it takes a panel of other surgeons to decide whether fraud has taken place, because it’s difficult for the laymen to understand where out taxes are going. Bugger.
So what’s the point of this rant? Have a think about your own business.
If the only people you get advice from are experts (your accountant and lawyer) be afraid.
It’s time to get a generalist at the table to make connections the others can’t see and put some balance in your life.
Brendan Lewis is a serial technology entrepreneur having founded : Ideas Lighting, Carradale Media, Edion, Verve IT, The Churchill Club, Flinders Pacific and L2i Technology Advisory. He has set up businesses for others in Romania, Indonesia and Vietnam. Qualified in IT and Accounting, he has also spent time running an Advertising agency and as a Cavalry Officer with the Australian Army Reserve.
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