Better pay, more joy on the job, or prerequisite to promotion? Whatever your reasons for deciding to build expertise in a new field, the question is how to get there.
Your goal, of course, is to become a swift and wise decision maker in this new arena, able to diagnose problems and assess opportunities in multiple contexts. You want what I call “deep smarts”—business critical, experience-based knowledge. Typically, deep smarts take years to develop; they’re hard earned. But that doesn’t mean it’s too late for you to move into a different field. The following steps can accelerate your acquisition of the expertise you need.
Identify the best exemplars. Who is really good at what you want to do? Which experts are held in high regard by their peers and immediate supervisors? Whom do you want to emulate?
Assess the gap between them and you. This requires brutal self-assessment. How much work will this change require, and are you ready to take it on? If you discover that the knowledge gap is fairly narrow, you should feel more confidence. If you determine that it’s really wide, take a deep breath, and consider whether you have the courage and resolve to bridge it.
Study on your own. Especially if the knowledge gap between you and experts in the new arena is wide, think about what you can do on your own to begin to narrow it. Self-study, talking to knowledgeable colleagues, and taking some online courses will help.
Persuade experts to share. Many of them will be pleased to do so—especially if you’ve done your homework and have some foundational knowledge. But some may resist for a host of possible reasons, ranging from a lack of time to fear that you are after their job. Their reactions will depend heavily on both their personality and organizational culture. Strengthen your case by focusing on how helping you will benefit them. Perhaps you could take over some routine tasks that are tiresome to them but new to you. If the expert is a part of your own organization, management may reward any investment they make in developing talent. Emphasize that the time commitment can be minimal; you’ll find short time slots in which to query them.
Learn to pull knowledge. Become some combination of a bird of prey and a sponge—eagle-eyed for opportunities to learn and avid to absorb. Don’t assume experts will tell you their most critical know-how in bullet points. That’s impossible (because they know what they know in context, when it’s called upon), insulting (because if it were that easy to impart, their knowledge wouldn’t be worth much), and frustrating for you both (because lectures about how to do something rarely translate into true learning). Instead, use the two most powerful questions in eliciting knowledge: “Why?” and “Can you give me an example?”
Observe experts in action. Concentrated observation is often more effective than interviews because it shows you how a person thinks and acts in real time. Ask to sit in on crucial meetings, accompany them to conferences and customer visits, and follow them as they solve problems. This is far from a passive process; you’ll constantly need to ask yourself: Why did they do that? What was the effect? Would I have done it differently? Afterward, ask for a few minutes to debrief—even if it’s just during a walk to the parking lot. Check what you observed against the expert’s intention, and see if you can “teach it back” by explaining the steps taken and the reasons for them.
Seek mini experiences. The next step is to identify opportunities to experience the environments, situations, or roles that have made the expert so valuable to the organization. Perhaps you can’t go to medical school before becoming an MRI-machine designer like the person you’re shadowing, but you can spend a week in a doctor’s office. Maybe you didn’t start out in your company’s call center like the super sales manager you’re emulating, but you could certainly work the telephones for a few days. Any “mini experience” that gives you a taste of the expert’s much deeper understanding of a context that informs their judgment will help you gain insights. If nothing else, you will be equipped to ask better questions and pull knowledge more effectively.
Add visible value as soon as possible. The experts and your new or future bosses will want to see some evidence that all this work is paying off. A log of what you have done and learned shows effort and progress. But if you can actually take over some small parts of an expert’s job that they are willing (or eager) to relinquish—even better. Perhaps you can attend a conference or association meeting, teach part of an in-house course, or draft a report.
Developing expertise takes time. Estimates usually range from seven years or more. But if you follow the steps I’ve suggested here, you will have deep smarts—and be able to use them—much sooner.