K Anders Ericsson has done a lot of great work on how people become experts. There’s a short excerpt here. It basically boils down to an awful lot of hard work that is exactly at the level of what you can do. This process can be greatly accelerated by having a good coach that can tell you what you’re doing wrong. Once you have “bootstrapped” you can continue improving yourself, but the right kind of environment and coaching is still very important. Expertise does not transfer – a vital part of your expertise is your factual knowledge, which is the reason that you can’t train general managers that will manage any kind of business.

Geoff Colvin has written “Talent is Overrated”, and this is an easier to digest version of a lot of research, but it is by no means complete. It is however a good start if you want a more verbose description and a set of case studies of “talent hotbeds” around the world.

Cal Newport has a blog that focuses on study techniques. Much of what he is writing is mainly targeted at material of suitable level for highschool students or undergrads, but there are some gems on his blog about research level things as well.

Thanks for that great post, I found it extremely interesting and it has given me a lot to think about. Here are some of my immediate thoughts.

One of the consistent themes I am getting from your post is the fact that you’ve had the opportunity to work with and help grow the skills of some great individuals, they were driven and sufficiently self-starting to grow their skills in the first place. So, it all really starts and ends with the quality of the people you’re working with. You can help, guide and point but you can’t make people grow their skills. So, the types of people you work with really counts.

I really like how you basically propose that it is not just knowledge flowing downhill, you can get your beginners to push and prod the more experienced practitioners to become more expert, I think that is great. Although once again, the quality of the people is paramount in my opinion.

Here is another thought, coaching someone takes time and the ability to frequently re-examine and adjust your course. It would be tough if all you did was set some vague goals every 6 months and that’s all. It is almost like personal agility, you need to be able to retrospect and correct your course etc. It sounds to me like you’ve been able to do that with some people which is great. I do have to say that most teams find it really difficult to do this as it is a massive time commitment and would grow exponentially with the size of the team.

Those are some of my immediate thoughts, but you have given me much to mull over and I’ll let it bounce around my head for a while :). And on top of all that you’ve reminded me that I’ve been meaning to write up my thoughts on the stages of competence model as well (should probably do that before I forget again). Thanks for sharing.

I don’t build experts from novices, but from competent practitioners. I also play on their strengths to do it – and I’ve certainly brought people through from experienced beginners to knowledgeable practitioners capable of balancing out inexperience on a team.

I posted some things that I do here, together with the Dreyfus Model of Dreyfus Modelling:

http://lizkeogh.com/2009/08/13/building-experts-using-the-dreyfus-model/

Hope you find it interesting!

Put a little more cliche: you can lead a horse to water, but you can’t make it drink!

The staff recruited have in short developed great expertise in SQL, as dealing with set theory and associations of data was right up their alley. They can work on their own, solve problems, and still branch out for new techniques when presented with technical challenges. One guy has started with C# and struggles, but as each obstacle conquered brings that person a different perspective.

Good provocative post.

Thanks, and i am glad you enjoyed reading it.