Is your expertise keeping you from your next breakthrough?
As you grow in your experience, you grow your expertise.
Being an expert has its perks - you are the top of your field, you are sought out for your advice and opinion, and you have name recognition.
But the very title of expert comes with a dark side if you aren’t careful.
You achieved the title of expert because you spent most of your life learning.
But if you aren’t cautious, wearing the expert badge can cause you to flip a switch where you actually close yourself off to new ideas. After all, your knowledge thus far was hard won.
Adam Grant’s book, Think Again, makes the case for why you should adopt a posture of continuously questioning your previously held beliefs and stay open to new ideas.
In today’s world, most problems are not simple. Many problems are complicated, but even more are complex, where there is not a clear relationship between cause and effect.
There is a high degree of unpredictability and uncertainty.
At least one right answer exists to a problem, but it’s not something that can be predicted.
Rather, it needs to emerge.
Photo by Diego Madrigal on Pexels
As an expert, you can miss opportunities for these answers to emerge unless you are willing to experiment with new concepts or new environments.
One of the best ways to do this is to start reading and learning about other disciplines outside your field or collaborating with others in different industries.
Frans Johansson coined the phrase, “the Medici Effect” to describe the type of innovation where ideas and disciplines intersect.
This practice has led architects to draw inspiration from termite mounds to design buildings with natural airflow in Zimbabwe and healthcare professionals across the US to adopt the common practice of checklists used in aviation.
Your can boost your creative thinking by stepping outside your discipline and opening your mind to fascinating concepts.
The complexity of the world relies on it.
What could emerge for you as you branch out?
Love,
Audrey
