An undergraduate student of mine once suggested that I sounded like an encyclopaedia when I spoke! For the young academic, that was high praise indeed. In retrospect after reading Liz’s blog on expertise I am no longer sure that I should have been flattered by the comment. I was always under the impression that I was close the student body and that I connected with them. Was this an illusion? At the same time I started consulting for what was at the time Brent Chemicals. The person who started me on the road of consulting and who developed into a great friend of mine, Albert Loubser the South African Dairy Standards Agency guru, said that I was able to make science simple. And by the way, having connected with my first lot of students many years later, I can confirm that it wasn’t.
But I digress, am I hiding behind my expertise? I suppose that as a consultant to a point I have to. I do need to know more about a subject than my client base and have a network that allows me to access relevant information much simpler and faster. But to baffle people with science? With the current access to the internet (and my own leanings towards Web 2.0) that would be a self-limiting approach. To quote Liz, “Puffed-up biggified experts who speak only in authoritative lists of seven ways to do this and eight ways to screw up that ... they're a dime a dozen. They're interchangeable. They're expendable. We're not coming for your expertise, really. There are all sorts of places to get that. Sure, the information is nice. But we're really coming for you.”
The conclusion, stay relevant to my client audience with impeccable integrity and I won’t have to hide behind my expertise.
0 comments:
Post a Comment