Ch. 6 Summary: Build your knowledge base: Become a specialist.


The fundamental purpose of thinking skills is to upgrade your intelligence to that of a specialist. How do you make yourself of incalculable value to an organization? That’s easy. You develop the ultimate form of business intelligence: a unique knowledge base, and become a specialist. But—and this is a huge caveat—you also retain your generalist skills, to keep from being boxed into a corner.

 

Specialists can comprehend complex details as well as system-wide problems. They can analyze data by means of sophisticated pattern recognition, extrapolate from the known to the possible, and make subtle distinctions that are invisible to a novice. When their company is sold or in an acquiring mode, they’re still wanted and needed. They’ve got a built-in career firewall, and have become essentially untouchable. This chapter explores the development of the specialist knowledge base—using the latest scientific research on expertise. To ease the fears of readers, it also emphasizes early on that specializing does not mean Warren-Buffett intelligence in 99% of the companies out there, but it will require a bit of Tiger-Woods determination.

 

Building on strengths, focusing on key development objectives, capturing opportunities, what I call strategic thinking, escalates the growth of a worker’s knowledge base. Although entry-level workers have grand dreams of their career future, the truth is that strategic development never crosses the radar of an entry level person, and rarely that of a forty-year-old. Although some of that failure is lack of know-how, more often it’s either disinterest or a victim mindset. Indeed, the volatility of today’s market enhances workers’ fixation on helplessness, distorting their understanding of risk, and causing them to ignore the factors they can control. Here, readers will be introduced to Malcolm, an entry-level Web programmer still using HTML, needing to expand to expand his skill set to more creative technologies, along with Kate, a company auditor, feeling trapped in the marketing division of a multi-national. Purposefully ordinary in my illustrative choices, I showcase the extraordinary consequences of strategic development. These cases highlight the contrasting and widespread employee behavior of going-with-the-flow, which reflects an unrealistic mindset without parallel in executive suites.

 

The chapter also presents stretchwork—a process for bridging gaps in one’s experience by extending skills in the direction of expanded competencies and responsibilities. Workers can strategize to get the next job, then gain still another. Job-embedded learning by doing, reflecting on the experience, and then generating and sharing new insights, can be used for high-potential gains. Stretchwork includes reframing knowledge learned--and bluffing about the expertise required for a new job--all fundamental to one’s growth and career. Bluffing is not lying, but the ability to position prior experience in terms that potential employers can link to their needs. For example, if a client were to ask whether I’d coached physicians—specifically one who was writing clinical software--I would say, “No. But I have an extensive background in coaching lawyers who have a similar ego structure. Furthermore, my client base includes more than fifty technology clients. I’m certain that I can figure out the important coaching differences by the time I’ve concluded the interview segment of the project.” I got the job.

 

Such street smarts are necessary skills for growing one’s knowledge base. Stretchwork has long been used by hi-tech contractors to progress in external work markets, where there is no career ladder. However, more and more employees use stretchwork skills internally where the idea of a career ladder is disintegrating. Introducing the reader to George Faust, a bright low-level hardware engineer at a technology company, I relate his process from research into customer installation. Positioning his problem solving skills as an equal match, he proposed that the everyday interactions between research and sales were not a lot different than interactions with company clients might be. Driving his decision was a growing commitment to marketing which had been resistant to his claims. His strategic thinking was that customer relationship skills would provide unique experience, the kind of experience for which marketing might be more amenable. Street smart employees can successfully triangulate around difficulties that employees with less savvy could not navigate.


Specialists will want to link an owner’s perspective to their knowledge base. In today’s world, you can’t spend your time holding onto one part of the business, and think your job is safe. You’re going to have to connect the dots about everything that’s going on, which means you’ve got to understand the firm’s business and its industry, in order to build a personal firewall. An owner’s perspective invariably provides an understanding of vulnerable structural processes and projects, and also gives insight into the core competencies that provide for stretch experiences and more secure work assignments. Furthermore, workers who maintain a global perspective on the business are more apt to get the plum opportunities to build their knowledge base. Thus, over time, the specialist becomes knowledgeable of the firm’s process to market, the trends of the marketplace, the customer, the company’s finances, the industry, major technology changes, and the other functions within the organization. In other words, you’re going to need to have the information and insights that a fund manager has when facing an investment decision.

 

Finally, the chapter recommends specific performance strategies such as lateral moves within the corporation, interdepartmental task force experience, zig-zag maneuvers between corporations, employment with consulting vendors, membership within communities of practice outside the organization, and presents numerous cases of successful employees following these strategies. To a surprising degree, knowledge-building is a sport that demands a certain irrational dedication—a willingness to endure long periods of intense, eye-glazing focus, and an occasional overnighter—all in pursuit of one payoff—security in a volatile marketplace.

 

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