Is making investments in developing the broader capabilities of experts in your organisation a business case that will quickly find acceptance?

If you are in HR, probably yes. People & Culture executives see the opportunities for growth in experts in a daily basis.

But the wider organisation might have a less open view of experts, and the role they play in creating value.

Several things mean that making an argument for investment in the building of enterprise skills in experts is challenging - experts aren’t easy:

• Often the work experts do, and value they create, is invisible. None of us have much of an idea about how much effort every week goes into making sure your email arrives safely every hour; we only know how important this work is when it stops working.

• Experts don’t help themselves. Experts typically aren’t great at making the case for themselves, or even articulating what they do well to non-experts. They can actually be condescending (often without realizing it) to others - “I could explain it to you, but you wouldn’t understand.” (This may be true, but its an insensitive way of putting it!)

• Experts actually don’t want ‘enterprise skills’ training. They don’t think they need it, believe their technical skills are all that matter, and have had previously bad experiences from “that emotional intelligence course they forced me to go on”. Making a case for investing in colleagues who don’t want to be invested in is tough.

However, it is worth the effort.

Your organisation almost certainly has a stream of talent initiatives for people leaders. And yet increasing it is the experts who are re-creating the world we live in, and it is the experts who - if not there - cause our systems, processes, innovation and services to fail.

Because experts have never been more important, or more in demand, it is more important than ever to hang on to, motivate, and up-skill those you already have.

The feedback from experts who have been invested is intensely positive.

Book a call with us today and we’ll show you how to make the case for investing in experts that you’ll be thanked for by experts for years to come.

Helping SMEs understand the next level up

Most experts super-invest in their technical skills, but they under-invest in enterprise skills.

As a consequence, they can miss things. They might not accurately price risk or reward when asking their leaders to invest in innovation. They might not think it’s their problem to sell their projects to leaders, boards and CEOs. They might struggle to influence co-workers and leaders of teams. They do have outstanding technical skills, but their enterprise skills are under-developed.

As a result, technical subject matter experts can often fail to tell a good, convincing story about how they can add more value. And, of course, they can’t really be expected to improve if their organizations won’t give them the tools and coaching they need.

This is what we call the “Expert Gap”. It demonstrates the growth needed to shift from a super-technical “specialist” to a more strategic “expert” to then become a “master expert”.

As the model above shows, there are three levels of expertise, and many experts are stuck at expert level, and need assistance to achieve Master Expert capability.

The Expert Gap challenges experts to become a better Expert.

Of course, experts need a roadmap for this journey of professional growth. Which is why we have developed The Expertship Model, which simultaneously provides a way for experts to assess where they are today, and describes the capabilities they need to acquire to become Master Experts.

The Expertship Model, and its associated development programs, helps experts jump the Expert Gap.

Check out our Mastering Expertship.

Read what experts have to say about developing their enterprise skills.

Key skills experts need

The Expertship Model describes the key skills that an expert needs to master to become a Master Expert. This is the highest level of expertise.

The Expertship Model describes three groups of skills, only one of which is technical skills. The others describe enterprise skills - the ability to optimise stakeholder engagement, dive change, business skills, and innovation and value creation.

A Roadmap for Subject Matter Experts

Ultimately, the Expertship model helps experts identify the skills to improve to reach master expert level across six months of intensive development with coaches, facilitators, their manager and other experts.

The Expertship Model has four key applications:

• It enables experts to self -assess, and build a plan for continuous improvement;

• It enables managers of experts to have meaningful and valued-added conversations with experts about the impact they are having and the impact that they could be having;

• It enables organisations to assess the quality of their experts, and acts as a development and recruitment guide; and

• It enables organisations to effect introduce a fair method of remuneration and reward for experts based on effective impact not longevity.

Below is a brief description of the structure of the Expertship Model. Or you can download a detailed primer to the Expertship model at the end of this article.

TECHNICAL DOMAIN

The Technical Domain is the area of the model most experts will already be familiar with. This domain describes the best practice collection, application and transfer of knowledge. It’s what experts are known for, although individuals’ capability varies widely across the spectrum.

The Technical Domain consists of three Expert Capabilities:

• Expert Knowledge

This capability deals with how experts acquire, retain and grow the deep specialist knowledge and experience they require to do their jobs effectively.

Specifically, it defines three Expert Roles : Knowledge Seeker, Knowledge Curator, and Knowledge Generator.

• Solutioning

This capability deals with developing the the ability of the expert to solve complex technical problems effectively and quickly, via insightful diagnosis, shaping long-term solutions that improve processes and create opportunities.

Specifically, it defines three Expert Roles : Problem Identifier, Active Responder, and Problem Solver.

• Knowledge Transfer

This capability deals with developing the increased knowledge of others to apply specialist knowledge and facilitate the overall increased capability of the organization.

Specifically, it defines three Expert Roles : Knowledge Sharer, Knowledge Coach, and Talent Developer.

Relationship Domain

The relationship Domain is about influencing, and engaging those around you in a positive manner. It describes best practice in identifying and engaging with key stakeholders, influencing skills, relationship building skills and understanding what makes humans tick.

• Stakeholder Engagement

This capability deals with the ability of the experts to build and maintain mutually rewarding stakeholder relationships across a variety of internal and external stakeholder groups.

Specifically, it defines three Expert Roles: Internal Networker, External Networker, and Network Manager.

• Collaboration

This capability deals with the ability of the expert to act as a valuable, proactive member of their teams, virtual or co-located, taking on a leadership role when required and appropriate.

Specifically, it defines three Expert Roles: Team Worker, Communicator, and Diplomat.

• Personal Impact

This capability deals with the ability of the expert to effectively influence others positively, be empathetic and adaptive, their being self-aware of the impact they have on others, and their ability to make individual and collective great results happen.

Specifically, it defines three Expert Roles: Positive Influencer, Self-Aware Adapter, and Results Driver.

Value Domain

The Value Domain deals with the ability of the expert to understand and leverage the context in which their organization operates, both internally and externally. Our meta-data suggests that many experts are deficient in this capability, and mastery here is a source of great opportunity to redefine personal brand and effectiveness.

• Market Context

This capability deals with the ability of the expert to to acquire, retain, refresh and deploy contextual organizational, competitive, and customer knowledge consistently and effectively.

Specifically, it defines three Expert Roles: Organizational Navigator, Competitive Analyst, and Customer Strategist.

• Value Impact

This capability deals with the ability of the expert to articulate and recognize tangible ways of adding commercial or community value, and demonstrating an active engagement in improving overall organizational performance.

Specifically, it defines three Expert Roles: Operational Value Creator, Competitive Advantage Creator, and Customer Value Creator.

• Change Agility

This capability deals with the ability of the expert to to act as a change catalyst and lead change initiatives effectively.

Specifically, it defines three Expert Roles: Change Supporter, Change Catalyst, and Change Leader.

For more detail, download the detailed primer below.

How do your experts rate?

Use our Expertship360 multi-rater survey, based on the Expertship Model, to help your experts understanding what level of expertship are they currently operating at, and how they can become the best expert expert they can be. We offer affordable and easy to implement options.

Key insight: Technical experts are mission critical to most organizations

Few senior leaders realize how critical SMEs are to the success of their organization.

Most medium to large organizations employ plenty of subject matter experts (SMEs). You’ll find them in IT, data, legal, finance, engineering, marketing, science – you name any department where deep technical expertise is needed, and you’ll find SMEs. Three facts might surprise you.

Firstly, there are typically far more SMEs in the organization than most senior leaders believe (on average about 20% of the employee population, but in specialist market segments like government, technology, science, and engineering far more than this).

Secondly, many senior leaders believe that experts tend to play the role of “keeping the lights on” or that they provide “enabling services:” that allow others in the organization to do the real work. Both of these things are true, but what gets missed is that typically experts are at the heart of organizational transformation reducing costs, creating efficiencies, finding new ways to add value to customers and citizens.

Thirdly, a scary insight – any recruitment team will tell you that subject matter expert positions are most expensive, time-consuming and difficult positions to fill. Which is why organizations are beginning to really focus on SME retention, particularly since COVID.

Our firm is dedicated to help SMEs around the globe re-energize and upskill, so they can focus on game-changing, strategic, fulfilling work. Making the difference most SMEs know they can. Their organizations benefit in many ways – greater retention, greater value-add, more rounded business savvy, super-collaborative expert teams, and the creation of greater customer and citizen value.

Our clients tell us that the return on investment and the return on effort of expertship initiatives surpasses almost every other skills development they invest in.

Getting strategic with top technical talent approaches

Most organisations take a very strategic approach, and invest heavily, in the development of a pipeline of leaders.

Most of our clients are now taking the same approach to the development and retention of their top technical talent – their experts. The strong business case is multi-faceted:

• Shaping coherent career plans for high-potential technical staff and other experts, who often have no interest in climbing the people management ladder, transforms retention, engagement, and elevated impact of subject matter experts.

• By investing in the capability growth of very bright experts who may be trapped in a cycle of high workloads and repetitive problem solving (with little recognition), this enables organizations to keep these technical stars motivated and engaged. It avoids long tenure experts from defaulting to cynical and negative behavior.

• Many experts have become ‘single point of failure’ risks for organizations, where only that single overloaded expert knows how to solve a problem. Building mentoring and coaching capabilities among top experts helps build broader team capability and frees up the top expert to focus on more valuable strategic work.

• Losing key technical talent can take a year or more to replace. Using growth initiatives to plan for succession of top experts talent avoids the advent of expertise gaps at critical times.

• Investing in the development of technical experts significantly reduces the danger of flight risk among overworked, unappreciated, or unchallenged experts.

• Any reasonable analysis of successful innovation in most organizations will uncover a group of awesome experts working together collaboratively at the center of the project. Investing in expert development ensures innovation projects achieve their full business potential.

Getting started with expertship initiatives

Part of our value-add to clients is the tools and frameworks which we have built that enable organizations to quickly and inexpensively pivot to address talent pipelines among their SMEs very effectively. We call this pivot organisational expertship and have free to download primers available here.

But the usual, and very successful, starting point for most organizations is to identify and begin to develop the expertship capabilities of mission critical subject matter experts. For example, our Mastering Expertship program has graduated over 3,000 SMEs, based in 16 different countries, from organisations in government, financial services, science, technology, space, utilities, health and manufacturing. It consistently receives rave reviews from technical experts in a wide range of expert disciplines. The program focuses on building the enterprise skills of experts to complement their existing technical skills.

Another starting point is deploying the Expertship360, a multi-rater assessment specifically designed to assist experts understand how they are currently experienced as an expert by their stakeholders.

Interested in learning more?

We are happy to provide an obligation-free briefing to any head of technical department or organizational development professional about how they might begin to shape an expertship strategy in their organization.

We are also happy to have a short one-to-one session with an expert who wishes to develop their expertship skills. We can connect you to an accredited expertship coach who operates in your time zone. Note: there are a variety of no-cost and low-cost development tools that individual SMEs can access immediately, listed here. You might want to check out www.expertship.com as well.

Please use the contact form below.

How SME’s grow their impact and careers

95% of technical subject matters experts report huge benefits from developing their non-technical skills through Expertship programs.

While every experts’ journey is uniquely different, there are six outcomes reported back to us by managers of an expert and by the participants themselves, which are very common - and powerful - outcomes.

A renewed sense of purpose

Many experts nominated for our programs are ‘stuck in a rut’. By which we mean have been in the role for several years, are doing the same work repeatedly, and have started wondering “what’s next”?

Expertship programs enable experts to do a career and capability audit - and via the stretch that is the Expertship Model - see a level of performance and value beyond where they currently are. Experts return re-energized, and with a plan on how to grow their career, and have more influence and impact.

Seeing the big picture

Experts, being highly technical, have a propensity to get stuck working in their own ‘bubble’. And this creates a raft of problems for them - inability to engage easily with the rest of the organization, appearance of aloofness, apparent disinterest in what is going on outside their bubble.

Expertship programs burst this bubble aggressively. Our focus on the Market Context capability in the Expertship Model, helps experts see that without a much broader view - seeing the Big Picture - they can’t create the new value they are capable of.

Clarity about current and future role value

When you spend all days fixing problems - the same problems as last week - as experts do, your sense of perspective about the value of your role diminishes. This decreases motivation and engagement and can leave some experts feeling bitter over the apparent lack of value the rest of the organization associates with their work.

Expertship programs help experts re-evaluate what value they add currently, and think about what value they could add in the future. We work with experts to help them see the value of their contribution, and be able to articulate it effectively to non-technical colleagues. This generates energy and reignites their passion for what they do (and can do) back in the workplace.

Enhanced communication skills

Experts around the world and in all technical domains have a reputation for being extremely confident in talking about stuff they know really well (they are expert in), but struggling to hold a conversation with colleagues about anything else to do with the organization. Partially this is because of the number of experts who are introverted, but also because they simply don’t have a bank of questions or confident inter-personal skills to carry on these conversations.

Expertship programs help experts see how critical having these conversations with colleagues really is - how vital a contribution they make to the experts doing great work. the Mastering Expertship program in particular focuses heavily on question techniques, advanced listening skills, expert networking techniques, and appreciative inquiry. We experts put their natural curiosity to work effectively, with confidence.

Enhanced relationship skills

Experts inter-connect with a complex web of colleagues - senior, junior, internal, and sometimes external - in order to get their jobs done. We call these their stakeholders. Their relationships with most stakeholders tend to be very transactional, and fast - experts are almost always under high workload pressure. This isn’t a good combination to generate positive stakeholder relationships.

Expertship programs help experts get a real grip on who their most important stakeholders are, and why, and helps them generate a plan for managing these relationships in a win-win manner. We introduce them to tools and techniques which completely transform relationships back in the workplace.

Elevated knowledge transfer skills

Long-serving experts often end up being the go-to person for a whole range of tasks that no one else knows how to do. This lack of redundancy is dangerous for the organization, and irritating for the expert (they are constantly interrupted with requests to do low-value work).

Expertship programs help experts build elevated knowledge transfer skills - that is, successfully training others to do low-value technical work, enabling them to focus on the bigger picture, high-value work. This often involves a change in mindset - persuading experts that they can take the time to train others and that they will eventually understand how to do things if the experts teach them properly, and yes, hoarding your knowledge is eventually career-limiting not career-saving).

The data tells a story

Our clients have sent us accountants, actuaries, chemists, coders, consultants, economists, engineers, financial experts, hardware specialists, heads of compliance, information architects, insurance experts, lawyers, medical experts, risk managers – the list goes on.

One client saw such a strong return that they’ve enrolled more than 100 of their most critical staff through the program.

But the most telling feedback we receive is at the end of an expert’s six month Expertship journey. Was that difficult challenge worth the time and energy invested? Did it make a difference?

Respondents are overwhelmingly positive. Read what experts have to say about expertship.

We have three forms of programs, and one - Public Programs for Subject Matter Experts - individual experts can join. These Mastering Expertship programs have an average NPS score of 70-90%. That is, at least 70% of participants scored their program a 9 or 10 out of 10.

See what these six experts had to say about what they got out of attending the Mastering Expertship program.

Virtual coaching is conducted by video conference, usually on ‘gallery view’, so the screen is split into five screens, each featuring either a participant or the coach. We have a ‘video must be on’ policy. No exceptions. Expertunity can use several different platforms - our preferred platforms at this time are Zoom and MS Teams.

In the two hours sessions there is a mix of discussions about content (for example, principles of change, and the change curve), discussions about challenges all experts face, and then challenges the participants are facing, and then discussions about how to solve these challenges. Coaching pods are very applied, discussing real world solutions to real world problems.

The intimate nature of the pods greatly assists even contributions, and high levels of comfort from introverts.

For a longer description, read this article.