Whatever their seniority, a technical specialist needs commercial (in the private sector) or community (in the public sector) context to understand the role that their expertise plays in creating value.

Without that context, they struggle to articulate a credible and compelling connection between their work and how the organization executes its strategy. In turn, that makes it hard to see the how their work contributes to competitive or community advantage. We call this market context.

To develop outstanding market context skills, technical subject matter experts (SMEs) should understand:

• Why market context vital to being effective in an organization.

• How technical specialists can become informed about their organization’s larger market context. How informed is informed enough?

• How do you get up to speed quickly on market context.

• How doing so change the way their input is perceived in the wider organization. (The payoff is huge.)

Using the Market Context Canvas

In our Mastering Expertship programs, we introduce The Market Context Canvas as a tool to identify gaps an expert may have in their commercial or community understanding of their organization.

It’s an exercise in three distinct parts:

• Organizational Profile. This describes what you need to know about your organization to operate at both a strategic and tactical level.

• Competitive / Community Landscape. This describes what you need to know about competitors, how they relate to your organization, and therefore how you can add competitive value.

• Customers / Citizens. This describes what you need to know about your range of customers, internally and externally, to understand how their future requirements will impact your specialist area.

If you’d like to try the Canvas assessment yourself, you download a clean copy below, including the chapter of Master Expert that explains the Market Context Canvas in detail.

Other ways to help your experts master organizational commercials and strategy

Master Expert

The Master Expert book, written for the experts themselves, is a helpful tool for leaders of experts wanting to know how to develop their technical experts to master the business skills above.

The book is highly accessible, split into lots of separate chapters, so you can delve into the topics that you most want to help your expert develop in. You can see an contents index here: Mastering Expertship. The book is available on Amazon. For a small investment you can provide yourself and your expert a manual for doubling their influence and impact.

The Expertship Growth Guide

This publication lists 102 development actions experts can take to develop skills across their expertise. There are 20 ideas for building business skills quickly inside. This is a companion publications to Master Expert above. You can check it out here: The Expertship Growth Guide

Leader of Experts program

The Expertship Institute offers a short one-day program enabling leaders of expert teams to sharpen their leadership skills when it comes to leading highly technical subject matter experts. Check out the Leader of Experts program.

Or download the brochure below. We run regular virtual programs every quarter.

Sign up for coaching

The Expertship Institute has accredited a group of highly informed and experienced coaches to help the experts or their managers build effective growth plans for their experts. We operate globally. Complete the Contact Us form for further information and an introduction to our delivery partner in your region.