If you read this, you are probably a member of “Knowledge Economy”. Does it make you an “expert” in your field?

Perhaps it would become easier if we start with definitions -

“expert - one with the special skill or knowledge representing mastery of a particular subject”

Personally, I do not like to be called an “expert” because I grew up with the following definition - “one who knows more and more about less and less, until he knows everything about nothing”. I don’t remember where I read it, but it does resonate “the truthiness” with me.

knowledge is defined by the same source as

a (1): the fact or condition of knowing something with familiarity gained through experience or association (2): acquaintance with or understanding of a science, art, or technique b (1): the fact or condition of being aware of something (2): the range of one’s information or understanding <answered to the best of my knowledge> c: the circumstance or condition of apprehending truth or fact through reasoning : cognition d: the fact or condition of having information or of being learned <a person of unusual knowledge>

You would have to decide for yourself whether you are an expert or not, but you are a player - a “knowledge worker”, i.e. in possession of special knowledge or information.

The source of all wisdom could not provide me with a definition of “Knowledge Economy”, but pointed me in the direction of the World Bank and their KE Index which means without a doubt that such an economy does in fact exist. If you inclined to question my logic, you obviously missed a class in school - “if you can measure “it”, “it” exists.”. If you are an expert in an area of Malcolm Baldrige methodology or Six Sigma, you can add with conviction to the latter statement “.. and you can improve “it”, but I digress.

The reason I mumble about this is because I am always amazed to see how small the business analysis effort is with respect to the allocation in Enterprise Software initiative budgets, relative to design and construction. It seems that the former is easier to define as “learning”, and the latter - as “expertise”. The vocabulary used to describe the effort is also telling as an IT analyst “interviews business users” to “document their requirements” which assumes that they “know” what is required. Even if one agrees that this assumption is correct, which is not always the case, how does it make the process user or even owner to be an expert in process improvement, optimization, or design?

“most process people have spent their careers learning the ropes of their jobs and the processes that govern them largely by rote. Rote is hard to translate into formal processes by people who didn’t formally learn them in the first place.”

Josh Greenbaum, IDS Scheer: Jazzing up BPM

Another “tell-tale” of this strange discounting of knowledge is the criteria used by organizations to assemble the expertise for such initiatives.  knowledge is a by-product of learning, therefore the best “expert” to re-engineer business processes and practices is a person who needs to learn them afresh and without political and emotional attachments. Janet Rae-Dupree wrote about the so-called “curse of knowledge” which is a very good read pointed out by Dennis Howlett:

As our expertise increase, our creativity and ability to innovate tend to taper off. Why? Because the walls of the proverbial box in which we think are thickening along with our experience.

Yet organizations always attempt to recruit expertise which is as indistinguishable from their existing pool of talent as possible, from exactly the same industry and segment as they operate in, effectively arresting any potential innovation at the beginning of the effort. This strategy may play out OK for efficiency efforts, but effectiveness will likely suffer dramatically. The initiative will likely bear fruit of low or non-existing ROI in a game of catching up instead of creating a competitive advantage.

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