Everywhere I’ve worked – and that’s been quite a few places over the last 30 years or so – I’ve found people who are extremely good at certain things. While most people are good at their jobs, these individuals stand out because of any number of things they either know or do – sometimes a combination of both. They are experts.
I’ve met experts in instructional design, graphic design, communication, software development, authoring, project management, call centre operations, marketing, online banking systems, telecommunications and on and on I could go.
Often much of their expert knowledge is in their heads – it’s tacit. Some researchers believe that up to 90% of all organisational knowledge could be tacit. That’s an enormous amount not to have available to everyone and even more enormous risk should those individuals decide to leave and take their knowledge with them.