Streamline Training & Documentation: How Experts are Made

Sunday, July 01, 2007

How Experts are Made

In a post I wrote about a year ago, I suggested that research on "the expert mind" described by Philip E. Ross in a Scientific American article might be exrapolated to the business world.

That is exactly what Anders Ericsson, Michael Prietula and Edward Cokely (EPC) do in an article in the July-August issue of the Harvard Business Review.¹ In "The Making of an Expert," EPC begin from a premise based on reviewing the body of research concerning what produces successful performance:

Consistently and overwhelmingly, the evidence showed that experts are always made, not born.

To develop expertise, you need to engage in upwards of ten years of "deliberate" practice, i.e., "practice that focuses on tasks beyond your current level of competence and comfort." You also need "a well-informed coach not only to guide you through deliberate practice but also to help you learn how to coach yourself."

All of this seems perfectly plausible. Where I part company with EPC is in their claim that this view of expertise is wholly applicable to creative artists, such as Mozart, and to the topmost tier of athletes, such as Ted Williams (in whose case extraordinarily acute vision is given partial credit for his high lifetime batting average).

EPC enumerate three tests that reveal whether or not someone is a true expert. Real expertise:

must lead to performance that is consistently superior to that of peers.

produces concrete results. EPC cite surgeons as an example: Surgeons can be deemed experts only if their patients are consistently benefited by their work. I would argue that it is considerably less straightforward to try to apply this test to artists since objective measures of results are inadequate for gauging the quality of an artist's work.

can be replicated and measured in the lab. Again, I question whether this criterion, with its requirement of objective quantification, is fully applicable to the task of distinguishing expert artists from non-expert artists. As EPC themselves note, judges who rated the drawing proficiency of artists "clearly agreed ... especially in regard to technical aspects of drawing." Testing technical ability is not the same as testing artistic expertise.

This issue of how to define expertise is important because EPC make such a broad claim concerning the overwhelming significance of deliberate practice for determining who grows up to be an expert. The importance of innate talent, by contrast, is viewed as basically a myth.

My own view, based on many of years of observing both business people and performing artists, is that the EPC model of expertise is valid for developing experts in the world of business, but overreaches when applied to artists. Over and over again, researchers have found that high performers in business are not necessarily the smartest people in the room in terms of raw intelligence, but are rather those who most assiduously and consistently apply themselves to learning what they need to know and taking decisive action to achieve valuable results.

I believe if researchers were to study, say, students at the School of American Ballet, the top US training academy for classical dancers, they would find plenty of young people devoting themselves wholeheartedly to daily "deliberate practice" under the guidance of outstanding teachers. The students could be ranked according to the quality of their performance, and it would turn out that something I'd call innate talent plays a significant role in determining which students are at the top of the heap. Conversely, it would turn out that some of the students never manage to reach the rank of principal dancer despite long-term conscientious effort and guidance from good coaches.

In sum, for certain skilled endeavors — producing top-notch art being the most important, but to some degree also including world-class athletics — deliberate practice with informed coaching feedback is essential for success, but it is not sufficient.

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¹ K. Anders Ericsson is the Conradi Eminent Scholar of Psychology at Florida State University in Tallahassee. Michael J. Prietula is a professor at the Goizueta Business School at Emory University in Atlanta. Edward T. Cokely is a postdoctoral research fellow at the Max Planck Institute for Human Development in Berlin.

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Labels: Coaching, Expertise, Leadership, Simulation

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