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Expertise Is Overrated… And Often Fatal To Your Goals
The truth about what really matters
We spend too much time trying to master the wrong things. There’s an easier way, a more productive approach to mastery.
There’s great pride that comes with mastering a skill or competency. I’m not asking you to give that up, only to arrow your focus and dedicate your time to master the one thing that produces the most value. That approach leaves you with one problem.
What about everything else?
I sort of lied. You do need to master a second skill, though you probably never thought of this as a skill.
The salesman who knew nothing
In my early days of sales, I shadowed an experienced salesman. He had a reputation for being a great closer, but ignorant when it came to product knowledge. He knew the basics of the product, what it did on a high level and how it could solve particular problems.
But when it came to individual features, technical characteristics, and inner workings, he was clueless and did his best to remain that way.
That puzzled me at first. Why would he want to remain clueless about such things? People might think he’s an idiot or worse unqualified — and they did.
