Several years ago I made a recommendation to a client regarding how to design a website.  The client’s development team pushed back.  They said that they never saw a website built using that approach and that my idea wouldn’t work. Or, if it did work, it would take a lot longer to implement than their solution.  I explained that I wasn’t speculating on the idea.  This was an idea that I’ve seen work and one that I had used myself.  They said that I didn’t understand their situation well enough and that my idea wouldn’t apply.

That night when I got home, I wrote out the requirements for the website and handed them to my fifteen year old son.  I asked if he could create the site over the weekend.  He did.  The following Monday, I returned and showed the site to my client.  He was excited and showed it to his project team.  They still maintained that it couldn’t be done to which I replied, “But we just did it”.

Expertise is important.  Our expertise helps us run our organizations more efficiently, troubleshoot more effectively, and solve problems more quickly. 

But, there is a downside to expertise.  Research shows that expert brains actually have less activity than novice brains when solving a problem.  This makes sense.  Experts have so much experience that they are able to quickly find a pattern and apply it to what they already know.  However, those same connections that help an expert see a pattern can sometimes cause that same expert to miss an opportunity.

Albert Einstein often talked about the power of the “beginner’s mind”.  That’s the type of mind that doesn’t make assumptions and continually questions and challenges its reality.  The beginner’s mind allows us to more easily learn and often more easily find creative solutions to problems.  The power of the beginner’s mind is that it’s not smart enough to know what can’t be done.  As a result, it often finds a way to do it.

Don’t back away from your expertise but learn to challenge it.  Recognize the difference between what you don’t know (or haven’t seen) and what is or is not possible or practical.  Doing so will make you a more effective leader.