TMRW/TDY
The Future’s Playbook
Read time: 10 minutes
Hey Reader,
I hope you enjoyed your Thanksgiving! There is a lot to be grateful and I include all of you who have supported my work. I learn tremendously from all of you. Thank you
Now onwards…
Expertise is the very basis of how doctors treat heal patients, and how all professionals conduct their work. All those years we spent huddled in libraries were to command the credibility of an expert.
But now we are entering the post expertise world, which has profound implications for how society functions, how patients heal, and how businesses operate.
Expertise is being eroded by three forces:
- AI
- anti-elite global populism
- social media fueled mis & disinformation
1. AI is learning knowledge exponentially faster than any person, including doctors. That has real implications in the knowledge economy. According to ex Google CEO Eric Schmidt, AI models like ChatGPT will self learn in 5 years.
All high performing professionals have one primary claim to their services – they are experts. The explicit argument is this: I have trained, I have credentials, and I have unique knowledge so pay me a premium.
In fact, a CV or Resume is nothing less than a formal claim to expertise.
But when AI can do a job better, faster, and with no need for benefits – what happens to human expertise?
It disappears.
2. The election of Trump along with the rightward leaning political movements around the world have been led by global anger against elites.
Expertise historically been the province of the educated, wealthy and successful. Therefore, people have conflated experts with elites and have attacked both.This meritocratic discontent is fueled by the unavoidable premise of the modern world:
Your failure is your fault.
As Michael Sandel of Harvard notes, if you haven’t succeeded in the modern economy where opportunity abounds and talent is rewarded, well, you didn’t just lose. You are a loser.
That’s not a message people like hearing.
Lingering anger over perceived mismanagement over the COVID pandemic broke the camel’s back. The experts failed us when we needed them the most. So it’s time to tear them down.
3. Social media has democratized communication, allowing all information to be reduced to “content.” This has opened a huge door for misinformation and disinformation. Confused citizens are easier to prey upon, after all.
In fact, the marketing ploy today for most online sales is:
Inflate a problem + Hate the Elites –> Promote Contrarianism
Examples:
Inflation eliminates all savings and is governmental theft -> Buy crypto!
Microplastics are everywhere + Doctors want you sick – > Drink this detox tea !
What we have is the weaponization of the near complete absence of enduring trust in our global public squares.
We are not only bowling alone, we are bowling against each other.
Perhaps it would be more accurate to state that trust has been redirected from local communities and large institutions to de-centralized online networks. However the effect is the same: technical acumen and the social status it confers has been eroded dramatically.
It used to be trust then verify. Now, its verify then trust.
And who has the standing to do the verifying is very much up for debate. A post-expertise world.
Our techno-jaded society needs Expertise 2.0
Expertise 2.0 is a new model of operating in a world where traditional claims to authority and status are immediately cast in a doubtful light.
Expertise 2.0 requires understanding that everyone has a voice online. There are no public moves without significant public commentary.
Expertise 2.0 also recognizes that what happens on our phones drives what happens in the real world. The arrow of causality has reversed. It is no accident our recent elections were called the “podcast election.”
“Expertise 2.0 “ is based on a few key principles:
- Lived experience – Authenticity, intuition, & empathy will matter much more. A woman with fertility challenges, for example, will be seen as more credible in founding a fem-tech company than an OB/GYN
- Cross-disciplinary – Technical acumen is not enough. Success now is being able to synthesize disparate information out of their silo’s. Genius is taking incongruous fields of discipline and colliding them to make stardust. The popularity of the hip-hop musical Hamilton is a classic example
- Story-telling– Narrative is King and Queen. It is the most important skillset in life & business. If you cannot communicate your skills, you don’t have them. There is an art to taking complex ideas and translating them into digestible forms that resonate with the public and not losing nuance. Either perform retail politics (1-1, LBJ) or become a broadcaster (mass communication, Obama). Stories are in excel sheets, slide decks, emails, tweets and more. Find them, dramatize them, share them.
- Media Literacy – A Corollary to Storytelling. This is no longer the focus of moody people wearing all black at New England liberal arts colleges. The more media you have facility with, the better. Writing, audio, video, short form TikToks, tweets, long form podcast and on.. Find the sandbox that plays to your strengths.
- Collaborative – Talk with your clients, not talk at them. The new entrepreneurial model is NOT Product- Market fit but rather Community-Product-Market fit. Your brand is not what you think it is. It is what your customers tell you your brand is.
- Embrace the Human-AI partnership – I mean, what other option do you really have?
- Expert as guide not gatekeeper – Especially for doctors, you must relinquish the idea that you are the repository of unique insights. Everyone has access to the spell book now. Your role is a guide (think Yoda not Luke). You help your patients use that information to navigate complex, unforgiving institutions (healthcare anyone?)
- Lifelong learning. Society’s frame has been: Learn for the first 1/3 of your life; work for the next 1/3 ;and then retire for the last 1/3. That model is dead. Learning, Retirement, and Work are now continuous threads we throughout our lives.
- Knowledge is decentralized but so is consensus. Humans like to bicker. The new expert will be able to facilitate collective action across large networks of people, either IRL or online.
- Pattern recognition fields will be the first to be disrupted (radiology, law, etc). Better to be good at pattern creation. Especially in media, the people who will succeed will drive news cycles and create memes, not simply respond to them.
Who are some models of Expertise 2.0?
- Brene Brown – Research based storytelling for emotional intelligence
- Esther Perel – taking intimate relationship topics like sex and intimacy and making them globally relevant. She brings you into the therapy room.
- Adam Grant – Tweets + OpEds about workplace savviness.
There used to be degree inflation, where letters after names was overly prevalent and problematic. Now there is “degree collapse”. It came up in the recent POTUS elections. And there is now a backlash against the Ivy League colleges, in part due to lack of credibility because of controversies regarding race based admissions, legacy applicants and recent college campus protests surrounding Gaza. It’s another example of our “post – expertise world”.
A final word
The great irony of the current moment is that we have “wicked problems” that require expertise more than ever. However, subject matter experts are trusted less than ever.
Everyone is compromised.
The tasks of leadership, then, is to find effective ways to collaborate, engage, inspire in a world that questions the very idea of credibility.
That is no easy task, but leadership never was. It risks and rewards run ever high.
Forward,
