The greatest insights are short, simple, easy to grasp. But, not shallow, not simplistic, and not fluffy. They are short, simple, easy to grasp – and substantive.
Jim Young seen me a link to a video of a presentation by Professor Dan Klyn’s (thanks, Jim). He has spent years studying the work of Richard Saul Wurman, the man who coined the phrase Information Architecture – and, oh, yes, he created the TED Conference, now curated by Chris Anderson. (And there is a lot of Wurman’s work to study – 83 books, a very different kind of road atlas, and a whole lot more).
Mr. Klyn’s talk is entitled: Make Things Be Good: Five Essential Lessons from the Life and Work of Richard Saul Wurman. It’s a good talk, with five terrific insights.
The five insights are:
5. Hats – (Pattern: Order Encodes Meaning)
4. Sandcastles (Pattern: What before How)
3. Gathering – (Pattern: Apperception)
2. Tango – (Pattern: Terror + Confidence)
1. Dumb – (Pattern: Expertise Expires)
(You can view the full set of slides here, and watch the talk here).
I felt more than a little dumb watching this, and viewing the slides. Much of this was pretty new to me…
But I was especially captured by this phrase:
Expertise Expires.
I think he was saying this: you spend a lot of time working on something, developing your expertise, and then the world moves on, again, and you are left behind — to start over – all over – yet again.
I do know this. A casual reading of practically any week’s news will remind you that expertise that was valuable yesterday can be not-quite-so-valuable in a seemingly short time.
Or, to word it differently – we all start out dumb, and then we become dumb again and again throughout our life/career. Yesterday’s expertise may not be adequate, may not be “enough,” for tomorrow’s challenge.
And, I think he is saying this — take on the stance of “dumb” all of the time, on purpose, so that you can pursue understanding and knowledge acquisition constantly, from a mindset of “innocence” (“innocence” is a close cousin to “dumb”). After all, if you think you know it all – that your expertise is adequate, all that you need – you have nothing left to learn.
And, trust me, we all have something else to learn.
But, beware of thinking that you have learned once you immerse yourself into a new learning mode. You are dumb – so stay dumb. And then, keep on learning anew.
I think this is the implication of this terrific insight.
Expertise expires – yes, it does.
First Friday Book Synopsis 