Yesterday I wrote about expertise as either common or differentiated. One way to think about it is through the lens of the Resource Based View (RBV) of the firm theory. RBV gives us four attributes of a strategic asset. The asset must be Valuable, Rare, Inimitable, and Non-substitutable (the VRIN attributes) to be a strategic asset that can sustain a competitive advantage.

Common expertise (in consulting I would call that project management, change management, process work, and traditional strategy work) is Valuable. It is possibly Inimitable, but with the plethora of templates and other resources available these days, that’s arguable. It is not, however, Rare. As for Non-substitutable, that probably depends on the problem being solved.

Differentiated expertise is Rare, less open to Imitation, and more prone to being Non-substitutable. The question is…. how Valuable is it? Its value is market sensitive – there have to be clients who need it. And over time, it may become less Rare and easier to substitute.

Consulting companies are challenged to maintain both types of expertise in their resources, and to recognize that while everyone might be an expert, not everyone has (or needs to have) differentiated expertise. Investing in and maintaining a diverse knowledge pool as an asset requires thinking about these things differently.

In consulting we talk a lot about bringing expertise to our clients. Sometimes, though, we get caught up in not wanting to appear elitist or exclusive, so the expertise gets downplayed. It is a weird confluence of mixed messages for our clients and for our people.

I was thinking today that we have to be careful to recognize that expertise is not necessarily rare or exclusive, or even particuarly valuable. Being an expert in many things is a factor of education, the number of times you’ve done it, and the recency of your experience, and there may be many people who share in that equation. In consulting, we have many people who are experts at project and program management, change management, process design, and other ‘bread and butter’ consulting services. Calling someone else an expert in a specialty like health care reform doesn’t change that some people are more ‘general experts’, who bring years of experience and talent to the blocking and tackling of getting things done in business.

Differentiated expertise is by definition rare and hard to substitute.  Whether it is valuable or not depends on the business needs of the moment. Because differentiated expertise may eventually either become irrelevant or become a common expertise that many people have, people with differentiated expertise have to watch the winds closely and continually stay current, timely, and relevant to maintain their value.

I heard a client talking about the use of YouTube to support a 24×7 contact center. She records a message every week that goes out to everyone, and they can watch her deliver the message by following her. It sounds like it goes over much better than the dreaded weekly e-mail full of bits and pieces, and it gives her a way to connect with an audience in a more personal way.  Really forward thinking, and coming from a woman in her late 40s who works at a very traditional company.  It made me rethink some of my assumptions about how to best use social media as a tool.