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.