YOUR OWN DEEP SMARTS People with Deep Smarts are the “go-to” individuals in an organization, possessed of skills and knowledge that make them valuable to their organization and their colleagues. The bad news is that developing deep smarts, according to extensive research on expertise, takes 7-10 years of focused effort. The good news is that there are certain characteristics, knowledge and skill that experts with deep smarts share, to which you can consciously devote some attention. If you are interested in considering your own deep smarts and how you might develop them further, read on.
Deep Smarts: Deep smarts are a potent form of expertise based on first-hand experiences, providing insights drawn from tacit knowledge, and shaped by beliefs and social forces. Deep smarts are as close as we get to wisdom. They are based on know-how more than know-what—but they include both types of knowledge. Two Types of Knowledge: KnowWhat and KnowHow Know-what (facts, data, locations, situations, customers, equipment) can be extremely valuable to an organization. The salesperson who knows the price points of the competition, the operator who knows the idiosyncrasies of a particular machine, the history teacher who remembers dates and associated events, the colleague who has a mental list of the project priorities or who knows the best algorithm to apply to a statistics-based decision—all of these people can claim very useful knowledge. However, often this type of knowledge has a more limited useful life span and/or less unique value than operational skills and know-how. The competition will move on, the machine will be replaced with a newer version, wikipedia can provide the historical dates, the project will end. Therefore, experience-based know-how, we argue, is the essence of deep smarts. Know-how (mental and manual skills, judgment, insights) builds over years of experience. The manager who can handle strategy but also can dive into tactics if necessary, the production engineer who can diagnose a process problem at a glance, the surgeon who can anticipate possible problems in an operation and take precautions against them, the project manager who understands how to constitute and handle a creative team—these individuals have knowledge that is likely to be useful so long as they are working. Deep smarts have tacit components and are not easily captured or transferred from one brain to another. While this characteristic means that the expertise of individuals may walk out the door when they retire or leave the organization, the tacit nature of deep smarts also constitutes a competitive advantage—both for the organization and the individual possessing them. Such deep smarts have multiple dimensions, as described below. DIMENSIONS OF DEEP SMARTS:
1. Deep Understanding of Organizational Products/Services/Processes. Detailed knowledge about the work you do for your organization, including both process and facts.
2. System Thinking. Knowledge about the interactions among the different components of the products, process or services you are working on. Understanding how a local, individual decision affects others in an organizational unit.
3. Wise Decision-Making. Good judgment; rapid decision-making considered wise by colleagues; proven ability to grasp and analyze issues quickly.
4. Ability to Contextualize. Ability to adopt a perspective that takes into account a variety of circumstances and contexts. Ability to customize, tailor advice, decisions and behavior to the particular, idiosyncratic situation.
5. Ability to Manage Novelty. Ability to recognize and deal with unusual, novel or rare situations. Openness to experimentation.
6. Separation of Signal from Noise. Ability to pull out of a sea of data, information, or observations, the most critical, relevant elements.
7. Networks. Has broad and deep networks of other professionals that can be drawn upon to solve problems. The deeply smart individual knows other experts who can be accessed for “knowledge-once-removed.”
8. Diagnostic Capability. Through observation or probing inquiry, can gather cues to underlying and non-obvious situations or behaviors. These diagnostics may be used prior to the step of pattern recognition, to gather information, data and knowledge.
9. Pattern Recognition. Ability to recognize patterns from past experience to help predict future events. Ability to extrapolate from less data than other people to analyze a situation. Motivation: Passion and enthusiasm for learning in a particular knowledge domain do not constitute a dimension of deep smarts, but facilitate their growth. People with deep smarts enjoy going to work because of their love of the product or service they provide, the organization with which they are affiliated, or the intellectual stimulation in their job. This passion motivates them to learn and continuously update their smarts. Self-Assessment Instrument
Within the next couple of months, we will be posting an instrument that you can use to self-assess your own deep smarts. Those of you who fill out the survey will receive a report on the dimensions described above. If you would like to be notified via email when the survey is available online, please provide your email-address by clicking here.