My Definition of a Tech “Expert”

Let’s start with the dictionary definition: 

Hey look at me - I’m an Expert at Googling!! But then again, aren’t we all?

You might think that in order to have this mystical authoritative knowledge of technology that you would need to be working in IT or data, or have been dubbed the “accidental techie” on your team, or spend all of your time using technology and reading blogs about it and listening to podcasts about it. I can get caught up myself in thinking this way at times. 

For example, like a ton of people right now I’m signing up for a ton of webinars and livestreams and other educational pursuits. In part this is because there are just SO MANY MORE of them available now, and in another part because we all are so much more oriented towards online learning than we ever were before. So I was signed up for a webinar about Salesforce last week, and there is an endless amount of knowledge and skill that you can gain using Salesforce. But when the time came around to listen in, I was highly engrossed in watching tons of snowboarding videos. 

Ah, when the air turns crisp and the leaves change colors, my spidey-sense starts to go off - winter is coming. And when winter comes, I am all-the-way obsessed with snowboarding. I’ve been boarding long enough to know that I experience some of my highest highs and happiest moments when I’m on my board. But I felt so guilty - shouldn’t I switch over and watch that Salesforce webinar? How would I ever find another time to get that knowledge that I would have gained from it? If I don’t know every single damn thing about this system and how to use it, how can I possibly say that I am an “expert” in Salesforce and lead others in their work in the system? In that moment, learning about Salesforce just felt way more boring than watching videos of snowboarding. 

Back to that mystical “comprehensive and authoritative knowledge or skill” that makes one an expert - that is a crazy goal to have in technology, because the guideposts keep moving at an insanely fast pace. Salesforce comes out with new shit every 3 months at minimum, and that doesn’t include the every-day innovations of other systems that can work with Salesforce, or the customizations of Salesforce that can be shared across any organization. Everything in technology is advancing all the time. Keeping up your knowledge and skill in any area of technology can feel overwhelming, and like you aren’t able to reach that place to call yourself an “expert.”

That’s why I have my own definition of expert for technology - someone with grit, curiosity, and the resilience to keep learning. 

Notice please that I did not focus on these skills for a particular area of knowledge. Because believe it or not, a diversity of experience and knowledge is what I have seen to be the most influential part of how well technology is used at any level of skill. I have seen insanely skilled computer programmers totally muck up a technology project because they couldn’t get their heads out of the code enough to see the multiple different solutions that could have been explored. In fact, sometimes the right answer to what seems like a technology project is actually to not use the technology at all. But the supposed “experts” can’t always see the forest for the trees, their focus is so narrow and intense. 

That focus can pay off handsomely in some scenarios, but I’ve seen much more often that success in technology projects comes from the people who aren’t so single-mindedly focused. They don’t have their heads in the tech game 100% of the time.

What they do have most of the time is the grit to envision an ideal outcome and the perseverance to work towards that outcome, the curiosity to find new and alternate solutions to a challenge, and the resilience to get slapped in the face by tech mistakes and missteps and to keep seeing the potential that technology has to get to their outcomes efficiently and effectively.

I’m definitely not thinking about tech 100% of my time - and I’d be a lot less happy if I didn’t have a ton of focus on all things snowboarding. And in my opinion, a tech “expert” doesn’t need to be 100% focused on technology. I’d prefer that the people I work with are NOT 100% tech focused, because we need creative approaches to using technology for mission-driven work. There will always, always be more to know. If you’ve got grit, curiosity, and resilience, then you’ve already got what it takes to make it as a successful techie.