As the conference season starts warming up, here’s another gentle poke at some of the things which irk me about learning and development and work in general. Full disclosure – I KNOW all these can apply to me and am happy to be challenged over all of them 🤓.

The sage. All knowing, their slides are full of diagrams, flowcharts and clutter, they require a good half hour to interpret. And models. ALL the models. A model for EVERYTHING.

Those experts who have a magic bullet. It doesn’t matter what your problem is, this will fix it. A little knowledge is a dangerous thing. Someone who had one good idea and wants to use it for everything is as bad as the sage with loads of ideas.

Thinking is important and we need people to think about how we an do things better. However, we need to know things work in practice, not just academia, theory, or model. Real world application please!

Expertise is knowing what you don’t know; having an answer to every context, every circumstance, every question isn’t expertise.

Expertise as brand. Knowledge sharing is essential and comes from dialogue. The expert who talks about them and what they do aren’t sharing insight – they’re pushing their brand. Look behind the content and find the bias – is it promoting a book, course or consultancy?

The world didn’t stop in 1992, 1997, 2006, or 2017. There WILL be more recent evidence, and advice ages as quickly as mobile phone technology.

Performative expertise in a spotlight. I go to a conference. You go to a conference. We go to a conference. Egos to a conference.

Which annoy you? What grinds you gears with experts? Let me know in the comments.