LinkedIn and 3rd parties use essential and non-essential cookies to provide, secure, analyze and improve our Services, and to show you relevant ads (including professional and job ads) on and off LinkedIn. Learn more in our Cookie Policy.
An expert is someone who knows more and more about less and less until he knows everything about nothing. About this time, your "expert" will develop an attitude. He believes that he knows SO MUCH about this one topic that his job is secure. Surely, he will add to his knowledge as new technologies come out. But this is the guy (or gal) who head is down, working on the computer and not acknowledging the presence of anyone else He's quiet. His resume has a few items on it, but he has a real, real deep knowledge of those few items.
And everybody hates him. He complains if he is given a task about something that he is not expert in. He complains about having to learn something new. He is very project oriented. He's smart, he is hard-working, and nobody wants anything to do with him.
Eventually, your expert goes home to India, or is hired away, or has a heart attack and dies from the stress at work. He really was irreplaceable, and now you have to replace him. Now you will find out how difficult and expensive it is, if at all possible, to replace him. He was probably doing the work of 3 or 4 people. But you only have budget for one. You asked him to 'step up to the plate' some time ago--to put in the extra hours and extra effort to become that expert. And now you just will not be able to replace him. You'll hire 3 or 4 people to do his work, which is what you should have done long ago.
The person who needs to be replaced is YOU. You allowed him to become the expert, rather than the professional. You depended on him, and he came through for you time after time. You rested easy at night knowing that he was taking care of whatever immediate problem was causing the system outage.
But you didn't send him to Dale Carnegie. Maybe you gave him training on one technical item or another, but you did not give him "7 Habits of Highly Effective People". To you, he was just a part of the "system"--a non-entity attached at the fingertips to your computers. You never developed him as a person, as a professional. Do you think that he doesn't need to learn "people skills" just as he learns technology?
Now consider the professional. A professional has a broad array of experience, but not as much depth in any one of them as the expert does in his more limited range. His technical skills are impressive, but his PRIMARY skill is PEOPLE skill. He is a nice guy; he always has a joke ready and everyone likes him. He "speaks Geek" to the Geeks, and English to everyone else. He can communicate in spoken form, rather than inarticulate grunts between keystrokes. Simple, declarative sentences are what he is best at. So you can trust him to write, or at least oversee, the documentation for your project. Experts struggle with communicating with people--they are better with machines. But computers serve people, not the other way around.
When you find a computer technologist with people skills, you have found a rare commodity. This is the person you need to hire, nurture, mentor and teach. You can give him books on salesmanship or interpersonal relations, and he will read them and take them to heart. A professional really is the guy who has your best, and most important long-term goals in his mind. He knows where he needs to lead your organization. You need to train him and then let him do his job.
The secret to a beautiful, protective wood finish starts with a professional clean. Our easy-to-use cleaners and brighteners handle everything from light to heavy, deep cleaning. EXPERT Clean & Bright gets the job done right.
This is a groundbreaking book for two main reasons in that it develops new perspectives on expertise and agency. The thinking was forged through a long term engagement with research which has examined professional learning and systems development and functioning in the public sector in the UK. This work drew attention to the multiprofessional nature of new and emerging forms of professional work and the need for professionals to develop new and relational forms of expertise. The development of an understanding and appreciation of the capabilities and priorities of other professional service providers has become a major imperative in modern welfare services. This book argues for, and illustrates, the building of common knowledge that stretches across boundaries and in turn mediates the exercise of relational agency . In short this book announces the need for an enhanced form of professionalism which has major implications for professional work and learning as well as training. It is well written and accessible to a wide audience. It is, without doubt, a major contribution. It sheds new light on a field which is in danger of instrumental codification rather than, as this book does with such elegance, promotes an understanding of complexity and subtlety of the ways in which newforms of work emerge.
IFSEC Insider is operated by a business or businesses owned by Informa PLC and all copyright resides with them. Informa PLC's registered office is 5 Howick Place, London SW1P 1WG. Registered in England and Wales. Number 8860726.
I attended a workshop recently for those leaving the armed forces. During the open forum session the question about professionalism was raised, and it got me thinking about how former armed forces members transfer their skills into Civvy Street.
There are those who practice successfully as consultants, who lack qualification and whose expertise has come from experience as a practitioner. I would argue that they are no less expert just because there are no post-nominals to hang off of their names.
Managing client expectations
We all know of colleagues who are experts in their given field, but we would not put them in front of a client. Similarly, there are those who are good at establishing client relationships but lack technical expertise. It is a delicate balancing act where the dynamics of professionalism must be paramount in understanding how we interact with our clients.
It is all very well providing a client with expert advice, but if the task takes longer than agreed, or the client changes the scope on us midway through delivery, then it is up to us to make the right business decisions. Our course of action will depend on how much flexibility we are prepared to show in order to serve a client. In short, our professionalism comes from being expert, not only in our discipline, but also in the way we manage the relationship with our clients.
Development
In an ever changing security landscape where new technologies or methodologies are evolving, we as experts must stay current, not only in our particular subject matter, but also in other areas of our very diverse sector. We are expected to demonstrate a view on everything from convergence to data protection.
Continuous Professional Development (CPD) obligations are common to most professions, and many professions define CPD as a structured approach to learning to help ensure competence to practice. So there should be no difference in the security consultancy sector, especially when it can involve any relevant learning activity. Strange then there is no formal industry or sector requirement for security consultants to maintain currency or competence in our chosen discipline. It is down to the individual.
However, for us as security professionals, there are professional organizations. These groups provide tiers of membership linked to CPD activity, where membership may be seen as a differentiator in the marketplace. Similarly, individual enterprises operating in the security sector provide CPD activity, usually as a business development opportunity. Nonetheless, these are opportunities for us to stay abreast of general business practices and expand our knowledge about our very (and I keep saying it) diverse sector.
Each month, the IFSEC Insider (formerly IFSEC Global) Security in Focus podcast brings you conversations with leading figures in the physical security industry. Covering everything from risk management principles and building a security culture, to the key trends ahead in tech and initiatives on diversity and inclusivity, the podcast keeps security professionals up to date with the latest hot topics in the sector.
Good article. A professional is someone who has 80% of experience and the rest with born capabilities. To be a professional can be taught but to become an expert you need the willingness plus the capabilities to stand up towards the occasion. It comes naturally and cannot be taught.
Professional is any one who has met his/her professional accreditation demands through training and qualifications. One then become an expert through continously discharging his or her professional duties and responsibilities for a very long time.
So if you have high level education/training/certification and many years of hands on experience in a specific professional field, do you become a Professional Expert? Rather than one or the other, I think everybody would wish to be (or aiming to be) regarded in that way, I know I certainly do!
I agree, professionalism is ultimately down to character, it can be worked on/ refined with experience. Expert, I think is a relative term: everyone will be an expert in the eyes of someone else, making most of us experts in the eyes of our organisations. Its what our peers view us as that is more telling.
CurveExpert Professional is a cross-platform solution for curve fitting and data analysis. Data can be modelled using a toolbox of linear regression models, nonlinear regression models, smoothing methods, or various kinds of splines. Over 90 models are built-in, but custom regression models may also be defined by the user. Full-featured publication-quality graphing capability allows thorough examination of the curve fit. The process of finding the best fit can be automated by letting CurveExpert compare your data to each model to choose the best curve. The software is designed with the purpose of generating high quality results and output while saving your time in the process.
7fc3f7cf58