What is domain Expertise Part I

Ubiquitous Domain Knowledge

 In the professional world of today, each one of us, or nearly everyone works in some industry or service context. All of us, working in our respective industries, may contribute directly to the industry through sales, product / Service Innovation or delivery or Indirectly through support functions like HR, IT, Legal, Finance, Operations etc.. The domains here would not just be industry but also include Government and its many functions.. Or even arts and entertainment like Bollywood and its mechanizations to get successful movies done. Or Even some deep technology service domains like Big-Data, Computing, Telecommunications etc.

 It is imperative that knowledge of that industry and its nuances become critical for you to establish yourself and grow to senior positions of influence. This is Regardless whether you are directly or indirectly involved with the industry / Service Eco-system

 For people Indirectly involved like IT HR and Finance, there is a constant questioning whether one understands the domain that they are working in, do the appreciate the intrinsic challenges, customer value and therefore align their work and solutions that they offer. This translates to conversations and evaluations during ones career life-time over how well you have imbibed and do understand the domain.

 This domain knowledge typically touted as strengths by business analysts {esp in IT Services, a space that I belong to } are today so ubiquitously touted by everyone. That this dispersion of claims, where we hear people rachet out experiences in wide ranging industries from Tech, to financial services to healthcare etc.. Myself being one such claimant on Insurance, Pharmaceuticals Manufacturing, high- Tech and IT Services. This got me thinking as to what is domain knowledge and when / how can a person truly be considered as a domain expert?

 GVP's Pearl of wisdom 

 It reminded me of a wonderful interaction with the CEO of a Indian

Pharma Major Dr Reddys [DRL] many years ago. I was then quite fresh in the industry and had just joined DRL and had gone through an induction program and a few weeks of exposure to the various aspects of the pharma value chain [ mostly backend as we would not have the market customer facing experience ... being located ourselves in Hyderabad in india, while a large part of the markets where elsewhere in india and abroad in foreign locations ]. This interaction with the leadership was the culmination of our induction process and a leadership get together was due before all of us got down to brass-tacks of daily chores that awaited our role. It was arranged in one of the corporate auditoriums typical theater like setup with steeped arches of swinging chairs facing a staged floor in front of us at the bottom where the leadership were seated and would soon address us. During this event, we eagerly looked forward to meeting the CEO Mr GV Prasad well known in the industry circles and within DRL for his aggression, innovation and management alacrity. The gathering was large, other than a few of us laterals, there were a myriad graduates from various colleges relevant to Pharma business including under-grads post grads from medical , medical sales, engineering and a few management graduates all gathered. During this interaction what I vividly remember and would like to recall in the context of domain ensued during GVP''s address to the graduating class.

In his speech, GVP [ as he was called] asked us how good was the induction and how much do we think we now understand pharmaceuticals business. This was a pertinent question as many of us had joined as relative pharma novices without background to this industry, and it looked like he was tryiing to gauge how much we had gained from the program. We could hear various responses, people shouting out 70%, 60% and other numbers and such equivalents to show that the program had successfully given a a good perspective on Pharma. All through this GVP smiled in his typical manner looking at all of us. Finally after the responses were through, GVP stated his experience in Pharma, going all the way back to the early 1980s as part of his business Cheminor Drug and then DRL cumulating about ~20 years of work leading these organizations and he said that he could hazard that he has gathered just about 5% knowledge of the industry. Revealing so, GVP concluded, that we all should embrace humility and work hard long-term before we truly claim expertise. That was a total eye opener and stunned the gathering to a few moments of silence. I am not sure whether GVP did this regularly for an effect, as part of his interaction or was that spontaneous but that left a deep impression.

Today when I look at all types of people esp from support functions walking around claiming domain expertise and drawing flow charts to prove their claims, I wonder what is true domain expertise. This thought has been in mind for a few years and therefore this attempt and giving a Structure [ akin to the CMM!! ] on what is domain expertise. Under some special moments of clarity, it started to strike me that one could visualize domain expertise like concentric regions [ think chakra-vyuha for visual simile] moving closer to the center of each industries domain where, people reside and that reflect their depth of true understanding of domain

 I propose this Chakra-View [ !! ~ Vyuh] to benchmark myself and view others as well. I propose 4 layers, like regions in a circular ocean, the outer most being shallow and the innermost deepest with most water and hidden treasures or secrets .. Most people are found to be in the outer most layer adjoining land. Here as expected most people are to be seen and to be claiming that they are now comfortable with the waters of the ocean and therefore marine experts!

 The 4 regions and the related 4 personas being as shown in the graphic below 

Layer of Expertise	Persona	Index	%-age	Brief Description
Communication / Vocabulary	Jargonist	1%	90%~	Knows definitions terminology. Shallow outer knowledge,  junior assistant, or support function personnnel
Customs / Practices	Machinist	10%	9%~	Knows to execute transactions, process. In Training within industry in lean, these are the operators, can do but don’t exactly know why.
Context	Cognist	50%	.9%~	Knows the context in which the industry plays, How the market place delivers value to the end customers, Nuances of competition and their relative positions.
Connects	Protagonist	100%	.1%~	Knows and has the connects with key people who are getting things done and has information on future state of the industry before the industry gets there. They are the people who shape the industry into the future

In Part II, I will attempt a detailed perspective on each of these above layers of expertise and persona. I would like to get your thoughts on how you view Domain expertise.