Specific vs Structural Expertise
When most companies, hiring managers, leaders, purchasing departments, and recruiters go looking for talent or service providers, 99.999% are looking for the exact same thing. Their job description or request for proposal/quote are exactly alike.
“We’re looking for someone that is an expert in apple slicing machinery. They need to have a PhD in it, and have worked for the best apple slicing manufacturing company on the planet.”
In fact, it’s highly likely that your company already has a lot of [insert your thing here] specialists. And even more specialists adjacent to it.
But I can almost guarantee that you are poor in a different kind of expertise.
Namely, structural.
What is structural expertise you ask?
Imagine tomorrow you walk into work and see that the apple slicing machinery is being used by a new pair of hands. These hands are called AI and Robotics.
That AI-native Robot had structural expertise and figured out how to become a specialist in apple slicing in a few minutes. And just like that…the machine and the company became obsolete. A buggy-whip business, failing in the modern age.
But then there are the people who created the AI-native Robots. The ones with even deeper Structural Expertise. So deep, in fact, they were able to encode it into the AI and the Robot.
So, I ask you. Doesn’t your company have more than enough of the same ole same ole specialists?
Don’t you need more structural folks that know how to build the machine that builds the machine that then gets you that specialist expertise you covet so deeply?
This is why 0.001% are absolutely crushing it, and 99.999% are scratching their heads wondering why their AI investments aren’t paying off. Welcome to the Power Law Economy.
Let me be more blunt:
—Sean
P.S. I’m not saying you necessarily need to be choosing only people and service providers with deep AI and robotics expertise. What I’m saying is change the JD and RFP to identify entities that understand the structural mechanics of how things work across businesses, industries, situations, behavioral economics, etc.
P.P.S. You find some of this in the management consulting companies where individuals have seen so many business problems, industries, sizes, etc. that they “see” a meta level of problems and solutions that are similar across types. They have thusly identified structural mechanics of an underlying system. That wisdom is incredibly valuable because it lets someone skip forward faster than competitors while also side-stepping land mines. Similarly, multi-sport athletes often have the muscle memory and spatial-body understanding to excel in different types of sport because they’re structurally similar: running, jumping, swinging, etc.