{"id":1002,"date":"2019-12-06T10:29:15","date_gmt":"2019-12-06T10:29:15","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/janbosch.com\/blog\/?p=1002"},"modified":"2019-12-06T10:29:20","modified_gmt":"2019-12-06T10:29:20","slug":"so-youre-an-expert","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/janbosch.com\/blog\/index.php\/2019\/12\/06\/so-youre-an-expert\/","title":{"rendered":"So, you\u2019re an expert?"},"content":{"rendered":"\n
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Image by Gerd Altmann from Pixabay\n<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n\n\n\n

This week, I gave a talk at a company that\u2019s starting with data-driven practices and A\/B experimentation specifically. My talk was concerned with the enablers required for this, such as continuous deployment (or DevOps), the specific ways in which organizations can apply data-driven practices and A\/B testing and the importance of value modeling so that you know what you\u2019re optimizing for.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

The interesting situation was that several participants were either \nvery quiet or had remarks that seemed to question the entire approach. \nAlthough I was initially surprised by this and focused on the content, \nover time it became clear to me that something else was going on: the \ncritics were so-called experts in their specific part of the product \nportfolio and, apparently, were concerned with the possibility of the \ndata showing that their expert opinions might actually be wrong.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

My favorite definition of an expert is someone who tells you why \nsomething can\u2019t be done and to some extent, this viewpoint was confirmed\n as part of this talk. We all appreciate being experts at something and \nour sense of self-worth stems from the identity confirmation that comes \nwith being an expert. Within groups, the status of individual members is\n derived from their reputation, for instance, as an expert. So, what I \nwas doing with my talk was presenting people with the possibility that \ntheir reputation and status within the group, as well as their sense of \nself-worth, might be taken away from them because they\u2019ve \u2018built their \nhouse on quicksand\u2019 and data from the field might not back up their \nbeliefs.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Many organizations have historically had very limited, biased and \nhighly delayed data from products in the field. This leads to this data \nbeing irrelevant for decision-making. So, if we can\u2019t make decisions \nbased on data, what\u2019s the alternative? The alternative is to base \ndecisions on the expertise available inside the company. And this is \nwhere the competition and jockeying for position start. The result often\n is a situation where each area within the product, and consequently \nwithin the company, will receive \u2018something\u2019 in terms of budget, people \nand responsibility. Not because these areas are the most critical from a\n business perspective but because of historical reasons and skillful \npolitical play.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Data-driven and experimental practices provide one of the \nmost effective ways to return to a customer and market-centric way of \nworking in which decisions are based on the real world, rather than on \ninternal politics. This means your role as an expert is evolving as \nwell. Instead of relying on your many years of expertise, you now need \nto concern yourself with frequently validating the beliefs you and the \norganization hold by collecting data from the field or running \nexperiments to confirm or disprove, interpreting data coming back from \nthe field concerning system and customer behavior based on your best \nunderstanding while highlighting aspects that are difficult to explain \nby current models, developing hypotheses to be tested based on \ndiscrepancies between what you thought you knew and the insights the \ndata provides, accepting that, in most cases, you don\u2019t know and need \nexperiments and data to answer questions.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Western society has reached a stage where the confidence in experts \nis lower than it has been in decades. Rather than blaming the uneducated\n masses, perhaps we, as experts, should reflect on our own behavior and \npreconceptions and see if, maybe, we\u2019re responsible for this decline in \ntrust. It feels really good to go out and pontificate about your \nexpert-based viewpoints and beliefs, but it hurts you and society if you\n have to go out a few months or a year later and claim the opposite of \nwhat you first believed.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

As an expert, the correct answer to almost all questions should be \u201cI don\u2019t know, but I know how we can find out\u201d. The real expert is humble and realizes how little he or she actually knows.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

To get more insights earlier, sign up for my newsletter at <\/em>jan@janbosch.com<\/em><\/a> or follow me on<\/em> janbosch.com\/blog<\/em><\/a>, LinkedIn (<\/em>linkedin.com\/in\/janbosch<\/em><\/a>) or Twitter (<\/em>@JanBosch<\/em><\/a>).<\/em> <\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

This week, I gave a talk at a company that\u2019s starting with data-driven practices and A\/B experimentation specifically. My talk was concerned with the enablers required for this, such as continuous deployment (or DevOps), the specific ways in which organizations can apply data-driven practices and A\/B testing and the importance of value modeling so that … Read more<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"generate_page_header":"","footnotes":""},"categories":[8,10],"tags":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/janbosch.com\/blog\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1002"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/janbosch.com\/blog\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/janbosch.com\/blog\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/janbosch.com\/blog\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/janbosch.com\/blog\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=1002"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/janbosch.com\/blog\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1002\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":1004,"href":"https:\/\/janbosch.com\/blog\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1002\/revisions\/1004"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/janbosch.com\/blog\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=1002"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/janbosch.com\/blog\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=1002"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/janbosch.com\/blog\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=1002"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}