At Crossroads Business Solutions (XRBS), expertise has a very clear definition. We believe expertise is comprised of three factors: Education, Experience, and Training. The more one has of each, the more of an expert one becomes. Therefore, expertise is not a yes/no categorization, but a matter of degree.
When it comes to technical and/or complex matters – the more expertise one holds the better they will perform. This applies to everything from brain surgery to plumbing, from law to technology.
Education: This includes classroom instruction… like high school and college, but also includes industry certification. Certifications are developed by governing bodies or manufacturers to ensure that experts understand the intended design, functionality, and best practices associated with a given discipline. Education alone, however, can provide very little business value. For instance, a new college graduate, while well educated, has very little experience applying their recent education to the real world. A brain surgeon is not ready to operate until they have spent hundreds of hours working on cadavers. And in technology – we refer to a highly certified engineer with little to no experience to be a “paper tiger”.
Experience: This comes in many forms which can all be helpful. Sometimes we have bad experiences – but it serves as unforgettable experience of what to avoid in the future. Other times we have tremendous success, which gives us a certain path that is beneficial to repeat over and over seeking the same destination. At XRBS, we work hard to standardize our recommendations, actions, and processes on past success. And when we run across an occasional failure, we are just as diligent to dig into the situation to identify what happened, seek out warning signs we could/should have seen (to recognize it again in the future), and ask ourselves if there is anything we can do differently in the future to avoid repeating the bad experience.
Training: Training is the most important factor of the three, and there is only one beneficial form – good training. The better the training, the better the performance. Bad training, however, can only lead to poor performance. At XRBS, training of our engineers is handed down through hours of “Shadowing”. First the student watches the expert perform, then the roles are reversed and the expert watches the student. This approach to training is essential when grooming anyone to move deeper into expertise.
Having a defined concept of expertise is important for a company like Crossroads Business Solutions because we are paid for our expertise. And while this commitment to building experts is not cheap – rest assured that it produces the best results possible for our clients.
Think about this the next time you are disappointed with the performance or recommendation of your expert. And then inquire about these three factors – 1. who educated/certified them, 2. under what conditions did they get their experience, and 3. how were they trained. The answers may surprise you, and also explain why you were disappointed…
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comments (0)Happy New Year, and welcome to 2012. This could be your year of business ubiquity. What I mean is with the use of current and cost affordable hardware and software, we can work from almost anywhere, at any time, as effectively as we do in the office – and sometimes more so! For instance, as I write this blog post on New Years’ Day, I am still in my PJs sitting in my living room chair in front of a fire with a football game on the TV. I can assure you in years past I would not have gotten dressed and driven into the office to write this article. Further, after I write this, I’ll probably work on other stuff for a few minutes here and there as I feel like it. And it’s not just business owners that can do this – it’s your staff too!
So, on a normal day, after getting the kids on the bus, I sit down in my soft-comfy recliner at about 7am and begin my workday by opening my laptop and logging into Microsoft Outlook to read e-mail and review my calendar. I am not talking about a watered-down “OWA“ version of Outlook. I am using a full installation of Outlook on my laptop that is now able to communicate directly with our company Exchange server back at the office over my in-home wireless Internet connection – and the experience is just like when I’m connected to our network in the office.
When I finally arrive at my first meeting of the morning, if I find I have arrived a little earlier than my counterpart - no need to be frustrated over wasted time, I just reach for my smart phone (I currently carry the iPhone 4) and can do any number of helpful things such as responding to e-mail, reading the mornings news (local, national, or just about anything in print), watching the morning news (local, national, or just about anything on TV) or catch up with people via social networking such as Linked In or Facebook.
Following my breakfast meeting, frequently I have a lunch appointment in this same area – rather than burning 30 minutes driving to the office and 5-10 more minutes of water-cooler talk, I decide to slip over to Panera Bread, Paradise Bakery, or any one of the local restaurants that now offer free wi-fi. Once there I remotely connect in to our Microsoft Terminal Server for access to all my office applications, web applications, and data – just like sitting in the office. And, now that we use the Cisco Small Business UC series phone system at work, any calls at the office simultaneously ring to my cell phone.
It is 2012. It is a new year… and hopefully a new economy is emerging. Is your staff armed with the technology they need for business ubiquity?
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As President and co-founder of Crossroads Business Solutions, Rob Green is responsible for the day to day operations of this central Indiana IT Outsourcing Company. He has a Bachelor’s degree in Business Administration & Management, as well as an MBA in Finance from Butler University. Over his 25 year career, he has obtained a broad array of Sales, Accounting, and Operational experience with businesses of all sizes, from startup to Fortune 500 high-tech corporations.
Crossroads Business Solutions is a central Indiana company providing Professional IT Services including advice, design, implementation, management, and maintenance support to small and medium size businesses that typically have 1 or no IT personnel on staff. To receive additional technical updates, sign up for our quarterly newsletter here.
