The Specialist Pipeline: Winning the War for Specialist Talent

by Kent Jonasen

The knowledge principal is not just recognized as a leading capacity within their own organization, but they also possess a depth of knowledge that can help the company build a competitive edge.

Taking a closer look at the knowledge principal role, we see that they are characterized by being strategically defined.

the knowledge principal is not just held accountable for the tools but also the immediate results of said tools.

Most specialists are held accountable at too low a level.

The knowledge expert operates in a narrower part of the organization and with a limited number of closer colleagues and stakeholders.

The knowledge principal is held accountable for being the architect of their domain of expertise and positioning it for the future. They are part of delivering more groundbreaking results based on their domain of expertise.

Stepping into a new specialist role demands a fundamental transition. Some will be successful at making the transition to one, two, or three levels—others may have challenges simply making a transition into the role of knowledge expert.

If work values are not changed, there won’t be any behavioral change.

Specialists will generally find how they use their time changes in two ways as they move from one role to another: A. They make more and more of their time available to their colleagues. B. They spend more and more of their time on developing their domains of expertise rather than on creating immediate results.

Every specialist role requires a focus on developing the right skills needed to meet expectations.

You dilute being a specialist if you automatically call everybody “specialists” if they are not people managers or project managers.

This means that • you know something about your area of expertise that not everyone else knows, and • some of your colleagues depend on you having this area of expertise.

people depend on the knowledge experts to be able to give feedback, guide, and clearly convey how the specific domain of expertise is important to them. And vice versa—the knowledge expert depends on people being willing to ask for and listen to advice. This raises a demand for developing a communication style that makes people want to come and talk to you.

Essentially, the knowledge expert must build a personal brand and a certain reputation and become the person people refer to when it comes to their domain of expertise. But for colleagues to actually reach out, it also requires that they experience that the knowledge expert understands the commercial side of the business and is focused on creating value for customers.

in this role, you will, for the first time, be held accountable—and not just for how you perform your own job.

Success in this role requires that you truly identify with being a specialist.

One of the most significant differences between a professional role and a knowledge expert role is that the knowledge expert is formally responsible for using their expertise to support colleagues.

In a knowledge expert role, you are expected to continuously find better ways of doing things in relation to your domain of expertise.

Though it takes time—and time spent on defining knowledge gaps and closing these gaps is time taken away from producing immediate results—if you are not cautious about this and do not proactively set aside time for this, then you risk only being focused on producing immediate results of your own.

As a knowledge expert, you must want to spend time disseminating your knowledge about your area of expertise and feel enriched by it— you must not only find joy in completing your own duties and tasks.

As a knowledge expert, you depend on people seeking and listening to your advice and suggestions. You depend on people reaching out to you. It cannot only be you having to hunt down people at the last minute to ensure they are involving you when they should. Accordingly, it is critical that you build a reputation as a knowledge expert.

As a knowledge expert, you need to ask yourself: • Does my manager know more than I do about my domain of expertise? If not, how are they then equipped to define the right business objectives for you? And even if they do, how will you ever step out of their shadow and take full ownership of your role? We have to stop looking at the people manager role from a mechanical perspective. It’s much more a question of collaboration between the specialists and their managers.

You need to ask yourself this question: • How can I, through my domain of expertise, contribute to improving the results of the team or organization? At the end of the day, your direct manager is the one who has to sign off on the business objectives, and they likely bring different perspectives to the table, given that they are responsible for their entire team delivering results—though the starting point in decentralized organizations and specialist organizations must be that the knowledge expert can at least draft relevant business objectives.

People managers giving feedback to their teams is one thing, but as a knowledge expert, you have to give feedback to peers and colleagues—people who are not reporting to you.

As for the emotional aspect, where your colleagues may not see you as the obvious person to give them feedback on anything, you can often successfully cross that bridge by making sure that you do the following: • Build a relationship based on trust before you start giving people feedback. • Establish yourself as a domain authority before you start giving colleagues feedback. • Ensure your colleagues can see how your feedback can benefit them. • Balance giving feedback on things colleagues do right versus wrong.

It all starts with actually valuing finding better ways of doing things. But given you have that work value in place, you also need the skills to get it done.

Driving continuous improvement is all about taking what we have and using it in better ways. We don’t add anything dramatic, and we don’t change anything fundamental.

The important thing here is that we as knowledge experts not only need to proactively take responsibility for engaging, educating, and supporting other people around us, but we must also take charge of driving continuous improvement in our part of the organization within our domain of expertise.

To be successful as knowledge expert, you must appreciate the link between your domain of expertise and the actual results of your work.

It is not sufficient just to share your knowledge. You have to follow through and ensure that it is applied in the right way.

In the roles, you surrender more and more control over your own results and become more and more dependent on others to achieve your goals. But the development is not linear.

in the knowledge leader role, you do not just create results by having a much deeper knowledge than other people within an area of expertise. Naturally, you must have that knowledge, but results are brought about through your ability to mobilize relevant stakeholders and by thinking in end results rather than just in knowledge, products, and processes.

The absolute greatest challenge as a knowledge leader is typically accepting that you are now more dependent on others for creating results.

Either you fulfill what most would call the “traditional knowledge leader role,” wherein you have a significantly broad understanding and insight into the value chain and combine it with extremely deep knowledge, or you have a knowledge leader role, wherein you, over time, have acquired knowledge at the knowledge expert level within different domains of expertise and are thereby able to operate and prioritize across different domains of expertise as well as create results across different domains of expertise.

The first type has built a solid understanding of the broader value chain and developed a deep company-unique understanding of a certain domain of expertise. This person is often referred to as the classic knowledge leader. The second type has built a solid understanding of the broader value chain, but instead of developing a deep company-unique understanding of one certain domain of expertise, they have developed a knowledge expert level of understanding of different areas of expertise and are now able to work across different domains of expertise.

You do not set your own team like people managers do. You have to operate with the people who happen to be there.

As a knowledge leader, you can’t drop the ball. You have to see it through because, at the end of the day, you are held accountable for the end results—not just your own contributions.

The consequence of Zane’s role as knowledge leader and with the associated key business objectives is, first, that his end performance is dependent on many other people rather than on himself.

Similarly, Zane often only sees the actual result of his work some time after it has been completed. In other words, he has to navigate his way around a time lag in order to achieve his set goals.

In the knowledge leader role, communication is not something you do only from time to time. It is a constant and daily part of your role. It is the foundation of being able to create results through others without having any formal authority.

It is crucial that in the knowledge leader role, you understand “the power of the question.”

You will also find that most innovation at the knowledge leader level does not take place in isolation of the remaining parts of the organization. So a critical part of driving innovation is aligning your own initiatives with relevant parts of the organization.

To summarize, it is critical that a knowledge leader positions their domain of expertise with a view to the future and not just for today. They are the only ones who can do this. They are the one person—or the one person out of two or three within the company who have the deepest knowledge within this domain of expertise.