Experts Know Best. Or Do They?
I keep getting offers to work as a consultant, an expert, an advisor. They want answers. A plan. A safe path. I almost always say no.
Not because I can’t help. But because I don’t want to ruin something that could have been unique. I am not comfortable in such situation. Actually, I hate it.
A consultant is for me, someone who borrows your watch, tell yu what the time is, and send an invoice for it.
An expert can never create your concept better than you can.
Experts come in with formulas, methods, and strategies that worked somewhere else, at some other time. But your project isn’t somewhere else, some other time. It’s here. Now.
I can give some advice. Explain patterns. Point out a path you might not have seen. But I will never tell you what to do. Only you have that answer.
Experts are usually overrated
I’ve met a lot of experts. Most have less to offer than they’d like to admit. I’m often disappointed. What they know, they’ve learned from books, seminars, and PowerPoint slides. They analyze, categorize, and create frameworks. They understand theory.
But they’ve never built what you are building.
They have often not built something even remotely similar.
I just read a review from an art expert who has never painted a single stroke but still critiques and advises the young talent. He has walked his own path, learned from the best, as an apprentice and found his voice. Yet she insists he has potential, but only if he gets a formal education.
And now she even wants some honour.
It was, of course, thanks to her previous criticism. He had absorbed what she said.
But Once in a While, I Say Yes.
When someone has a raw, unpolished, powerful idea. When they understand there’s no simple way forward, but they want to take the journey anyway. When I get to be part of the process for the long run, not to dictate direction, but to be a sparring partner along the way.
That’s when it gets interesting.
Because there’s one thing experts never understand:
There is no formula for doing something new.
