Expertise can be your lifeline

Today, I measured the gulf between education and expertise - and it's pretty large.

All of us have an area where we are the expert. For example, when it comes to robot design, colleagues come to me for advice. But, no matter our expertise, there will be work where our inexperience will not only delay completion, it will render the final product less than what it could have been.

Today, many experts store their knowledge on the Internet for anyone to use. When I am stuck in the mire of a home project for which I had insufficient experience, a well-placed Google search or YouTube video can be my lifeline. When it comes to intellectual pursuits like paper writing, a self-help video is less instructive. For these, I need an expert's personal attention.

Lately, I struggled to complete an editorial writing assignment. My subject is that HBCUs are the best resource for diversifying the STEM graduate pool. I am an educated recruiter who has written many research articles. But I am no editorial writer.

According to what I have learned, rules for editorial writing are similar to those for news and research article writing. For example, an editorial must be timely and have a lead that draws the attention of the reader.

Our professor invited four professional journalists to listen to our editorial ideas. After my pitch, one of the experts asked, "What makes your take on STEM recruitment new, urgent, and different? How special is it?"

Another suggested, "Increase your editorial's relevance by relating engineer diversity to the design of better products for a world community." This suggestion has its genesis in a recent failure of Google to engineer facial recognition so that it works on darker-skinned people.

These experts helped me take my editorial from ordinary to special. Increased diversity in STEM recruitment is a well-established practice. That engineering diversity will provide improved products to a broader society is the special twist I needed.

I did not get advice like this from reading online articles on editorial writing or watching YouTube videos. I got it from experts who personally considered my idea before suggesting just the angle that would make it work.

Never underestimate the benefit of expertise.