Not faster than a bear experts

There's that old joke: two men hiking come across a bear. One man says I'm going to run. The other man tells him he can't run faster than the bear. His reply: I don't have to, I only have to run faster than you.

I got to thinking about the disappearance of deep expertise. I am finding most of the consultants and other self-proclaimed experts in various fields are taking the approach of the bear joke. If they are one step ahead of the client, but only one step, they can tout themselves as experts.

I've seen it in SharePoint development, in data warehousing and BI. You and your staff have a certain level of expertise in these things. But something comes up, and you feel like you need to hire the big guns. The trouble any more is the big guns are hard to find! And so you often end up with someone who is only marginally more knowledgeable than you are. In many ways you end up teaching them.

I suppose a part of this is the fear of specializing. If you spent a decade becoming a deep expert in a narrowly focused area only to see that technology wane and die (Novell, 3 Com wizards), then you are at deep risk of losing your livelihood. And so today - is SalesForce or SAP something you want to gamble your career on? Or do you have a set of general skills - a jack of all trades, master of none?

But now as a hiring manager and CIO, I am on the hunt for the bears themselves, not the people who can outrun me.