An almost super concentration is what's seemingly needed in today’s competitive knowledge-based economy, and this kind of attention to detail is what's so important to corporations who hire marketers for their "expertise". But I've realized throughout my years that there are no true experts, just people with a measurable degree of superiority in skill, and that skill is usually embellished with imposing credentials. I've spent alot of my time trying to appoint people to various positions within my company, and I've had to consider that there is a balance between what one can innately do and what one has practiced considerably.
Rigorous studies in the past two decades have shown that professional stock pickers invest no more successfully than amateurs, that noted connoisseurs distinguish wines hardly better than beginners, and that highly credentialed psychiatric therapists help patients no more than colleagues with less advanced degrees. And even when expertise undoubtedly exists--as in, say, teaching or business management--it is often hard to measure, let alone explain.
I found this to be extremely revealing...
Garry Kasparov, is a Russian grandmaster in chess who had a rating of 2812, and he would win 75 percent of his games against the 100th-ranked grandmaster Jan Timman of the Netherlands, who had a rating of 2616 (not that many less won games). Ratings like these allow psychologists to assess expertise by performance rather than reputation and to track changes in a given player's skill over the course of his or her career. The feats of chess masters have long been ascribed to nearly magical mental powers, but as you can see by the numbers mentioned above that there is no such magic.
The chess master just as the other player does calls up a general knowledge of where the piece stands in relation to other elements on the board. It is this same kind of implicit knowledge that the commuter has when reading how many stops are left on a subway line. A master does not have to remember every detail at all times, because he can reconstruct any particular detail whenever he wishes by tapping a well-organized system of connections, established by his past experiences and usually by deductive reasoning. In short: The expert relies not so much on an intrinsically stronger power of analysis, but rather he summons from a store of structured knowledge.
When it comes to this marketing stuff, it is my knowledge of certain things that gives me edge in today's so called "urban" scene, something that alot of these other firms with "imposing credentials' just don't have. So I'd like all of you in Blog-land to know that your power comes from your knowledge base and your talent is found in what you know best, and that is what might make you look like an expert. But remember - performance speaks louder then reputation.
Peace out...
