Tag: professional development

From a young age, my fascination with how things worked led me to dismantle every toy that fell into my hands, such as the precious fire truck from my grandmother, much to my father’s dismay. This curiosity laid the foundation for who I have become: a computer science enthusiast and, later, a design expert.

My journey began to take shape when I realized the software I was developing wasn’t meeting user satisfaction. This realization underscored the importance of understanding not just the technical, but also the human aspects of system design. Recognizing that everything is interconnected, I began to see the value of Systems Thinking and Design Thinking as essential frameworks for addressing complex problems.

Systems Thinking offers a lens to view problems and solutions as parts of a larger whole, emphasizing interdependencies within systems. It taught me that usability issues in software were not merely technical but deeply rooted in a failure to consider the user’s experience and needs comprehensively.

Similarly, Design Thinking introduced a process-oriented approach focused on empathy, creativity, and user-centered design, highlighting the importance of iterative testing and problem-solving to create solutions that are technically sound, meaningful, and accessible.

The transition to adopting Systems Thinking and Design Thinking marked a significant shift. It wasn’t just about embracing new methodologies but fundamentally changing how I viewed design and development, ensuring a balance between the abstract beauty of high-level designs and the practical, detailed work required to make them effective.

This new perspective led me to systemic design, which involves mapping environments and concepts to identify components, interactions, and opportunities, enabling me to tackle complex projects with a critical and innovative eye, always prioritizing the user’s needs.

Despite the challenges in communicating these complex concepts, I strive to convey the importance of a thorough approach in designing complex tools. I aim to share this vision in a clear, accessible manner, emphasizing the effectiveness of a balanced, articulated thinking process in developing solutions that efficiently meet user needs. This journey underscores the evolution of my professional and personal growth, from curiosity about the workings of toys to a holistic view of design and development that appreciates both the abstraction’s beauty and the necessity of fine-tuning details.

You need to be more possibilistic. I know you have experience. You’re an expert in your field. Yes, you’ve been working on all kinds of projects: big and small, narrow and wide, complex and simple. I understand when you say you have an intuition and you can quickly find potential solutions and good roads to take. But when you stay on the surface of things you are not evolving as a professional. You might move to a more strategic role or even management but when you stop doing fieldwork you are missing a lot of opportunities.

Technology becomes more and more complicated and complex. Although design principles and sound mental models are the best equipment for a professional, in any field, detaching yourself from daily practice is risky. You become slow with tools because they change rapidly so you risk spending more time learning new tools from scratch rather than producing value. You weaken your capability to combine simple parts into complex ones to face complexity with complexity. When you don’t dedicate hard, intense, and deep work to a project you stop getting insights, refining your skills, and taking the chance to move your discipline further.

I am not saying you should go back to the front line to build the bricks, one by one, to raise a wall. But a good part of your working time should be involved in getting your hands dirty.

It’s the best way to constantly learn, refine your expertise, getting a chance to share your knowledge with others, putting your creative skills to hard work. And this keeps you alive, up-to-date and, maybe, you could even have the satisfaction and the fun of having accomplished something difficult and beautiful.

Get out of the office, put down your phone and see if you can do some practical work in your field, you’ll have immense benefits.

You cannot declare yourself an expert because it’s a relative quality. Only somebody else could define you as an expert because of the problem you have solved for them and with them.

Being an expert is a relative position because there will always be somebody who knows more and better than you and somebody who knows less and worse than you.

At any moment in time, you are always an expert for somebody and a beginner for somebody else.

What to do with your expertise? Ask to whom sees you as an expert and have a dialogue with them. Don’t impose your help. Find, discover, define, and set the problem to see if it is desirable, useful, meaningful, and sustainable to solve that problem, and then offer your expertise to solve it.

This idea sparked thanks to the interesting Knowledge Entrepreneur Salon organized by Achim Rothe on Ness Labs Community.

It’s paywalled, this is an excerpt of a thread with Achim:

“There will always be people with more expertise than you, there will always be people with less expertise than you, it’s not for you to decide whether you are an expert.”

Massimo Curatella

“And it is the job of a knowledge entrepreneur to show up with your particular expertise. So that your audience—people that do get value out of this—can find you”.

Achim Rothe

I totally subscribe to the notion of showing up to provide value to be recognized.

Practice, study, and be prepared to show up and provide value with your expertise. Welcome to the era of the Knowledge Entrepreneur.