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Written on September 1, 2007 by Dr. Lauchlan A. K. Mackinnon in Uncategorized
The Making of an Expert: The 3 Key Factors
Underlying Individual Elite Performance in any
Domain
The July-August 2007 issue of Harvard Business Review contains an interesting article The
Making of an Expert by Ericsson, Prietula and Cokely.
The article argues (on the basis of scholarly research since 1985) that outstanding or elite
performance in any field is predominantly the product of years of deliberate practice and
coaching, not of any innate talent or skill. Experts (and elite performers) are made, not born:
that elite performers in fields ranging from music to arts to mathematics to neurology could not
be correlated with significant early indicators that could have predicted success research has
indicated that there is no correlation between IQ and expert performance in chess, music,
sports, and medicine. The only significant exception the research allow for is that genetic
physical characteristics such as height and body size can play a significant role as indicators of
elite sporting performance but even then these factors alone arent enough to indicate elite
success in the chosen field.
The key characteristics behind the development of experts (defined as outstanding leaders in
their chosen fields of endeavour) are
deliberate practice 1.
outstanding coaching, feedback and mentorship 2.
A significant investment of effort over time (typically ten years or more) 3.
Deliberate practice includes, focused, concentrated training, techniques of visualisation and
scenario planning. It involves systematic efforts to practice and improve performance in any
area of activity.
The key point with training and practice is not the length of time spent practising: it is the
amount of quality focused practice and training undertaken on a regular basis. For example, the
authors cite violinist Nathan Milstein. Milstein noticed other students around him practising all
day, and asked his mentor how many hours a day he should be practising to which the mentor
replied it doesnt really matter how long. If you practice with your fingers, no amount is
enough. If you practice with your head, two hours is plenty. Milstein advises to practice as
much as you can with concentration.
Practice also involves focused efforts to improve on weaknesses as well as to build on strengths.
The authors argue that it takes time to become an expert typically a minimum of ten years
(or 10,000 hours) before they win international competitions. The authors claim that in some
fields it is longer: for classical musical performance, it can be 15 to 25 years. This result is well
borne out by research studying successes from the Beatles to Nobel Prize winners, identifying
that typically even overnight sensations have a solid ten years behind them during which they
acquired skills, developed familiarity and relationships in their professional domain, and
generally built the capabilities and relationship infrastructure to position themselves for
success.
Finally, the authors argue that individuals who reach elite performance success or expert
status seek out constructive, even painful feedback and develop an ability to assess when
and if a coachs advice is appropriate and useful to work for them.
The article and its observations are certainly interesting. However, it is a rather superficial
examination of the making of an expert, and does not begin to address a range of additional
factors such as passion and motivation (presumably something along this dimension is needed
to fuel people through a 10 year journey towards becoming an expert), intrinsic and extrinsic
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rewards and their roles in motivation, commitment, supporting social networks (e.g. family and
colleagues), and the differences between acquiring expertise in different areas (for example, the
differences in becoming an expert and leader in their field in Medicine or Law and in Olympic
Athletics, Business, Creative Arts, etc). Does an expertmean the same thing in all these
different areas, and is the path to get there the same? And is expert necessarily the best word
to use for extremely informed and capable high achievers and star performers in a range of
different fields?
In any case, the article is an interesting provocation for further thought.
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