What is the difference between experience vs expertise? Are you an Expert?

CPT Private RallyPoint Member — Fri, 01 Sep 2023 14:48:27 -0400

Recently was I was able to talk about this. I am not a fan of the term "SME." Experts are credentialed. If you are an Expert Infantryman then you were tested and passed. Too often I hear find the SME being self-proclaimed. I think we have all seen that person that was been at a job for a long duration and feels they are an expert. They may be good at what they do but then what is an expert? Can they train another person in that role? Did they just build the habits required to be successful at a process?

I don't believe that experience equates to expertise at all. I feel this way with veterans. Just because you deployed and performed your duties doesn't make you better than someone that hasn't deployed. They just happened to be at the right place and time to deploy. They could gain experience and knowledge to become expert while deployed but you don't become an expert by accident.

How you do become an expert? Are you an expert?

Response by A1C Medrick "Rick" DeVaney made Sep 1 at 2023 3:45 PM

A1C Medrick "Rick" DeVaney — Fri, 01 Sep 2023 15:45:15 -0400

Looks Like Ya Got It Nailed...
And Here's One MOST People Get Screwed Up.
The Difference Between An Expert And A Professional;
And Those Whom Refer To Themselves As Professionals Are In For A Lesson.
An "Expert" Is Well Trained In Their Field, And Is Capable Of Preforming The Tasks...
Whereas Being A "Professional" ONLY Means "You've Been Paid To Preform A Service"
But Does NOT Mean You Have To KNOW Anything About It...
And That's Exactly WHY, Amateur's Have An Amateur Status.... As Olympians Do.
They've Never Made Money From The Activity.........
So When Someone Says "I'm A Professional In My Field;
It Really Isn't Saying Much...So Don't Be Impressed By Their Bull Sh*t;
They May Not Know Anything About It...
So, If You Want Proper Information, You're In Need Of An"Expert".

Response by Sgt Private RallyPoint Member made Sep 1 at 2023 7:06 PM

Sgt Private RallyPoint Member — Fri, 01 Sep 2023 19:06:28 -0400

CPT Private RallyPoint Member Anyone can have experience, but if you are content to do the same thing year after year, then all you have is experience. On the other hand, if you are constantly learning and expanding the boundaries of your job, you gain expertise. I had expertise in multiple fields during a 33 year Space Shuttle career due to dedication and commitment. During my career, I held brown bag lunch discussions where I taught co-workers about money management and investing. I was highly skilled but not in the expert category.

Response by 1LT Private RallyPoint Member made Sep 1 at 2023 9:48 PM

1LT Private RallyPoint Member — Fri, 01 Sep 2023 21:48:34 -0400

Completely agree.

Experience = gaining of knowledge and practical skills through on the job training, first hand witnessing, and real world encounters and observations.

Expertise = knowledge and ability/capacity earned through studying, training, and testing; a proven and earned accomplishment vetted through another expert, substantiated by professionals with quantifiable standards.

Different things, not the same.

Response by MSG Thomas Currie made Sep 2 at 2023 2:40 PM

MSG Thomas Currie — Sat, 02 Sep 2023 14:40:13 -0400

I absolutely agree that experience does not necessarily equate to expertise.
I would say that experience is an essential element of expertise. This makes experience a simple gate for initial evaluation of expertise: if the individual lacks experience, they are NOT an expert.

The military uses the term Subject Matter Expert primarily to refer to those positions qualified to either conduct or develop training on a specific topic. We have a long tradition of expecting all NCOs to be SMEs across the full spectrum of their MOS, including both MOS-specific and Common tasks. Everyone knows this isn't realistic, but we continue to maintain the pretense throughout most of our force structure.

It is very unfortunate that in the mid-1970s the US Army made a deliberate decision to avoid having real experts serving throughout the force.

Like most bad decisions in the military, this decision was made with the best of intentions and for good reasons. The concept that the Army chose to apply didn't absolutely need to be the disaster that it was and still continues to be, but like so many new programs in the military the change was very badly implemented.

What was this disastrous new program? Perhaps you've heard of it -- It was called Performance Oriented Training.

The concept was wonderful in its simplicity. Teach the soldiers what they need to know to perform their jobs. Who could argue against that? What could possibly go wrong with a program that called for teaching each soldier what he needed to know to do his job? To understand why this was a new program and to see how it went wrong, you have to understand what Army training looked like before Performance Oriented Training.

Let's talk about rifle training. The new soldier obviously needed to be trained on his rifle, and he certainly was trained. He learned all about his rifle: how long it was, how much it weighed (with and without ammunition), how to tell where it was manufactured, how to disassemble it, the correct name for each part, how each part worked, the complete cycle of functioning, how to properly inspect, clean, and lubricate each part, how to assemble the rifle, how to adjust the sights, how to load the rifle, how to aim the rifle, how to hold the rifle, how to properly assume each of the approved firing positions, etc., etc.

The idea behind Performance Oriented Training was that a lot of the items we were spending time training weren't essential to the soldier's job. Think how much time we could save if we got rid of all the useless "nice to know" material and just taught the soldier how to load, aim, and fire his rifle!

With visions of all those $AVING$ in mind, the Army jumped into Performance Oriented Training with both feet. We immediately eliminated all the unnecessary material from every lesson plan in every school in the Army. We also developed a whole new way of looking at training. Instead of teaching a soldier about a subject, we were now going to teach the soldier to perform a task. (This caused us to develop "Tasks" but that's a whole different rant.)

Like any new program, there were some people who resisted the change, but like any new program pushed from the top, anyone who objected was pushed aside and the way to be Up-And-Coming was by supporting the program avidly, literally, and yes excessively.

In less than a decade, Army "training" became a system of teaching monkeys to push buttons. It is very efficient to teach a monkey that when the red light comes on you push the blue button. You can train a lot of monkeys very efficiently and they all will be experts at pushing the blue button when the red light comes on. None of them will know what the red light means. None of them will know what the blue button does. But all of them will know to push the blue button when the red light comes on. 100% success in training!

But what happens when the next box comes with a yellow light and a green button? Start all over from scratch. Or worse yet, what if we issue that new box to a unit that has some of the old monkeys and one of them has initiative to decide that colors don't matter so when the yellow light came on he tried pushing the green button, but maybe that's NOT the right thing to do -- Ooops!

Even we never have to face the problem of a new box with different lights and buttons, what happens in combat when the red light fails to come on, or when pushing the blue button doesn't work? Sorry, Sir, they didn't cover that in the box training course.

Armor was the first branch to notice the problem. Their stopgap solution was to create the Master Gunner program that was supposed to keep the knowledge alive until ANCOC could be revised to ensure that all senior NCOs got the kind of training that included the how and the why rather than just Do This.

Of course the Army decided it would cost too much to revise ANCOC to train all the senior NCOs, so instead Armor was allowed to keep the Master Gunner program, creating a select group of NCOs who had that special knowledge. Other branches soon copied that concept and now we have many flavors of "Master Gunner" throughout the force. There is a reason that Master Gunners are often sarcastically referred to as "the Priesthood" for being the select group chosen as keepers of the arcane knowledge and able to perform strange rituals like boresighting.

Response by MSG Private RallyPoint Member made Sep 2 at 2023 10:17 PM

MSG Private RallyPoint Member — Sat, 02 Sep 2023 22:17:32 -0400

Spending a month on a skill, that gives you experience. Spending a lifetime on a skill, perfecting that skill, that is what gives you the expertise. That's how I see it, at least.

Response by SFC Michael Cook made Sep 3 at 2023 9:41 AM

SFC Michael Cook — Sun, 03 Sep 2023 09:41:05 -0400

"I don't believe that experience equates to expertise at all." I would disagree; to a point. I think that experience COULD produce an "expert", but simply having experience does not necessarily make someone an expert. If that makes sense...

Response by PO1 Robert Ryan made Sep 4 at 2023 10:45 AM

PO1 Robert Ryan — Mon, 04 Sep 2023 10:45:17 -0400

I have a lot of Life experience and common sense I am 74 and the only thing I am an expert at now is thanking the Lord for each new day.

Response by SPC Darren M. Squier made Sep 4 at 2023 11:00 AM

SPC Darren M. Squier — Mon, 04 Sep 2023 11:00:00 -0400

In a court room it works like this. The jury leaves. The Prosecutor, Defense and Judge ask you questions, if you know more about the question at hand, you are dubbed "An expert". The jury is called back in and the questioning of you begins. The questioning has to be very specific and pointed towards one question or point. You can give an "Opinion", normally not allowed. In another context, you may be the "go to" who understand a topic more or better than anyone else, or you can explain it better than anyone can, or you can write it in a policy that even attorneys can understand and not find a way around it. Maybe it's due to training, education, experience... or all three. One of my experiences with this was this question: Can a 9mm, fired from a handgun, hit a door and "blow" it open without any other factors involved? More context: His footprints (Boot prints) were also on the door. The round didn't hit anything but the core of the door, not a bolt, not a latch, or lock. He claimed the door just, "Opened", all on its own, when he fired a round at the door (A crime(s) unto itself that he just admitted to in open court). Your standard American home door? I was dubbed a "Ballistics" expert. An "Ex" is a has been and a "pert" is a drip under pressure. Signed: Use of Force, SME for many years. Advanced Firearms Instructor for many decades. Involved in 279 use's of force, never lost a case in court, including State Court of Appeals. I had been called in on many UOF incidents to give my "Opinion", reviews, court, investigations, videos, lawsuits, etc. I was NEVER considered a "Ballistics" SME kinda guy or "Ex-pert" on Ballistics,... before or since. So...... it is a very complex question and can mean very different things to different people, situations, or questions. I agree, just because you were in a "Combat" area of operation does not make one an "Expert" in any particular example... OR it could... Particulars are important to the question.

Response by SPC Kenneth Berry made Sep 5 at 2023 7:09 PM

SPC Kenneth Berry — Tue, 05 Sep 2023 19:09:11 -0400

An expert says " Ask me and I will tell you!" Experience will say, " I been here and this is what I did or how I resolved it."

Response by CW2 Eric Fox made Sep 7 at 2023 1:24 PM

CW2 Eric Fox — Thu, 07 Sep 2023 13:24:45 -0400

I think that experience can lead to expertise in a given subject area, craft, or skill.

Response by CPT Private RallyPoint Member made Oct 16 at 2023 8:03 PM

CPT Private RallyPoint Member — Mon, 16 Oct 2023 20:03:09 -0400

In my civilian fire service, we had a saying - “that guy there has 20 years of experience.” “That other guy over there has one year of experience, 20 years in a row.” Yes, it was easy after just a few shifts to tell who the expert was. Does he/she seek out training opportunities on their own time? Invest in education on their own dime? Earn certifications beyond what’s required? These things don’t make an expert by themselves, but they point to someone on their way to being an expert.