All experts have a domain of competence. Sometimes the domain is well defined and understood, but other times not so much. Professional athletes, for example, have standardized metrics for high performance. For most corporate experts, the situation is different. These experts, such as physicists, psychiatrists, accountants, and engineers, operate in a veritable stew of expectations. It can take years of trial and error for experts in these domains to understand the full scope of their professions. They gradually develop skills and knowledge as needs arise, and they atrophy skills and knowledge that are unneeded.

Corporate division of labor has been the single biggest contributor to the development of expert domains in the past one hundred years. Through division of labor, worker productivity has gone up, repetitive tasks have been streamlined, and low-value tasks have been assigned to lesser-skilled workers. Most expert domains are the byproduct of corporate division of labor.

Beyond the division of labor, there are other important perspectives that help define each expert domain. Each perspective is worthy of an SME’s consideration.

Beneficiary Perspective. Someone should benefit from an expert’s actions. A heart attack patient is the beneficiary of a cardiovascular surgeon. A music fan is the beneficiary of an artist. A company is the beneficiary of a tax accountant. All beneficiaries have expectations about the expert’s knowledge, skill, and attitude. The beneficiary anticipates that the expert will satisfy a specific set of needs. From the beneficiary’s perspective, nothing else matters. Other abilities possessed by the expert are superfluous.

Seller Perspective. Experts, above all others, are uniquely positioned to be masters at selling. Not "selling," as in closing deals, but selling ideas, influencing an audience, or nudging, convincing, and encouraging behavior. Experts are always involved in selling.

Colleague Perspective. Few people will influence an expert more than their colleagues. High-performers should always lift the skills of the people around them. If a corporate SME is surrounded by talented, capable professionals, then the SME will also be a talented and capable professional. It is worth considering what your colleagues expect of you.

Board Perspective. Most expert domains have outside groups that establish standards, develop best practices, and even make laws that govern expert performance. Bar associations govern the actions of lawyers. The American Medical Association defines physicians’ specialties. Some boards are formal and powerful. They grant or rescind credentials and may even impose punishment for noncompliance. Other boards are informal and toothless. Regardless, boards can provide SMEs with objective validation and the basis for transferability within their given domains.

Self-Selected Perspective. Finally, all experts have an individual perspective of their own domain. An SME chooses which areas to study and which skills to practice—and determines through deliberate practice how much of the prospective domain will be mastered and how much will not.

All perspectives listed in this chapter contribute to the size and shape of the domain. Great SMEs accept responsibility for excelling in their domain, and this excellence is defined as the union of all contributing factors and perspectives.