In the Introduction, I mentioned a meeting I attended many years ago at Ford Motor Company. I was participating in a major software development initiative. Despite my intimate knowledge of the project’s technology, resources, budgets, and schedules, I was ill-equipped to answer executive level questions about the strategic eff ort. My failing, at that time, was not understanding context. I should have known how my project fi t into Ford’s global strategy and how adjacent initiatives were affected by my work, but I did not.

After decades of personal observation, it is my opinion that this type of error—a lack of understanding of context—is the most common weakness among technical experts. Some of the most capable and competent experts I have met in my career have lacked the ability to understand how their efforts fi t into a larger context. They know intimate details about the tools and technologies of their trade, but they know frightfully little about what many of their colleagues do or how they do it.

If experts do not understand the context of their actions, then they will not know how their eff orts affect colleagues or customers. They will not know how to make the right decisions for their organization if they do not fully understand the organization’s needs. Instead, they will make decisions for themselves and their own myopic domain and will risk imposing disastrous consequences on the people around them.

When SMEs understand context, they know how their expertise intersects with all adjacent SMEs. In my experience at Ford Motor Company, I should have understood how my project affected all interested parties. I knew the facts of my project but not the terrain or processes surrounding it.

The importance of context cannot be overstated. It is the last and highest skill of the Dreyfus and Dreyfus model. It is the skill that differentiates professionals. If your colleagues do not think you fully understand context, then your recommendations will be second-guessed or completely ignored.

I have had the good fortune to work on many software development initiatives with offshore programmers. Without exception, context is the most frequently missing ingredient of the offshore resources. Software developers on another continent, in another culture, working for another company, often speaking another language, struggle to master context. They miss things that local technicians quickly catch, and they assume things that local technicians don’t. In fairness, offshore developers have a monumental task. It is almost an impossible expectation for them to maintain consistent mastery of context. Few people can accomplish it.

Finally, context is a major source of confusion and frustration for less experienced technical professionals. They know their technology singularly well, but they misunderstand or dismiss the perspectives of others. Mastery of context is the difference between promotion and stagnation, credibility and rejection, respect and denial.