Expertise is Changing

It seems that we often need to be certain before we act and to know the answer before we ask a question.

Which means that we are working with overly simple, ungrounded opinion.

In the UK, as our Brexit negotiations take us through an incredibly difficult transition, we seek the security of expertise.  It’s a familiar pattern.  We can develop highly polarised opinions about international relations but it's a field which few of us know anything about.

The assumption that even the well-informed  can ‘know’ the detail of the complex, unpredictable, non-linear relationships between economic and social policy, and the outcomes that changes will provoke, is false.

Which isn’t to say that we should or shouldn’t try something different.

But that good resolution is more likely to arise from a conversation where we hold a position of not-knowing and inquiry rather than the head-banging advocacy and sham bargaining founded in so-called 'expertise'.

And that's my opinion.

Notes:

Margaret Wheatley on When Change is Out of Our Control

Come to the INEXPERT 2018 - a celebration of not knowing

Ralph Stacey on Managing the Unknowable 

Colin Wright on Opinions

Resources