The idea brought to mind a quote from management consultant David Maister:
Knowledge is relatively easy to accumulate quickly, but it also depreciates quickly. Skills are hard to win, but keep their value a little longer.
If we asked Maister our questions, I imagine he would say: It depends.
What parts of your job rely on knowledge? What parts on skill? How do those two areas relate to one another?
There’s a reflexive
tell us that the possibility of writing yourself out of a job depends.
Knowledge of process can only get you so far—skill is the rest of it.
What should concern us more is those areas of a role where we gained knowledge by virtue of our skill.
Should we give away that knowledge to our colleagues? Are we jeopardizing our indispensability?
What might they gain, and what might we lose?
Taylor Coe 