making of an expert
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le they. are t.o identitY 1Inusual·diseases of the lungs or
eart Because they encounter these ·ill~esses so rarely, doc
rs quickly forget their characteristiC featl,lres and have dif
culty dia~osing them. Performance picks l;lPonly after tbe
octors underg<?·arefresher course. , ...
.How;then,.can you tell when you're dealing with a genuine
pert? Real expertise must pass three tests; First,it must lead
performance that is consistently superior to that ofthe ex
rt's peers. Second, real expertise produces concrete results ..
ain surgeons, for example; not only must be skillful.with
eir scalpels but also must have successful outcomes with
eir patients. A chess player must be able to win· matches·
tournaments. Finally,true expertise can be replicated and
asured in the lab. A5 the British scientist LordKelvinstated,
f you can not measure it, you can not impmve it:'
.Skill in some fields, such as sports, is easy to measure, Com~
etitions are standardized so that everyone competes ·in a
imilar environment. All competitors have the same .start
nd finish lines, s()that everyoce can agree on who came in
irst. That standardization permits comparisons among inividuals over time, and it's certamly possible in business as
ell. In the early days ofWaI-Mart, for instance, Sam Walton
rranged competitions among store managers to identify
hose whose stores had the highest profitability. Each store
.Things to Look Out for
When·J udging '~xpertise
in the Nordstrom clothing chai~ posts rankings o( its sal.es-.
. people, based on their saJesper hour,for each pay pe~od ...
Nonetheless, it often can be difficult to qteasure ew~rt.
perforn1ance - for example, in projects that take.mo~ths or
e~en years to complete and to which dozens of individuaJ.s
.m~y contribute. Expert· leadership is similarly ·difficult to
assess. Most leaciership challenges are hig)J.lycomplex and
specificto a given conipany, which makes it hard to compare
per[ormance across companies and situations. That doesn't
meah, thoug)J.,that scientists snould throw up their hands
and stop trying to measure-performance. One riidllu.uu.lugy
we use to deal with these challenges is to take.a representa;
tive situation and reproduce it in ~he laboratory. For exam
ple, we present emergency room nurses with scenarios that
simulate life-threatening situations. Afterward, we compare .
the nurses' responses in the lab with actual outcomes in thereal world. We have found that performance in simulations
in medicine·, chess, and sports closely correlates With objec
tive measurements of expert performance, such as.a chess
playds track record in winning matches.
Testing methodoloiies can be devised for creative profes
sions such as art and writing, too. Researchers have studied
differences among individual visual artists, for instance, byhaving them produce .drawings of the same set of objects.
With the artists' identities concealed, these drawings were
evaluated by art judges, whose ratings clearly agreed on the
artists' pyoflciency, especially in regai'd "::0 tcchnic~ ~spcct~
,, ,
Individual accounts of
expertise are often unreli" .
able. Anecdotes, selective
recall,. and one~ff events
all can present insuff.icient,
oft~n misleading, examples
of expertise. There is a
huge body of li terature
on false memories, self
serving biases, and recollec
tions altered as a result
of current beliefs or the
passage of t ime. Reporting
is not the same thing as
research.
Many people are wrongly
believed to possess exper
tise. Bear in mind that true
expertise is demonstrated
by measurable. consistently
superior performance.
Some supposed experts
are superior only when it
comes to explaining why
they made errors. After the
1976 Judgment of Paris, for
example, when California
I wines beSted French wines
in a blind tasting, the French
wine "experts" argued that
the results were an aberra-.
tion and th.i,ltthe California
reds in particular wo'uld never·
age as well as the famous
French reds. (In 2006, the
tasting of the reds was reen
acted, and California came
out on top again.) Had it not
been for the objective results
from the blind tastings. the
French wine experts may
never have been convinced
of the quality of the Ameri
can wines.
Intuition can lead you
down the garden path.
The idea that you can.
improve your performance·
by relaxing and" just trusting
your gut" is popular. While it
may be true that intuition is
valuable in routine or familiar
situ.ations, informed intuition
is the result of deliberate
practice. You cannot consis
tently impJove your abil ity to
make decisions (or your in
tuition) without considerable
practice, reflection, and
analysis.
You don·'t n.eed a different
putter. Many managers
hope that they wil l suddenly
improve performance by
adopting new and bet-
ter methods - just as golf
players may think that they
can lower their scores with
a new and better club. But
changing to a different 'putter
may increase the variability
of a golfer's shot and thus
hinder his or her ability to
play well. In reality, the key
to.improving ~xpert ise is
consistency and carefully
controlled efforts.
Expertise is not captured
by knowledge manage
ment systems. Knowledgemanagement systems
rarely, i f ever, deal with what
psychologists call knowl
edge. They are repositories
of images, documents, and
routines: external data
that people can view and
interpret "Is they try toolve a pr~blem or make
a decision. There are ho
shortcuts to gaining true..expertise.~
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more charismatic, especially aver time. In fact, warkingwith
a leading drama schaal, we have develaped a set of acting
exercises far managers and leaders that are designed to. in
crease their pawers af charm and persuasion. Executives
who. do. these exercises have shawn remarkable improve
ment. So. charisma can be learned through deliberate prac
tice. Bear in mind that even Winston Churchill, ane af the
mast charismatic figures af the twentieth century, practiced
his aratary style in frant af a mirrar.
Genuine experts nat arily practice deliberately but. also.
. think deliberately. The galfer Ben Hagan once explained,
"While I am practicing I am alSo.trying to. develap my paw
ers af concentratian. I never just walk up and hit the ball?'
Hagan wauld decide in advance where he wanted the ball
to. go. and haw to. get it there. We actually track this kind
af thaught process in aur research. We present expert per
farmers with a scenario. and ask them to. think alaud as they
wark their way through it. Chess players, far example, will
describe haw they spend five to. te\nminutes explaring all the
passibilities far their next m~ve, th~nking through the can-~ "\
, ,
This kind of deliberate practice can be adapted to. develap,:.
ing business and ~eadership expertise. Tbe classic exampl~
is the caseJnethad taught by many business schaals, which
. presents. students with reaHife situations that require ac-:, tian. Because the eveiJ.tual'autcomes af thase..situatians are... ' .,
known, the students can imrriec,iiatelyjudge the merits' af' .
their'propased salutians. In this way,they can:practice mak~
ing decisions' ten to. :20.' tImes a week. War games .serve·a .similar training functian at miiitary academies. Officerscan
analyze the trainees' respanses in simulated cambat and pra
vide· an instant evaluatian. Such mack military aperatians
sharpen leadership skills With deliberate practice that lets
trainees explare uncharted areas.
Let'slake-a-claser-look at haw deliberate practice mighL
wark ror leadership. Yau aften hear that a key element af
leadership and management is charisma, which is true. Be-
, ing a leader frequently requires standing in frant af yaur em
playees, yaur peers, or yaur baard af directars and attempt~
ing to. convince them af one thing 0.1' ahather;especially in
times af crisis. A surprising number af executives believe
that charisma is innate and cannat be learned. Yet if they
were acting in a play with the help af a director and a coach,
mast af them wauld be able to. come across as cansiderably
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a surprisingly shart time (perhaps 50. haurs), yau will de
velap better cantrol and yaur game will improve. From then
an, yau will work on yaur skills by driving and putting more
balls and engaging in mare games, until yau ',"strokes become
automatic: Yau'll think less abaut each shct and play mare
fram intuition. Yaur golf game naw is a saci,l auting, in
which 'Yauaccasianally concentrate an yaur shat. 'From this
paint an, additianal time an the course willnat substantially
improve yaur perfarmance, which may remain at the samelevel far decades .
Why daes this happen? Yau dan't improve because when
yau are playing a game, yau get orlly a single chance to.
make a shat fram any given lacatian. Yau dan't get to. figure
aut how yau can correct mistakes. If yau were allawed to.
take five to. ten shats from the exact same lacatian an the
caurse, yau waul<jlget mare feedback an yaur technique andtart to. adjust yaGr playing style to. improve yaur cantrol. In
fact, professianals aften take multiple shats fram the samelacatian when they train and when they check aut a course
befare a taurnament.
MANAGING FORTHE LONG TERM I T he Making of an Expert
It takes time to become an expert. Even the most gifted performers
need a minimum of ten years of intense training before they vvin
international competitions.
Practice Deliberately, , ,
To. people who. have never reached a natianal ar irtterna"
tianal 'level af campetitian, it may appear that excellence isf .•.•.
. siriJ.p~yhe result of practicing daily far years ar even decades.
Hawever, living in a cavedaes nat make .yaua gealagist. Nat
all practice inakes perfect. Yau need a particular kind af..
practice - deliberate practice - to. develap expertise. When
mast peaple practice, they focuS qil the ttings they already
knaw how to. do..Deliberate practice is different: It entails'
cansiderable, specific, and sustained effarts to.do.samething
yau can't do.well- ar even at all. Research across domains
shaws that it is anly by warking at what yau can't do.that yau
.turn into. the expert you want to.become.
To. illustrate this paint, let's imagine yau are learning.
,to. play galf for the first time. In the early phases, yau try to.
understand the basic strokes and facus an avaiding grass
mistakes (like driving the ball into.anather player). Yau prac
tice an the putting green, hit balls at a driving range, and play,
raunds with athers who.are mast likely navices like yau. In
.. " ..
af drawing. Other researcQers have designed abjective tasks
to. measUre the superiarperceptual skills af artist.s withaut
, the help af judges .
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sequences Of each and planning out the sequence of moves
that might follow it. We've obseI:Vedthat when a course of
action doesn't work out as expected, the expert players will
go back to their prior analysis to assess where they went
wrong and how to avoid future errors. They continually workto eliminate their weaknesses.
Deliberate practice involves two kinds oflearning: improv
ing the skills you already have and extending the reach and
range of your skills.The enormous concentration reql,lired
to undertake these twin tasks limits the amount of time you
- can spend doing them. The faI?0us violinist Nathan Milsteinwrote: "Practice asmuch asyou feel you can accomplish withconcentration. Once when I became concerned because oth
ers around me practiced all day long, I asked[my mentor]Professor Auer how many hours I should practice, and he
said, 'It really doesn't matter how long. If you practice with
your fingers, no amount isenough. If you practice with your
head, two hours is plenty:"
It is interesting to note that across a wide range of ex
perts, including athletes, novelists, and musicians, very
few appear to be able to engage in more than four or
five hours of high concentration and deliberate praetice
at a time. In fact, most expert teachers and scientists set
aside only a couple bf hours a day, typically in the morn
ing, for their most den:randing mental activities, suct as\.
writing about new ideas. While.this mays~efu 'like a relativ~ly small inve~tment,
it is two hours a day more than' most ex
ecutives and managers devote to build-.
ing their skills;since the majority of their
· time is consumed by meetings. and day- •
·to·day concerns. This.differ~nce adds up'
to some 700 hours more a year, or about
7,000 hours more a decade. Think about
what you could acC;)ri1p:~shf you devoted
two hours a day to deliberate practice.
It's very. easy to neglect deliberate
practice. Experts who reach a high level
of pert"ormailce often find themselves re
sponding automatically to specific situa-·tions and may come to rely exclusively on
tneit intuition. This leads to difficulties
when they deal with atypical or rare c<.:ses,
because they've lost the ability to analyze
a situation and work through the ri~htresponse: Experts may not recognize ,this
creeping intuition bias, of course, because
there is no penalty until they encounter
a situation in which a habitual response
fails and maybe even causes damage.
Older professionals With a great deal of
experience are particularly prone to fall-ing into this traj); but it's certainly not
in~vitable. Research has shown that musicians over 60 years
old who continue deliberate practice for about ten hours a
week cM match the speed and technical skills of 2o-year~0ld
expert musicians when tested on their ability to playa pieceof unfamiliar music.
Moving outside your traditional comfort zone of achieve
ment requires substantial motivation and saCrifice,.but ~t's
a necessary discipline. Asthe golf champion Sam Snead once
put it,"It is only human nature to want to practice }Vhatyou
can already do well, since it's a hell of a lot less work and
a hell of a lot more fun:' Only when you can see that de
liberate practice is the most effective means to the desired
end - becoming the best in your field - will you commit to
excellence. Snead, who died in 2002, held the record for win
ning the most PGA Tour events and was famous for having
one .of the most beautiful swings in the sport. Deliberatepractice was a key to his success."Practice puts brains in your
muscles;' he said.
Take the Time You Need
Bynow it will be clear that it takes time to become an expert.
Our research shows that even the most gifted performersneed a minimum of ten years (or 10,000 hours) of intense
training before they win international competitions. In some
fields the apprenticeship is.,longer: It now takes most 'elite
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MANAGING FORTHELON(3TERl\1 IThe Making aLan Expert
musiCians 15 to 25 years of ste~dy practice,:on average, before'
they succeed ~t the int~rnationalleve];' .
. Though there are historieal examples.of p~ople .who at- .
tained an international level of expei:tise at an earlyag~, it's: .
also true that, inthe nineteenth "andearly twentieth 'centurks, people could reach world-class levels more quickly; In
most fields, the bar of pe:-formance has "risensteadily since
that time. For instance, amateur marathon runners' and high
school swimmers today frequently better the times of OIyrrJ.
pic gold medalists from the .::arlj ~wentieth century. Increas- .
ingly stiff competition now makes it almost impossible to .beat the ten-year rule. One notable exception, Bobby Fischer,
did manage to become a chess grand master in just nine
years, but it is likely that he did so by spending more time
practicing each year.
Many people are naive about how long it.takes to becOine
an expert. Leo Tolstoy once observed that people afte'n told
. him they didIi't know whether or no.t they rould write anovel because they hadn't tried - as if they only had to make
a single attempt to discover their natural ability to write.
Similarly, the authors of many self-help bo.oks appear to
assume that their readers are essentially ready for success
and simply need to take a few more easy steps to overcome
great hurdles. Popular lore is full of stories about unknown
athletes, writers, and artists who beCOmefamous overnight,
seemingly because of innate talent - they're "naturals: ' peo
ple say. However, when examining the devel
opmental histories of experts, we unfailingly
discover that they spent a lot of time in traiIi
ing and preparation. Sam Snead, who'd been '
called "the best natural player ever:' told Golf
Digest, "People 'always said I had a natural
swing. They thought I wasn't·a hard worker.
But when I was young, I'd play and practice
all day,then practice more at night bymy car's
headlights. My hands bled. Nobody worked
harder at golf than I did!'
Not only do you have tobe prepared to in
vest time in becoming an expert, but you have
to start early - at least in some fields.Your abil
ity to attain expert performance is clearly,con
strained ifyou have fewer opportunities to en
gage in deliberate practice, and this isfar from
a trivial constraint. Once, after giving a talk,
K.Anders Ericsson was asked by a member ofthe audience whether he or any other person
could win an Olympic medal if he began train
ing at a mature age. Nowadays, Ericssonreplied,
it would be virtually impossible for anyone to
win an individual medal without a training
history comparable .with that of today's eliteperformers, nearly all of whom started very
early. Many children simply do not get th~ op-
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portunity, for whate~er reason, to ~ork ~ith t.heb~st.teach~
·ers and to engage in the sort ofdelibe'rate practice that they
need.to reach the Qlympic level in a sport .
Find Coaches and Mlmto:rs . '.' .Arguably the m05t famous 'violin teacher of all time, Ivan .Galamian,. made the point that buciding maestros do not"
engage in deliberate practice spontaheou'sly: "If we analyze
. the developmen~ ofthe well-known 'artists, we see that in al
most every case the success o~theire~tire career was depen
denton the quality of their practicing. In practically every
case, the practicing. was constantly supervised either by theteacher or an' assistant to the teacher?'
Research on world-class performers has confirmed Galami
an's observation. It also has shown that future experts need
different kinds ofteachers at different stages of their develop
merit. In the beginnirig, most ate' coached by local teachers,
people who can givegenerously oftheir time and praise. Later·on, however, it is essential that performers seek out more;
advanced teachers to keep improving their skills. Eventually,
all top performerswor~ closelywith teachers who have them- ,selvesreached intemationallevels of achievement.
Having expert coaches makes a difference in a variety of
. ways.To start with, they can help you accelerate your learning'
·process. The thirteenth-century philosopher andscieritist
~oger Bacon argued that it would be impossible to master
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.Real experts seek out constructive, even painhd feedback. They're'
also skilled atunderstanding'when and if a coach's advice doesn't
work for them~
.mathematics in less than 30.years;.Arid yet today individuals can master framewprks as·complex as. calculus· in their·
teens. The difference is that scholars have since organized
the material in stich a way that 'it is much ·more accessible.
Students of mathematics no longer have to climb Everest by .
themselves; they can follow a guide up a well-trodden path,
The development of expertise .requires coaches who are
capable of giving/constructive, even painful, feedback. Real
experts are extrer:nely motivated students who seek out such
. feedback. They're also skilIed;'it understaIidingwhen and if.a coach's advice doesn't work for them~Th.eelite performers
we studied knew.what they were doing right and C0T'-cen
trated on what they were doing wrong. They deliberately
picked unsentimental coaches who would challenge them
and drive them to higher levels of performance. The best
coaches also identify aspects of your performance that wilI
need to be improved at yoW next levelof skill. If-a coach
pushes you too fast, too hard, you will only befrustrated and
may even be tempted to give up trying to improve at' all.
Relying on a coach has its limits, however. Statistics show
that radiologists correctly diagnose breast cancer from X-rays
about 70% onhe time.'JYpically,young radiologists learn theskill of interpreting X-rays.byworking alongside an "expert:'
So it's hardly surprising 'that the success rate has stuck at
70% for a long time: Imagine how.much better radiology
might get if radiologists practiced instead by making diag
nostic judgments using X-rays in a library of old verified
cases, where they could immediately determine their ac
curacy. We're seeing th,ese kinds of techniques used more
often in training. There is an emerging market in elaborate
simulations that can give professionals, especially in medi
cine and aviation, a safe way to deliberately practice withappropriate feedback.
So what happens when you become an Olympic gold
medalist, or an international chess master, or a CEO? ideally,
as your expertise increased, your coach will have helped you
become more and more independent, so that you are ableto set your own development plans. Like good parents who
encourage their children to leave the nest, 'good coaches
help their students learn how tq rely on an "inner coach:'
Self-coaching can be done in any 5eld. Exp~rt surgeons, for
example, are not concerned with a patient's postoperative
status alone. They will study any unanticipated events that
... . .. .
.. took pl<iceduring thesutgery, to try to figure out how mis-
. takes or misjudgments can be avoided in.the future ..
Benjamin Franklin provides one of the best examples of
motivated· self-coaching When he wanted to learn to wtite·
eloquentiy and PefSlla:sively,he began to study hi~ favoljte.
..articles from a popular Briti~h ·publication, the Sp~ctator.
Daysafter he'd' read an article he particularly. enjoyed, he·
would try to reconstruct it from memory in his own words.
Then he would compare it with the original, so he couid dis
.coverand correct his faults. He also worked to improve his
. sense of language .by translating the articles into rhyming
verse and then from verse back into prose. Similarly, farrious .
painters sometimes attempt to reproduce the paintings ofother masters .
Anyone can apply these same methods on the job. Say
you have someone in your company who is a masterly com
municator, and you learn that he is going to give a talk to aunit that will be laying off workers. Sit down and write your .
own speech, and then compare his actual speech with what
you -wrote. Observe the reactions to his talk and imagine
what th~ reactions would be to yours. Each time you can
gerierate by yourself decisions, interactions, or speeches that
match those of people who excel, you move one step closer
to reaching the level of an expert performer.
Before practice, opportunity, and luck can combine to cre
ate expertise, the would-be expert needs to demythologize'
the achievement of top-level performance, because the no-
. tion that genius is born, not made, is deeply. ingrained. It's
perhaps niost perfectly exemplified in the person of Wolf
gang Amadeus Mozart, who is typically presented as a child
prodigy with exceptional innate musical genius: Nobodyquestions that Mozart's achievements were extraordinary
compared with those of his contemporaries. What's often
forgotten, however, is that his development was equally ex
ceptional for his time. His musical tutebge started before
he was four years old, and his father, also a skilled composer,was a famous musicteacher and had written one of the first
books on violin instruction. Likeother world-classperformers,
Mozart was not born an expert - he became one. e
Reprint R0707J
To order. see page 195.
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