Latest / Edan Haddock - Total Talent / The Death of Expertise

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The Death of Expertise · Edan Haddock - Total Talent

• 0:51
  SPEAKER_00: Hello everyone and welcome back to Eden Haddock Total Talent.
• 0:56
  SPEAKER_00: I am your host, Eden Haddock, Head of Talent and People Experience at Movember.
• 1:03
  SPEAKER_00: Thank you as always for joining me.
• 1:05
  SPEAKER_00: There are no guests, no sponsors, no sales pitch.
• 1:09
  SPEAKER_00: Just one talent practitioner, still very much on the tools, sharing observations from the front line.
• 1:17
  SPEAKER_00: So today, the topic is expertise.
• 1:21
  SPEAKER_00: Or perhaps more accurately, the death of expertise.
• 1:25
  SPEAKER_00: Now, before anyone loses their mind in the comment section, you have in the past, let me be clear.
• 1:31
  SPEAKER_00: I don't actually think expertise is dead, obviously.
• 1:35
  SPEAKER_00: And far from it.
• 1:37
  SPEAKER_00: I think expertise is becoming more valuable than ever.
• 1:42
  SPEAKER_00: The problem is we've built a world where expertise and visibility are no longer the same thing.
• 1:49
  SPEAKER_00: And increasingly, visibility is winning.
• 1:54
  SPEAKER_00: We're living through a strange period in history.
• 1:58
  SPEAKER_00: Everybody has a microphone, everybody has a platform, everybody has an audience, everybody has an opinion.
• 2:08
  SPEAKER_00: And now everybody has AI.
• 2:12
  SPEAKER_00: So the result?
• 2:13
  SPEAKER_00: Well, we've created the largest opinion factory that humanity has ever seen.
• 2:20
  SPEAKER_00: Opinion factory.
• 2:21
  SPEAKER_00: I'm going to use that more often.
• 2:24
  SPEAKER_00: And somewhere along the line, we've started confusing confidence with competence.
• 2:31
  SPEAKER_00: We've started confusing reach with credibility.
• 2:36
  SPEAKER_00: We've started confusing content with capability.
• 2:40
  SPEAKER_00: And I really do feel that talent professionals need to pay attention.
• 2:47
  SPEAKER_00: Because this isn't just a social media issue.
• 2:51
  SPEAKER_00: This is becoming a workforce issue, a leadership issue, a hiring issue, and perhaps most importantly, a trust issue.
• 3:02
  SPEAKER_00: So listeners, grab a coffee, pour a whiskey, crack a beer, whatever your poison happens to be, and let's get into it.
• 3:12
  SPEAKER_00: So we'll start by rewinding the clock.
• 3:15
  SPEAKER_00: Say twenty years, thirty years, even fifteen years.
• 3:21
  SPEAKER_00: If somebody was considered an expert in talent acquisition, you knew why.
• 3:26
  SPEAKER_00: They'd done the work.
• 3:29
  SPEAKER_00: They'd survived economic downturns.
• 3:32
  SPEAKER_00: They'd recruited through talent shortages.
• 3:35
  SPEAKER_00: They'd hired executives.
• 3:38
  SPEAKER_00: They'd made mistakes.
• 3:40
  SPEAKER_00: They'd dealt with hiring managers from hell.
• 3:43
  SPEAKER_00: They'd built teams, broken teams, fixed teams.
• 3:47
  SPEAKER_00: They carried scar tissue.
• 3:49
  SPEAKER_00: And scar tissue is a beautiful thing.
• 3:53
  SPEAKER_00: Because scar tissue cannot be faked.
• 3:56
  SPEAKER_00: You earn it.
• 3:59
  SPEAKER_00: The best recruiters I know, they aren't great because they read a book.
• 4:04
  SPEAKER_00: They're great because they'd had offers rejected.
• 4:08
  SPEAKER_00: They've lost candidates.
• 4:09
  SPEAKER_00: They've made terrible hires.
• 4:12
  SPEAKER_00: They've sat across the room from people delivering redundancy conversations.
• 4:17
  SPEAKER_00: They've felt that emotional weight of the work.
• 4:21
  SPEAKER_00: That experience becomes judgment.
• 4:26
  SPEAKER_00: And judgment becomes expertise.
• 4:30
  SPEAKER_00: But today the pathway looks different.
• 4:35
  SPEAKER_00: Today someone can consume content, say for six months, and then look like an expert.
• 4:42
  SPEAKER_00: Not be an expert.
• 4:45
  SPEAKER_00: Look like one.
• 4:47
  SPEAKER_00: And that's a very important distinction.
• 4:51
  SPEAKER_00: Because appearance has never been easier.
• 4:56
  SPEAKER_00: Think about it.
• 4:58
  SPEAKER_00: We used to judge musicians by albums.
• 5:01
  SPEAKER_00: Now we judge them by followers.
• 5:04
  SPEAKER_00: We used to judge restaurants by the quality of the food.
• 5:08
  SPEAKER_00: But now we judge them by the Instagram photos.
• 5:12
  SPEAKER_00: We used to judge recruiters by outcomes.
• 5:17
  SPEAKER_00: Now we often judge them by content.
• 5:21
  SPEAKER_00: It's like we've applied social media logic to everything.
• 5:26
  SPEAKER_00: And the dangerous thing about social media logic is it rewards appearance, not depth.
• 5:35
  SPEAKER_00: Rock and roll figured this out decades ago, right?
• 5:39
  SPEAKER_00: The bands that survive aren't always the prettiest.
• 5:42
  SPEAKER_00: They're not always the loudest.
• 5:44
  SPEAKER_00: They're not always the trendiest.
• 5:47
  SPEAKER_00: They're the bands that can still play live twenty years later.
• 5:52
  SPEAKER_00: The bands with substance.
• 5:54
  SPEAKER_00: The bands with scars.
• 5:57
  SPEAKER_00: The bands that survived bad records, bad tours, bad reviews.
• 6:02
  SPEAKER_00: That's expertise.
• 6:04
  SPEAKER_00: That's earned.
• 6:06
  SPEAKER_00: It's not manufactured.
• 6:11
  SPEAKER_00: So here's where things start getting weird.
• 6:15
  SPEAKER_00: And AI has poured petrol on the fire.
• 6:20
  SPEAKER_00: Once upon a time, thought leadership usually came from practitioners.
• 6:27
  SPEAKER_00: People did interesting work.
• 6:31
  SPEAKER_00: Then they shared what they'd learned.
• 6:36
  SPEAKER_00: Now we're seeing the reverse.
• 6:40
  SPEAKER_00: People create thought leadership before they've done the work.
• 6:45
  SPEAKER_00: Think about that.
• 6:47
  SPEAKER_00: The sequence has flipped.
• 6:50
  SPEAKER_00: Experience used to create content.
• 6:54
  SPEAKER_00: Now content is often creating perceived experience.
• 6:59
  SPEAKER_00: That's a huge shift.
• 7:03
  SPEAKER_00: And I truly believe it's making everything sound the same.
• 7:08
  SPEAKER_00: Every LinkedIn post, every article, every panel discussion, every conference session.
• 7:18
  SPEAKER_00: For me, it's all starting to blend together.
• 7:23
  SPEAKER_00: Because we're all consuming the same source material.
• 7:28
  SPEAKER_00: And now AI is helping us remix it faster than ever.
• 7:34
  SPEAKER_00: The result is what I'll call intellectual karaoke.
• 7:40
  SPEAKER_00: Everybody singing someone else's song.
• 7:44
  SPEAKER_00: Nobody writing new music.
• 7:49
  SPEAKER_00: So we'll talk about the people who are actually doing the work.
• 7:53
  SPEAKER_00: This is the part that fascinates me the most.
• 7:58
  SPEAKER_00: Some of the smartest people I know barely post online.
• 8:01
  SPEAKER_00: And you know why?
• 8:03
  SPEAKER_00: Because they're busy.
• 8:05
  SPEAKER_00: They're really busy.
• 8:08
  SPEAKER_00: They're running global workforces.
• 8:11
  SPEAKER_00: They're fixing broken hiring processes.
• 8:16
  SPEAKER_00: They're dealing with engagement challenges.
• 8:19
  SPEAKER_00: They're trying to navigate economic uncertainty.
• 8:24
  SPEAKER_00: They're leading teams.
• 8:27
  SPEAKER_00: They're actually doing the thing.
• 8:30
  SPEAKER_00: The irony is extraordinary.
• 8:33
  SPEAKER_00: The people with the deepest expertise often have the least time to talk about it.
• 8:41
  SPEAKER_00: Meanwhile, some of the people producing the most content aren't carrying those same responsibilities.
• 8:49
  SPEAKER_00: Again, not everybody.
• 8:52
  SPEAKER_00: But enough to notice.
• 8:55
  SPEAKER_00: And that's created a credibility gap.
• 8:59
  SPEAKER_00: The loudest voices are not always the closest to the work.
• 9:05
  SPEAKER_00: I'm an on the tools ambassador.
• 9:08
  SPEAKER_00: I'm pro on the tools.
• 9:10
  SPEAKER_00: I say it all the time.
• 9:12
  SPEAKER_00: I keep coming back to this phrase, on the tools.
• 9:18
  SPEAKER_00: Because every year I become more convinced that leaders need to stay close to the work.
• 9:26
  SPEAKER_00: Not because they're micromanaging, not because they don't trust their teams.
• 9:32
  SPEAKER_00: And not because they aren't strategic.
• 9:34
  SPEAKER_00: Quite the opposite.
• 9:36
  SPEAKER_00: It's because proximity creates perspective.
• 9:41
  SPEAKER_00: You lose something when you move too far away from the work.
• 9:46
  SPEAKER_00: You lose context.
• 9:49
  SPEAKER_00: You lose empathy.
• 9:51
  SPEAKER_00: You lose relevance.
• 9:53
  SPEAKER_00: And eventually you lose credibility.
• 9:58
  SPEAKER_00: The best leaders that I have worked with could still roll up their sleeves and do the job.
• 10:04
  SPEAKER_00: I'm not saying they need to every day.
• 10:07
  SPEAKER_00: I'm not saying all the time.
• 10:09
  SPEAKER_00: But enough to stay connected.
• 10:12
  SPEAKER_00: Enough to fully understand reality.
• 10:18
  SPEAKER_00: Of course, we'll need to address the elephant in the room, our beautiful friend AI.
• 10:25
  SPEAKER_00: Because AI didn't create this problem, but it has absolutely amplified it.
• 10:35
  SPEAKER_00: We've gone from expertise to opinion to content, to now content to AI to opinion.
• 10:45
  SPEAKER_00: And that's fundamentally different.
• 10:49
  SPEAKER_00: We're now generating insights from summaries of insights generated from summaries of expertise and experience.
• 10:57
  SPEAKER_00: That's how insane this is.
• 10:59
  SPEAKER_00: Think about it.
• 11:01
  SPEAKER_00: At some point, we've become four degrees removed from reality.
• 11:07
  SPEAKER_00: It's like a photocopy of a photocopy.
• 11:12
  SPEAKER_00: Eventually, the image becomes blurry.
• 11:17
  SPEAKER_00: And that's what we're seeing happen to expertise.
• 11:23
  SPEAKER_00: Here's the irony.
• 11:25
  SPEAKER_00: Talent professionals are experiencing this exact problem every day.
• 11:31
  SPEAKER_00: Candidates can now create perfect resumes, perfect cover letters, perfect interview answers, perfect LinkedIn profiles, perfect portfolios.
• 11:44
  SPEAKER_00: The signal has become harder to identify.
• 11:48
  SPEAKER_00: We're entering a world where everybody looks qualified, which means assessment becomes more important.
• 11:57
  SPEAKER_00: Judgment becomes more important.
• 12:00
  SPEAKER_00: Human interaction becomes more important.
• 12:05
  SPEAKER_00: The future of talent may actually be less about finding information and more about finding truth.
• 12:13
  SPEAKER_00: Finding truth.
• 12:15
  SPEAKER_00: Sit on that for a bit.
• 12:17
  SPEAKER_00: Finding truth.
• 12:21
  SPEAKER_00: So let's make it fun though.
• 12:24
  SPEAKER_00: I want to introduce something.
• 12:25
  SPEAKER_00: The rock and roll test.
• 12:27
  SPEAKER_00: It's simple.
• 12:29
  SPEAKER_00: When someone shares an opinion, ask yourself, have they actually lived this?
• 12:35
  SPEAKER_00: Not read about it?
• 12:37
  SPEAKER_00: Not posted about it, not summarized it, lived it.
• 12:44
  SPEAKER_00: Because reality has a way of exposing weak ideas.
• 12:49
  SPEAKER_00: Reality is the ultimate fact checker.
• 12:53
  SPEAKER_00: Reality doesn't care about likes.
• 12:56
  SPEAKER_00: Reality doesn't care about followers.
• 12:59
  SPEAKER_00: Reality doesn't care about engagement.
• 13:03
  SPEAKER_00: Reality keeps score.
• 13:06
  SPEAKER_00: And the more people who have lived the work tend to speak differently.
• 13:11
  SPEAKER_00: There's more nuance, more uncertainty, more humility, less certainty.
• 13:19
  SPEAKER_00: Because they've seen things fail.
• 13:26
  SPEAKER_00: So have we created a culture of opinion?
• 13:29
  SPEAKER_00: Maybe that's the bigger question.
• 13:32
  SPEAKER_00: Not whether expertise is dying, but whether opinion has become too cheap.
• 13:39
  SPEAKER_00: We've industrialized opinion, mass-produced it, automated it, scaled it.
• 13:46
  SPEAKER_00: And somewhere along the way, we've forgotten that all opinions are not created equal.
• 13:54
  SPEAKER_00: The opinion of someone who has spent 15 years solving a problem should probably carry a little bit more weight than someone who discovered the problem last Tuesday, right?
• 14:05
  SPEAKER_00: It's logic.
• 14:07
  SPEAKER_00: That shouldn't be controversial.
• 14:10
  SPEAKER_00: Yet increasingly it feels controversial.
• 14:17
  SPEAKER_00: So is expertise dying?
• 14:20
  SPEAKER_00: No, I don't think so.
• 14:23
  SPEAKER_00: But I think we're simply living through the loudest period in human history.
• 14:29
  SPEAKER_00: And when everything gets louder, the signal becomes harder to find.
• 14:36
  SPEAKER_00: But here's the good news, folks.
• 14:38
  SPEAKER_00: Organizations still need results.
• 14:42
  SPEAKER_00: Leaders still need judgment.
• 14:45
  SPEAKER_00: Candidates still need opportunities.
• 14:48
  SPEAKER_00: Teams still need direction.
• 14:52
  SPEAKER_00: And none of that can be delivered by performative expertise alone.
• 14:57
  SPEAKER_00: Eventually, reality shows up.
• 15:00
  SPEAKER_00: It always does.
• 15:02
  SPEAKER_00: The trends change, the algorithms change, the platforms change, the audience moves on.
• 15:10
  SPEAKER_00: But experience remains.
• 15:12
  SPEAKER_00: Judgment remains, credibility remains.
• 15:17
  SPEAKER_00: And that's why I still believe the future belongs to practitioners.
• 15:22
  SPEAKER_00: The people doing the work, the people carrying the scars, the people still on the tools.
• 15:32
  SPEAKER_00: It's becoming rarer.
• 15:35
  SPEAKER_00: And I think perhaps that's the real story.
• 15:38
  SPEAKER_00: Expertise isn't dying, it's becoming rarer.
• 15:42
  SPEAKER_00: And because it's becoming rarer, it's becoming more valuable than ever.
• 15:49
  SPEAKER_00: So thank you for listening.
• 15:51
  SPEAKER_00: And again, thank you for supporting the podcast.
• 15:54
  SPEAKER_00: It's doing incredibly well.
• 15:56
  SPEAKER_00: I really appreciate it.
• 15:58
  SPEAKER_00: As someone who is on the tools and just sharing my reality, I'm really enjoying it.
• 16:04
  SPEAKER_00: And I'm so glad you are as well.
• 16:06
  SPEAKER_00: If you have enjoyed today's episode, please again follow, subscribe, leave a review, and maybe share it with someone who might enjoy the conversation.
• 16:15
  SPEAKER_00: And I'd love to hear from any of you that any topics you would like me to talk about and share what's happening in your world so I can share what's happening in mine.
• 16:26
  SPEAKER_00: This has been Eden Haddock, Total Talent.
• 16:29
  SPEAKER_00: I'm Eden Haddock, and I'll see you again next week.
• 16:32
  SPEAKER_00: Thanks again.