Five-Stage Model of Expertise

A model is a toy version of the world, built so you can afford to make mistakes in it. Five-Stage Model of Expertise is a sturdy toy.

Remember that every model lies a little. The question is never 'is it true?' but 'is it useful here?' Used with that humility, this model earns its shelf space.

Strip it to the floor and you find an old instruction: look carefully, judge slowly, act decently. The new name exists because the old instruction keeps being forgotten.

Picture the government office at four in the afternoon. The file moves only when someone owns it; until then it is everybody's business, which is to say, nobody's.

An organisation is only a group of people who have agreed, for now, to pull in roughly the same direction. If this page made you think of one specific person, do not send it to them. Apply it to yourself first; that is how these things work.