You graduate. You start working. You join an organizationwith an important mandate and potential for positive impact in the lives of people at all levels, and the organization employs you as a recent graduate from a reputable institution. From day one you feel that you have been given some informal authority based on yourprofessional and educational background. Well that is good, you would say. But it is not going to last very long. Assuming that you are lucky, you might be given an hour, a day or a week and in some cases a month, before the de-authorization process begins. That is when you realize that you are dealing with expectations and others are dealing with an assumed expert, someone who is expected to know it all.
So what is this de-authorization about? Authority, informal or formal, is given to someone in exchange for certain services. The bases to those services are expectations. Those expectations are based on assumptions about your capacity to deliver. Assumptions are formed through verbal and non-verbal interactions, in person or via other means of communication, and supplement your package of educational and professional qualifications. Another factor that drives these assumptions are the needs of the organization that you are going to join, as well as the level of uncertainty that the organization faces at that point. The more uncertain the organization, and in perceived need for a savior, the more would be expectations from you and the shorter will be the time that you’d get to prove your worth. This is probably the best time to question this state of being called “expert,” before you give in to the belief that you are one.
But who are experts? Do they really exist? And what do we mean by expectations?
As per the Indo-European root of the word, “expect” means to observe. It shares the root of spek- with other words such as examine, consider, suspect, perspective and retrospect.
My interpretation of the meaning of the word“expect” is to carry positive and negative feelings about a process simultaneously. It is an art of believing and disbelieving at the same time. It involves the act of considering and examining: listening to a perspective, paying attention to the past performances and evaluating. It includes suspecting: being doubtful, reflecting and questioning. As the root of the word suggests, to expect is not to give in. It is not a one-way process of receiving services, but is interactive, mutual and evolutionary in nature. In most cases, lack of fulfillment of our expectations disappoints us and we hold the other side accountable. But we ignore our contribution in the failure to meet our own expectations. Perhaps we fail to reflect on our own expectations.
The other side of this coin is the role of expert in raising expectations. It is tempting to say yes to the question of “do you know?” It is also tempting to give our opinion when we are asked for it, even though we may not have anything substantive to offer. It is indeed hard to keep quiet, isn’t it? It is a challenge to hold steady in the face of expectations. But as we fail to hold steady, we raise expectations, we give false hopes and we guarantee failure to meet them. As a result we contribute to our de-authorization process.
“Expert”on the other hand, is a very interesting word. It means to try, to take risk, to learn by trying. As discussed above, commonly we expect experts to know it all. After all, that is why we hire them, right? But a genuine expert, if this breed of human beings can ever exist, is one who knows how to experiment, to take risk, to try different options, to evaluate the outcomes and to learn in the process, even if that process is of failure. It is not the one who knows it all. But who wants to hire an expert who fails?
Perhaps we need to learn to have this demand: for experts who can take failure, have the ability to learn from it and try again. But that is not just it. We also might need to learn to give more time to an expert like this, before we de-authorize them.
I don’t think we have experts who know it all, at least in this post-conflict development context of Afghanistan. Not Afghan, not international, and here is why I think it is so: The problems that Afghanistan faces are complicated. These problems come as bundles; bundles of challenges, each with a different nature and intensity. We may know some of these challenges or parts of them, their nature or intensity, but in most cases, we may not. The process of learning about those challenges, their types, nature and intensity may require us to collaborate with many others, many who are not experts, listen to them, engage with them, learn from them and help them learn. This collective process of learning and unlearning will take time, effort and above all, the participation of a larger group of people than just us.
But do we have experts who know how to be loyal to the meaning of this word? Those who know how to learn from failure and try again?Those who have the courage to experiment and the endurance to take the people who are part of the experiment along? Perhaps not! Because we have never asked for them; we have never allowed them to be born, to grow, and to help us grow.
Afghanistan is not in need of a savior. A savior, in the human form, does not exist. We need risk takers. We need people with expertise to learn from failure. We need people who know how to stand up, and start all over again.We need people who have the willingness to learn how to carry out this experiment in a collective way, by involving people, those to whom the problem belongs. And we need an attitude that places hope in the human capacity to learn, to grow and to innovate.
To be a lonely expert is nothing less of committing suicide.