I’ve been watching the second season of the Snowpiercer series on Netflix and I absolutely love it. Just finished what technically is the penultimate episode of the season (although it is just episode 8 of 10) and I just like how they wrote that. Without spoiling anything so much, the blow dealt by one major character to another one was so decisive without needing to resort to force. It was done by highlighting his strengths while also making his opponent’s weakness so clear that you can’t really question who won this one. It was good writing, good acting, and ultimately great directing. How was it done? There was a problem, someone qualified had the best solution for it.

Of course, there was some engineering (pun intended) done on the part of the cunning “villain”, but it still played out so well that I forgot how sleazy of a charismatic conman he really is. At that moment, with the urgency of the situation, he was using his skills and expertise. He kept rubbing it in to the face of the other character the whole time, but you can’t help but agree that it was true.

Most of us probably have been is a situation where we’re faced with a problem and someone pretends to be an expert and tries solutions that only make it worse. If that was someone was just compelled to be the leader at the moment, you can appreciate that. If someone is doing it just for personal gain, most of us would not outright like that.

I have sat through meetings/plannings/reviews before where the supposed experts seemed to only want to flex to everyone that they know all these things but, in the end, still does not provide any solutions to the problem at hand. I’ve been through situations needing a solution for my group to satisfy an organization directive (read: change in the organizational structure), and the “expert” instead of using their resources to study my group just claimed we were at fault because the intricacies of the processes did not fit their cookie cutter solutions. Never mind the years that these teams have been operating and the relative success they’ve been able to achieve, their data does not fit the new template they created without collaborating with the business units therefore we’re wrong.

This is not as bad as the previous example, but I have to connect this to coffee. It’s like whenever I read comments on Facebook groups where the offered solutions to questions on how to make good coffee are to buy expensive equipment (mostly to buy a specific brand of a hand grinder). It’s not wrong, good equipment plays a role in it, but not everyone uses (or can afford) all these equipment and yet they can still make good coffee. By that logic, the solution is not just to buy expensive equipment. So how is it really? I cannot provide the solution here, I’m just a guy who posts about his coffee and watches Netflix series’.

Now, I understand getting a solution or advise from someone who absolutely knows what they’re talking about is rare. It’s either it’s because of luck, an actual expert was paid, or something as extreme as what was done with the Snowpiercer example up top. However, this is also how new experts/specialists emerge is that they chose to learn something because they could not find someone to help them. My only thing is, if you know you lack experience or skill about something, don’t sell yourself as an expert (and don’t sell a course).

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