Brian Krogh

If You're an Expert Who Feels Stuck in your Career, Here's How to Get Unstuck

Many experts I work with feel stuck in their career.

If you're a technical expert who feels stuck, here's what to do.

To become an expert, you invested years building a foundation of knowledge and experience.

Your expertise earned you rewards - grades, degrees, postdoc work, an industry job and maybe a promotion or two.

Be proud of this work. It's incredible.

Also, be aware that what you've built is a foundation.

If you want to build a skyscraper career on the foundation of your expertise, you need to become an expert communicator.

Nothing raises the ceiling of your career like the ability to communicate complex details so everyone inside and outside your company understands.

How do you do it?

The same way you became an expert in your field. Study, then get into the lab and experiment. Review the data and run another experiment.

The work is hard, but over time floor after floor will be built and you'll find yourself in an office with an incredible view.

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When you're ready to study, I suggest starting with one of these books:

1. To understand the science of short-term memory and the challenges it presents to communicators read, "Thinking Fast and Slow" by Daniel Kahneman.

2. For practical tips and tools, you can put to use in team meetings and conference presentations read "The Bezos Blueprint" by Carmine Gallo. For my money this is the most helpful guide for people in industry I've read in years.

Not sure how to talk to your team about presenting your company's most important information?

I would love to meet you and provide you with some value whether or not we work together long term. Let’s put something on the calendar.