When we begin to take liking for a particular domain it is primarily due to the fact that we are instantly enamored by the most visible and celebrated facet of our interest. We go about exploring our domain with this rather narrow view and understanding of the possibilities in our domain. We also rate ourselves based on a limited set of skills since we are not even aware what exists beyond the obvious
We did an exercise that enabled the cohort members to assess their domain intelligence. We asked them to list down all the options one could consider by building expertise in this domain. All of them looked puzzled and one even muttered, ‘what question is that?’.
One of them was interested in baking. For a whole of 5 mins, she sat still, not knowing what to write. The other was interested in financial trading. He jotted down the obvious – trader, financial consultant and gave up saying there isn’t anything beyond this.
After spending some time on their respective domains individually, we opened up this exercise to the entire cohort. All of us looked at each domain and gave some inputs. The member interested in baking started with 2 possibilities, the obvious ones – baker, owning a bakery. With a few nudges from the guides and a lot of discussion with her cohort buddies she ended up listing 18 possibilities in a matter of a few mins. Someone blurted ‘ food critic’. The other said ‘become a judge in cooking competitions’. We looked at the not so obvious choices like author of cook books, recipe innovator, food blogger and the discussion went deeper to include options like menu consultants, cloud kitchen, researcher, nutritionist and so on.
This entire exercise highlighted the importance of domain intelligence and the need to be aware of the ancillary facets to a particular domain which are often overlooked. At some times, when they could not state the exact domain-specific terminologies, they decided to look up LinkedIn and other hiring sites to get acquainted with more possibilities, the exact roles and their descriptions.