Accelerated Expertise by Robert R. Hoffman [Actionable Summary]

The Book In Three Or More Sentences:

A foundational book for people who want to move from novice to expert in less time. The book, Accelerated Expertise, written by an army of professionals in the field of learning, summarizes most of the major publications on the theory with the same name: accelerated expertise and also accelerated learning. The content is based on workshops funded by the military to develop ways for the armed forces to learn new disciplines faster and at the same time retain the gained knowledge for longer. Accelerated Expertise is packed with resources on how to achieve high levels of proficiency in a field, quicker.

The Core Idea:

Speed in acquiring knowledge and skills to perform tasks is crucial. Not only for the military personnel, where there are often gaps between missions – and people need to re-learn important components before being deployed. But also in the current era. A place where jobs are becoming more complex and require the constant acquisition of new skills. Organizations, of all kinds, need experts to handle difficult tasks. However, it takes years for an individual to master a domain. To reach a level of high competency faster, people need – the authors argue – to be adaptive, resilient, and robust in the face of unexpected disruptions. 

Reason To Read:

Don’t simply taste the refreshing tonic of “being right” and “remembering something”, once. Grab and hold the bottle. The knowledge and the skills-set this book will teach you will open your eyes to a new world of learning. A world where you can greatly increase your learning speed and retention so that “lessons learned” do not become “lessons forgotten”.

7 Key Lessons from Accelerated Expertise:

Lesson #1: The Need For Better Transfer of knowledge

The military had a problem: it takes years for an individual to become proficient in a field and get awarded with the badge of a master.

The reasons are plenty. Fields are complex. Requirements and information regarding the discipline are ever-evolving. There is always irregularity in relation to encountering hard-to-handle cases.

Unless people are continuously deliberately practicing and getting feedback while handling difficult tasks. The thing an individual will encounter in relation to his level of skills is one: degradation.

An example the authors share in a book is a person who owns skills in relation to maintaining an F-16. This person gets promoted to a supervisory position. With this move, the main daily tasks of this person are now new – he needs to supervise others. But that’s not the only challenge he is facing. Besides training for his new role. He also needs to ensure that his previous skills – in relation to maintaining the aircraft – remain intact and even evolving.

These challenges are quite common in all fields – not just the military.

We are constantly changing positions. Switching between tasks that require a different set of skills.

To progress – and avoid regression. Special care is needed not only in relation to the act of obtaining new skills. But also in keeping and further improving the ones we currently own.

That’s where the theory of accelerated learning enters. A concept that rapidize training and improves the time someone needs to reach high levels of proficiency.

“As workplaces and jobs become more cognition-intensive, organizations need to take traditional notions of training to new levels, and well into the territory of complex systems. Workers in sociotechnical systems must be trained to be adaptive, so that they can cope with the ever-changing world and ever-changing workplace.” Robert R. Hoffman

Lesson #2: Accelerated Learning – A Concept For Reaching Mastery

Experts argue that it takes around 10,000 hours of work to master a field. Another rule of thumb is that it takes around 10 years for a person to achieve expertise.

Sadly, that’s a lot of time to make people beyond proficient.

So, the “inventors” of accelerated learning methodology were trying to solve the following problem: “Can we turn an apprentice into an expert in less than ten years?”

Based on the findings in the book, it does seem possible. But the process is strewn with obstacles and requires a lot of work.

With this in mind, let’s look at what are the main components of the concept of accelerated learning:

Five Senses of Accelerated Learning:

1. Rapidized Training: The concept of training people to obtain a minimal level of proficiency faster than usual.
2. Accelerated Proficiency: The concept of training people to obtain high levels of proficiency faster than usual.
3. Facilitated Retention: The concept aiming to prevent knowledge decay – i.e., what was learned should remain remembered.
4. Rapidized Cognitive Task Analysis: The concept of better understanding the thought processes of experts so you can apply them in decision-making and also the ability to teach the knowledge to others.
5. Rapidized Transposition: The need to quickly transfer lessons learned from the training camp to the actual world.

Not only that the person who is training for proficiency should be motivated to reach beyond ordinary results – and stay motivated during the course of the training program. But also the training program should be designed with care.

Amongst the many requirements, the authors identify a couple of characteristics individuals need during their training to reach high levels of proficiency:

1. Robustness: The ability to remain effective – do your best – across a range of tasks and situations.
2. Resilience: The ability to quickly recover and keep pushing towards the goals even when there are destabilizing factors – negative feedback, losing a tournament, personal problems, etc.
3. Adaptivity: The skill of using different techniques from various fields for reaching a state of success.

An essential element that will improve all the above is the following: engaging in problems that stretch your current capabilities.

The more you go beyond your current skills. The faster you’ll improve.

“Professionals must acquire knowledge and reasoning skills that pertain to critical domain goals but which must be exercised in differing situations or contexts. Capability must transfer in this sense.” Robert R. Hoffman