Field Study № 01 — Invisible Expertise

Your best people know things they can’t teach.

I help organizations translate the judgment, intuition, and pattern recognition inside their experts into shared language, decision tools, and training that produces repeatable results.

Browse the archive ↓
The Tools

Instruments for making expert thinking visible.

Small, practical instruments you can use before we ever meet. Each one surfaces something training and documentation usually leave out.

TOOL 001Available now

Invisible Expertise Snapshot

A six-question diagnostic that scores your organization across Visibility, Translation, and Transfer — and shows you where expert knowledge is quietly going missing.

TOOL 002In development

Expert Context Builder™

A structured interview instrument that captures the judgment, tradeoffs, and edge cases behind expert decisions — the context AI systems and new hires need but rarely receive.

The Essays

Field notes on expertise, judgment, and learning.

Longer-form writing on what experts know, why it disappears, and how organizations can catch it before it walks out the door.

Work With Me

Two ways we can work together.

Both start the same way: by finding the invisible knowledge your teams need but haven’t been able to name.

ENGAGEMENT 01

Invisible Expertise Audit™

A structured diagnostic engagement. You leave with a report scoring your organization across Visibility, Translation, and Transfer, plus a recommended starting point.

ENGAGEMENT 02

Expertise Translation Sprint™

A done-with-you sprint that turns the domain your Audit surfaced into working artifacts: expertise maps, decision tools, and a transfer plan built with you in the room.

Shannon D. Smith
PORTRAIT · SDS
About

I’ve spent a career helping experts explain what they know.

For more than a decade, I’ve worked at the intersection of learning design, expertise, and performance — helping specialists, educators, and organizations turn what they know into knowledge others can actually use.

My work centers on Expertise Translation™: surfacing the intuitions, judgments, and decisions experts make automatically, and rebuilding them into training and tools that create repeatable results.

Ready to begin

The problem isn’t motivation. It’s the invisible expertise that never made it into the work.

Let’s make it visible.

Schedule a Conversation