Your Brain Is Not the Secret Sauce. (Or, how to get your expertise out of your head)

Today, a low-tech, high-res tool for you--so you can get your expertise out of your head and see your skills + talents in a new light.

I call this tool: Your Brain Is Not The Secret Sauce (YBINTSS).

I created it for myself a year ago as a way to daylight and capture the parts of my process or methodology that felt (most) intuitive to me.

Each of us, every day, in the act of doing our work (whether it be in editing, bodywork, teaching, counseling, or medicine) encounter circumstances, questions, cases or scenarios where we exercise our judgment—and make recommendations and directives in the moment.

What’s more, we often feel sure-handed in making these decisions (both at the time and in retrospect). So sure-handed that we can feel like our “brain is the secret sauce.”  

It’s not.

And I say that knowing how jarring that statement is, especially for those of us who see our “smarts" as a part of our unfair advantage—that part of us that’s more prescient, discerning, incisive, or able to synthesize disparate bits of data into a whole.

So how do you tease apart the ingredients in your sauce, so that’s it’s no longer a “secret”—either to you or to the clients you serve?

The answer: document. That’s where YBINTSS comes in.  I keep a separate Evernote for each YBINTSS entry and begin each with a verb. [While I love evernote, a paper notebook or index cards could work too.]

Here are three examples. (I created them to get clear on how I taught clients to write about themselves more interestingly or persuasively so they could be better editors of their own work.)

"forget chronology" (I.e. more interesting personal essays, speeches, or "about pages" move back and forth in time—yet writers often feel obliged to start at the start.)  

"build trust not tragedy" (sometime writers overdramatize and it kills the trust between them and the reader/audience).

“drop the dead weight” (a plea for concision, and lightening the narrative load) 

What to identify as a YBINTSS directive in your own work? These are the things that you find yourself saying over and over to your clients that make everything easier for them.

Let your actual live work with clients guide you, and be your laboratory.  It’s easiest to find/name each YBINTSS item when you give a correction, or notice a client (or student) do something the “wrong way" or in an inefficient way, leaving a potential opportunity untapped. Again start each with a verb, and let yourself have fun and create phrases that are sticky or memorable—for you and your client.

What’s so great about having this list?

Seeing your YBINTSS notes laid out in front of you:
—gets you clear on your point of view,
—gives you a shorthand for working with clients
—provides you a common language if you work with clients in groups, and
—lets you create a foundation if you ever want to train others in your method down the road. And this means that you begin to see your process or methodology as an business asset, rather than just a job you’ve created for yourself.

Now what? I challenge you this to come up with 3-4 YBINTSS (Your Brain Is Not the Secret Sauce) entries this week. And as always, I’d love to hear. Share one, or share them all.

To your brain, and its not so secret sauce,