I've Spent 25 Years in Operations. What Am I Actually an Expert At? The Hidden Risk of Answering With Your Job Title

“That's what an expert really is—not the person with the most information, but the person whose judgment you trust when information isn't enough.”

— Robyn Mancell, The Power of the Expert, Introduction

After 25 years in operations, you are an expert at the kind of problem people keep bringing you when the standard answer has failed. It is rarely your job title, and it is often something you have never named, because it feels ordinary to you. Robyn Mancell, author of The Power of the Expert, draws the line this way: an expert is not the person with the most information, but the person whose judgment you trust when information isn't enough. To find yours, look at three pieces of evidence that do not depend on your own opinion: who calls you and why, what the people who have watched you work say you did for them, and the list of specific problems you have solved. This article walks through all three, shows what a good answer sounds like, and ends with an action sequence you can finish this week.

Why Is My Job Title the Wrong Answer to "What Am I Actually an Expert At?"

Your job title describes where you sat in someone's organization chart. It does not describe what you can do. That is the hidden risk in answering this question the way most people do, with a title and a number of years. A title can undersell you by lumping a rare skill into a generic role, and it can box you in by teaching you to define yourself by a position you may outgrow, lose, or watch get eliminated. Expertise travels. A title does not.

Picture an operations director whose title never changes, even though colleagues keep pulling her into every vendor transition that looks ready to fail. (Illustrative example, not a client case.) The title says operations. The pull from the people around her says something narrower and more valuable. Mancell's advice is to take the title off the table and ask a different question: what could you do for a stranger who knew nothing about your employer, and what would they hire you to fix?

How Do I Find My Expertise Using the Calls I Get?

Start with what people ask you for, not what you offer. When a colleague walks over with a problem, when a former client reaches out two years later, when someone texts at 9 p.m., they have a dozen people they could ask and they chose you. That is a vote, and the votes are evidence. Mancell's filter for reading them is simple: a request that carries stakes and repeats is a vote for your judgment.

Sort your own requests with three questions. Which ones arrive with something at stake, such as money, a deadline, or a reputation? Which come from people who have already tried the obvious fixes? Which come back, from the same person, a second and third time? The calls that pass all three tests point to what Mancell calls the person "the person whose judgment you trust when information isn't enough", which is the working definition of expertise this article uses.

The same pattern shows up on the water. A ship's captain commands the vessel across the open ocean, but when the ship nears a tricky harbor, an outside pilot climbs aboard and takes the helm because the pilot knows those waters better than anyone on the bridge. Who is the pilot in your world, and which problems get handed to you when everyone else steps back?

Who Can See My Expertise Better Than I Can?

The people who have watched you work can, because skill looks ordinary from the inside. When something comes easily to you, it is easy to assume it comes easily to everyone. Researchers at the University of Michigan built a well-known exercise around this gap. In the Reflected Best Self exercise, described by Roberts and colleagues in Harvard Business Review in 2005, you ask people who know you to describe specific moments when you were at your best, then look for the pattern across their answers. When several people independently describe the same quality, you have found something real that you could not have found alone.

Here is a practical version. Send a short message to five or six colleagues, clients, or friends. Ask one question: "When have I been most useful to you, and what exactly did I do?" Ask for a story, not general praise. Save every reply word for word.

How Do I Turn 25 Years of Projects Into a List of Solved Problems?

Write down the problems you solved, not the jobs you held. A résumé shows where you sat. A list of solved problems shows what you did, and what you did is the substance of your expertise. It also reveals repetition. If you have solved the same kind of difficult problem a dozen times in a dozen settings, that is a specialty, not a coincidence.

Take one sheet of paper and list every problem you can remember solving, including the ones that felt small. For each, write what was broken, what you did, and what happened.

Circle the repeats. Mark any type of problem you have faced more than three or four times, in any setting.

Finish this sentence ten times, quickly: "People come to me when they need ______." Circle every answer that makes you think, "anyone could do that." That reaction is the shrug that hides expertise.

Lay the three lists side by side: the calls you get, the stories people told you, and the problems you solved. Where they overlap is your core. Take the combined list to the Expert Edge Finder at https://expertedgefinder.com/, a guided reflection that asks 12 questions, including the problems people bring you and a time your judgment made a difference.

Why Does Naming My Expertise Matter More Now?

Because trust is moving toward people with a name and a track record. The 2024 Edelman Trust Barometer, which surveyed more than 32,000 people in 28 countries, found that 74 percent trust scientists to tell the truth about new innovations and technologies, and the same share trust someone like themselves. That survey measures trust in who tells the truth about innovation, not buying decisions, so treat it as a signal about where trust is landing, not as a prediction of sales.

The practical point is narrower. When information is cheap and anyone can produce a confident answer in seconds, the scarce thing is a specific person who can say what the answer means for your situation. "Operations" is a field. "The person people call when a project is slipping and nobody can say why" is a position someone can refer, trust, and hire.

What Is the Difference Between What I'm Good At and What I'm Known For?

What you are good at is where the distance between you and the next skilled person is widest. What you are known for is whatever your employer and your early career happened to put in front of people. They are usually different. Many professionals are known for the first thing they did in their careers, or for what their current role requires, while their strongest ability sits in the background, used constantly and never mentioned. If the market knows you for your fifth-best skill, it will bring you fifth-best problems.

Ask where your advantage over a skilled peer is largest. Which problems do you solve faster, more accurately, and with more confidence than other people who are also good? That is your center of gravity, and the job from here is to close the gap between it and your reputation.

What Does a Good Answer Look Like Compared With a Title Answer?

A good answer names the problem you solve and the proof behind it, in plain words a stranger could repeat. The table below compares the traditional answer with the expert's answer, using only the ideas in this article.

How Do I Know It's Real Expertise and Not Just Years of Experience?

Years of experience become expertise when they taught you something. Psychologist and Nobel laureate Daniel Kahneman, who spent a career studying how judgment fails, wrote in The New York Times Magazine in 2011 that true intuitive expertise is learned from prolonged experience with good feedback on mistakes. His 2009 paper with Gary Klein points the same way: reliable intuition develops when a person has had a real chance to learn from outcomes. In practice, that means asking whether you kept score. Did you find out whether your calls were right, notice what worked, and adjust?

Mancell offers three quick questions for any candidate, including you. Do you get it right when it counts, in the hard cases and not the easy ones? Can you handle the case that does not match the book? Do people come back? Run the three questions over the people you trust most, then run them over yourself.

What Does It Cost to Leave Your Expertise Unnamed?

Expertise nobody can name is expertise nobody can refer, trust, or hire, and the people who name theirs first collect the head start. Mancell argues that this window is open now and will not stay open. Twenty-five years of judgment should not sit unlabeled while someone else takes the position. Start with the Expert Edge Finder at https://expertedgefinder.com/.

Frequently Asked Questions

What am I actually an expert at after 25 years in operations?

You are an expert at the kind of problem people keep bringing you when the standard answer has failed. The best evidence is outside your own opinion: the calls you get, the stories people tell about what you did for them, and the problems you have solved repeatedly.

Is my job title my expertise?

No. A title describes where you sit in an organization. Expertise is what you can do for someone who knows nothing about your employer. It stays with you when the title changes or the role disappears.

Isn't this just another personal-branding exercise?

It starts from the opposite direction. Branding begins with how you want to be seen. This process begins with evidence of what other people already rely on you for, and only then asks how to say it. If you would rather work through it in a guided reflection, the Expert Edge Finder at https://expertedgefinder.com/ asks 12 questions, requires no payment, and says plainly that its profile does not verify your expertise. It gives you hypotheses to test, not a verdict.

How many people should I ask what I did for them?

Five or six is enough to see a pattern. Ask each for one specific story, and look for qualities that several people describe independently.

What if my answer sounds too ordinary?

That reaction is common and usually misleading. What is ordinary to you is often exactly what other people cannot do. Circle the answers that make you think "anyone could do that."

Can this article tell me exactly what I'm an expert at?

No. It offers an educational framework for finding the answer yourself. It does not assess you, and it is not professional advice. Treat the result as a starting hypothesis to test against real requests and real feedback.

References

Kahneman, D., & Klein, G. (2009). Conditions for intuitive expertise: A failure to disagree. American Psychologist, 64(6), 515–526. https://doi.org/10.1037/a0016755

Kahneman, D. (2011, October 19). Don't blink! The hazards of confidence. The New York Times Magazine. https://www.nytimes.com/2011/10/23/magazine/dont-blink-the-hazards-of-confidence.html

Edelman. (2024). 2024 Edelman Trust Barometer: Innovation in Peril. Edelman Trust Institute. https://www.edelman.com/trust/2024/trust-barometer

Roberts, L. M., Dutton, J. E., Spreitzer, G. M., Heaphy, E. D., & Quinn, R. E. (2005). Composing the reflected best-self portrait: Building pathways for becoming extraordinary in work organizations. Academy of Management Review, 30(4), 712–736. https://positiveorgs.bus.umich.edu/?p=2022

Roberts, L. M., Spreitzer, G., Dutton, J., Quinn, R., Heaphy, E., & Barker, B. (2005, January). How to play to your strengths. Harvard Business Review.

Mancell, R. (2026). The Power of the Expert: How to Become Irreplaceable in the Age of AI, Introduction and Chapters 1 and 3. https://www.amazon.com/dp/B0HNGTSPRX

Expert Edge Finder. (2026, October 15). Terms and boundaries: Exploration, not verification. https://expertedgefinder.com/terms