smol thoughts: Eventually, Poor Domain Knowledge Catches Up

There’s the popular saying- fake it till you make it. This mantra works well to bolster confidence and kick ones imposter syndrome to the side. But when ‘fake it till you make it’ is used to rise the ranks at work, without investing in understanding ones domain better, it’ll eventually catch up.

Domain knowledge isn’t the same as domain skills. You don’t need to be the world’s best performance marketer to be a great CMO. The best CTOs usually aren’t the best engineers. You can be a great salesman, and be a terrible sales leader. Domain knowledge, to me, is a functional understanding of what to measure, and the levers you need to maximise outcomes.

People with domain knowledge are excellent at organising and distilling information into actionables. They’re excellent at ignoring/sidelining data points that are necessary to know but inconsequential to act upon. And because they understand the fundamentals of their domain, they’re quick to make decisions and move forward.

People with poor domain knowledge are the opposite. They give everything an equal amount of importance and don’t know how to prioritise; they succumb to information overload; and they don’t move forward because they fear the outcomes of their decisions. They can’t tell the lever from the metric from the outcome.

You can fake it till you make it early on in your career. People will be more forgiving, stakes will be lower. But back up your instinct and domain interest with an understanding of domain fundamentals.

Sure, BS can take you far; but will bring you down faster.