This writing was originally published as part of the Career EdVenture newsletter on LinkedIn.

When I was a newly graduated engineer, my first job was in engineering consulting. Like many early-career professionals, I frequently felt underprepared for the complexity of the projects dropped on my desk.

My boss at the time used to offer a phrase he repeated regularly:

“If you’ve never done it before, you’re a consultant. If you’ve done it once, you’re the expert.”

At the time, I didn’t fully believe him. The statement sounded a bit suspicious, almost like a quip about faking it until you make it. But I used his advice to push through self-doubt, step onto new project teams, and gradually build my technical competence.

Years later, looking back through the dual lenses of engineering and adult education, I realize he wasn’t describing instant expertise. He was describing the fundamental mechanism of how organizations actually build capability.

The Tension: Expecting Readiness Before Responsibility

Students and early-career professionals often carry a quiet assumption: I need to feel fully ready before I take on new work.

The reality of organizational life is quite different. Organizations constantly face new problems, evolving software, altered regulations, or unfamiliar client demands that no one on the team has solved before.

If everyone waited until they felt completely prepared before taking ownership, organizational progress would stall. Organizations don’t just consume pre-packaged expertise off the shelf; they have to continually create it.

Expertise is an Organizational Investment

Expertise isn’t a static credential you obtain once and hold forever; it is a dynamic asset developed over time through exposure and practice.

Every new tool or stretch assignment requires someone to navigate it for the first time. When leaders assign new or unfamiliar work, they aren’t just trying to check off a deliverable. They are making an investment in future organizational capacity. Taking on a project slightly beyond your current comfort zone is precisely how individual skill turns into institutional knowledge.

An Important Distinction: Growth vs. Competence

There is a critical boundary here that must be drawn. Operating at the edge of your knowledge is not an endorsement of working beyond your competence.

As a Licensed Professional Engineer (PE), practicing outside one’s area of competence isn’t just a poor work habit, it is unethical. The goal is never to blindly attempt critical work you are unqualified to execute safely or accurately.

Responsible organizational growth happens at the edge of competence, not far beyond it. Expanding that edge responsibly requires structural scaffolding:

• Support & Mentorship: Access to senior colleagues who can guide the approach.
• Feedback Loops: Active peer review and quality checks before final execution.
• Reflection & Documentation: Reviewing what worked so the learning becomes repeatable.

Growth doesn’t happen by leaping into the dark unsupported. It happens right at the boundary of what you know, backed by systems that make learning safe and effective.

Takeaway for Early-Career Professionals & Leaders

If you are waiting to feel 100% ready before stepping up to a new challenge, you will likely be waiting indefinitely. Real capability is built in the doing – one project, one workflow, and one stretch assignment at a time.

For leaders and managers, the question is equally clear: Are you building an environment with the scaffolding necessary for people to safely operate at the edge of their competence, or are you waiting for ready-made experts who don’t exist?