How does an organization maintain its competitive advantage during economic turmoil and a transformational market environment? Our newest research shows that one of the most critical keys to success is deep specialization.

Deep specialization refers to an organization's focus on building high levels of expertise, experience, and judgment in critical skills areas. As we all know from our own careers, it takes many years (and some would argue decades) to develop world-class skills in any functional area. Tiger Woods and Lance Armstrong, two of the world's most skilled athletes in their field, stay on top of their games by a continuous focus on deliberate practice, coaching, and learning. Today's highimpact organizations are using the same approaches.

Consider the productivity of your top salesperson or IT developer. In some cases, top performers outpace average employees many times over. These employees aren't born superstars through an accident of genes. While they may bring some intellectual advantages to the job, they develop their expertise through years of learning, experience, coaching, feedback, and development.

Such focus delivers benefits beyond productivity. These experts have judgment and decision-making skills that can bring significant advantages to your organization. When your engineering team has to evaluate a major investment, who best understands what will work and the likelihood of development success? Who is likely to know where to place the business bets? Your experts, of course.

To understand how to build deep workforce expertise, we have been studying companies such as Accenture, Intel, Qualcomm, Cisco, GE, IBM, and others. Our research shows that these expert-driven organizations behave differently from those that simply train their workforce to perform. These companies have a wide range of developmental programs in place to build, reward, and share expertise.

For example, Accenture is undergoing a worldwide focus on identifying the critical skills needed in each of its consulting positions. The company is assessing all individuals against these skills, and providing a wide range of development solutions to enable any consultant to master specific skill sets. Accenture recognizes that it is more advantageous to have consultants with deep specialization - say in systems applications and product - rather than individuals who know a smattering about enterprise resource management and associated solution providers.

Such skills development programs go far beyond training and assessment. At Intel, 80 percent of all worldwide staff are technical. Engineers are encouraged and expected to regularly move into developmental assignments associated with new projects and programs. While engineers have specialized areas of technical expertise, each knows that to succeed, she must also work on a wide range of projects to build overall experience and judgment. Leaders are regularly rotated from position to position, giving them the opportunity to enrich their skills in program and project management, leadership, and technical risk assessment.

Beyond Traditional Training

When it comes to leadership, these enduring organizations go far beyond the traditional approach to leadership development. Many expect leaders to be deep technical experts. For example, at Qualcomm, most of the program and project leaders have PhDs and multiple patents. The company builds and rewards technical excellence at all levels of the corporate pyramid. These organizations also allow specialists to advance in professional career ladders, which provide similar levels of pay and recognition as those provided to employees in managerial tracks.

Deep specialization programs go beyond traditional training to accommodate the continuous learning needs of senior experts. Companies such as Exxon and Accenture regularly bring in college professors, external experts, and outside business leaders to give experts an even deeper understanding of their technical areas. Some companies even encourage their experts to take sabbaticals and work in external organizations, just so they can bring new perspectives back to the workplace.

Finally, building deep specialization demands a particular type of culture and management style - one in which employees are given the time and freedom to focus, explore, and learn. Experts must be rewarded for coaching and mentoring others. Top employees must be rewarded for technical expertise, not only managerial prowess.

Any company has the potential to build deep specialization. Think about those job roles that define your company's competitive advantage. In most, these roles are in research, engineering, or manufacturing. Start here - and ask your business leaders to define what an expert really is. Study these people and use them as models to build deep specialization programs for others.

The recession has forced us to do less with less. In some ways, this is a blessing because it gives us the freedom to cut resources from low priority learning programs and focus heavily on programs that build deeper and more meaningful skills. Our research proves that those companies that make the time and effort to build deep specialization programs are much more likely to endure.