How I Build Subject Matter Experts from Any Team

The best thing I've ever done as a leader is give people problems that are slightly too big for them — and then make sure they had everything they needed to solve them.

That's the SME model in one sentence. Here's what it looks like in practice.

Why Most Teams Underutilize Their Talent

Most managers assume expertise has to be imported. If there's a problem, they hire a specialist. If there's a gap, they look outside the team. The internal talent gets left to execute instructions rather than develop authority.

This creates two compounding problems: the team stops growing, and the manager becomes the permanent bottleneck on every complex decision.

I've led teams of 65 people across enterprise technology deployments. The biggest gains I saw never came from hiring better people — they came from developing the people I already had into recognized authorities.

How the SME Program Works

The first step is a talent inventory. I don't just look at job descriptions — I ask. What do you already know deeply? What do you want to learn? What problems on this team would you be excited to own?

The answers are almost always surprising. The person managing content permissions is secretly a metadata taxonomy expert. The junior developer has spent years studying accessibility standards. The quiet one in the back has strong opinions about Jira workflows that turn out to be exactly right.

Once identified, I formalize it. I assign the domain. I give them the title internally. And then — critically — I step back.

Give Them the Platform, Then Get Out of the Way

The SME program only works if the leader does something counterintuitive: publicly defer to the expert they created.

In meetings, I direct questions to the SME. In cross-functional discussions, I bring the SME to the table. When their domain comes up in leadership briefings, I say the name and give them the credit. Explicitly. Every time.

This accomplishes two things. The person grows into their authority — they rise to meet the expectation you've set publicly. And the rest of the team learns that expertise gets recognized here. That knowledge is currency. That learning is rewarded.

The Multiplication Effect

At U.S. Bank, I built a formal SME program across a team of 65 AEM developers. Accessibility became its own domain. DAM governance became its own domain. Jira reporting became its own domain. Advanced component training became its own domain.

The team stopped waiting for me to answer questions. They asked each other. They created training materials for new hires. They solved problems I never would have had the bandwidth to solve myself.

The Standard I Keep

I don't hoard expertise. I don't become the permanent expert in the room. My job is to make myself unnecessary — by making everyone around me exceptional.

The measure of my leadership isn't the work I produce. It's the number of subject matter experts I created before I left.

That's the standard. And it scales wherever you take it.