Think Like an Expert

If we acknowledge that expert practitioners actually think differently about situations than novices, then is there a way to expose the differences more clearly to improve the speed and effectiveness of capability development?

In order to develop an exercise I called Think Like a Consultant (inspired by Think Like a Commander), I used the following steps:

1. Collect examples and stories from practitioners of the most difficult and challenging consulting scenarios they've experienced
2. Present the scenarios to expert and non-expert practitioners and capture their responses of how they would think about and deal with the scenario using a think-aloud protocol
3. Determine cognitive themes that are distinct between experts and non-experts
4. Run deliberate practice sessions with practitioners where again the scenarios are presented and they respond using a think-aloud protocol but we follow-up with questions that highlight weaknesses in their responses and a review of the Cognitive Themes for Effective Consulting
5. Continue to update the scenarios when better responses are discovered

I'm curious if this approach can be generalised.  Would a generic Think Like an Expert pattern hold across multiple contexts?

As an example, if we want to create Think Like an Agilist, just replace "most difficult and challenging consulting scenarios" with "most difficult and challenging Agile scenarios".  We would still expect the same phenomenon where the Agile experts have distinct cognitive themes when compared to Agile novices.... and we can use this to develop Agile capability.

I've been thinking that it would be interesting to actually create Think Like an Agilist as a platform or just as a fleshed out approach.  Tell me if you'd be interested in helping and / or participating.