Molson Hart

In general, it is much easier for a technical person to learn a non-technical skill than for a non-technical person to learn a technical skill. When I graduated from college, I almost became a chess teacher for a chess-in-schools program.

They told me, that when they first started, they figured that it would be way more efficient to just teach the teachers that the schools had how to play chess. Why hire new people? They were already there. They could stay in school for an extra hour or two, teaching chess.

The problem was, it didn't work at all. The general studies teachers (this was K-6) couldn't learn chess to the point where they could teach it. In fact, many of the students (young kids) would quickly outstrip their teachers.

The solution was simply, to hire people who were already good at chess to become teachers. It turned out that the chess players could learn how to become effective teachers much more easily than the teachers could learn to become effective chess players!

This has far-reaching implications. Mark Zuckerberg can become a CEO much faster than a CEO can become a programmer.