There is value in observing someone with a job just like yours to see what they do differently and what they do the same.
But there can be much more value in observing proximal jobs. Jobs that are similar but have significant differences. You can probably learn more about your own job by observing someone with a slightly different job than yours.
I observed a middle school orchestra festival performance and sight reading today, and I was struck by the similarities to my own choral festival experiences, but also by the differences. Differences in how adjudicators communicate with students, differences in how the teacher prepared their students in the warmup room, differences in the expectations of the group before, during, and after performance.
Certainly there were some things specific to teaching orchestra that I can’t apply directly to my work. But there was more that I can apply – and I can probably achieve more growth in my own work by considering and applying what I learned from a proximal job than from observing another educator tackling the exact same work that I do.
It’s related to the Zone of Proximal Development – you can’t be too close to or too far from your comfort zone if you really want to grow.