Generalist vs. Specialist – A False Choice
There is no second topic today because the primary article is longer than usual.
Word Count: About 1,300 words, with an approximate reading time of 5 to 7 minutes. Please share your thoughts in the comments.
Please be kind and follow and subscribe to this newsletter on either LinkedIn or Medium.
You can also follow this newsletter on Medium, a great place to explore interesting ideas.
My website’s recommended reading page has links to purchase the books discussed in this and previous newsletters.
Book Review: Range: Why Generalists Triumph in a Specialized World by David Epstein
Today’s culture celebrates specialization and encourages people to “follow their passion.” This focus implies that we need to narrow our focus and dedicate ourselves to a single purpose. Just reading the title of this book leads to the assumption that it is better to be a jack of all trades and a master of none. Mr. Epstein’s book points out that choosing between being a specialist or a generalist is a false choice. This has implications for personal career development and building effective teams.
Personal Career Development
Career advice articles often focus on hot career trends or short-term income potential. In Chapter 6, The Trouble with Too Much Grit, Range explores match quality. Economists use “Match Quality” to describe the degree of fit between a person’s work and who they are.
Epstein shares information about a comparison between English/Welsh and Scottish education. In England and Wales, students must choose a specialization before entering college. In Scotland, students study multiple disciplines during their first two years. Findings show that English and Welsh graduates were much more likely to abandon their initial career choices than their peers from Scotland. Studies also showed that the early income advantage experienced by specialized graduates fades over time.
A similar study of officer retention rates for US Military Academy, ROTC, and Office Candidate School graduates has similar outcomes. Those who chose to be officers later in life were more likely to stay in the Army for their careers.
As you consider your career, do not be afraid to sample. Exploration is the key to long-term success. Learning stuff is less important than learning about yourself.
Building Effective Teams
Building teams and creating environments where they can succeed is one of the greatest leadership challenges. Understanding the required skills mix and how different personalities come together to form a team is obvious. Less obvious is balancing unique levels and types of expertise is less well understood.
The Einstellung effect describes people’s tendency to use familiar methods to solve a problem, even when better ones are available. This tendency is magnified when teams of similarly experienced people work on an issue. Companies tend to build problem-solving teams with people from a single domain. Leaders need to look beyond the obvious candidates and include people with tangential experience. These individuals can often draw on analogies from other areas to help teams avoid focusing on technical details, enabling them to focus on practical solutions.
Build teams with an array of relevant experiences, some of which are tangential. Build checkpoints into your plan that enable outsider feedback.
The Concept of Range and AI
The first chapter, The Cult of the Head Start, explores the relationship between early specialization and long-term success. One narrative used to explore this idea is chess. Lazlo Polgar decided that his daughters would become great chess players. His daughter Susan was playing before she was six years old. Her sister Judit became world number eight in the world ranking in 1984. An apparent success for the idea of early focus and training.
Using AI as the frame, Epstein shows that early specialization is not as advantageous as it first appears. In many respects, AI is a powerful pattern recognition engine. Computer chess programs have been defeating human grandmasters for decades. Ai excels because the game’s rules are fixed, and no outside influences exist. The game is the game.
Progress has been made in other areas, like self-driving cars, but they are far from perfect. Autonomous driving relies on maps, street signs, stoplights, and traffic laws. This is a strong foundation. The imperfections result from outside influences. Maps can be out of date. Detours are in place. Other drivers and pedestrians do unpredictable things.
The most effective AI systems need narrow scope and stable structures. Without these boundaries, Ai suffers hallucinations. When the results are gibberish, they are easy to ignore. When the results look reasonable, the tendency is to accept and act on the information. I wrote I Do Not Fear the Rise of the Machines; I am Afraid of a Descent into Idiocracy to explore the over-reliance on AI.
Conclusion
For me, the conclusion is straightforward. Become a specialist in something. It is also necessary to be, as Epstein describes, a ‘dedicated amateur’ in many other domains.
Become a jack of all trades in many areas and a master in one or two.
Related Articles
How companies can use AI to find and close skills gaps (MIT Sloan)
Perplexity Is a Bullshit Machine Wired)
Where AI evolves from here (Axios)
Six-Chart Sunday (#22) – Income Disparities (Bruce Mehlman)
What are AI hallucinations? (IBM)
What I’m Up To
‘Too many old people’: A rural Pa. town reckons with population loss (Washington Post)
Last week, we visited my father-in-law in his memory care facility in Pennsylvania. We stayed with friends in Sheffield, my wife’s hometown, which is the subject of this article.
My first visit was almost 40 years ago when we were dating. Sheffield was decaying then and has spread slowly over the last few decades. Driving through town, you see houses that have not been painted in years and yards full of broken-down cars, old furniture, and other debris.
My wife and her friends often talk of the town’s resistance to change when she was growing up. New businesses were not courted or encouraged to move there. Sheffield’s glide path has been apparent for over 50 years. Some continue to invest in the town, but it may be too little too late.
The Allegheny National Forest surrounds Sheffield. It is a haven for outdoor sports of all kinds. Other towns in the area have managed to retain some of their vibrancy. However, most appear to be going the way of Sheffield.
Here is a fuzzy picture of an eagle we saw while cooking out one night. Deer and bear were also present.
Chips and Salsa: Snack-sized news and posts
In an earlier post, I wrote about the upcoming retirement crisis.
The Retirement Catch-22 (Business Insider)
An Example of Interesting but Incomplete Information
We have become so used to bad things we have begun to ignore their consequences. Familiarity breeds contempt.
We’ve Hit Peak Denial. Here’s Why We Can’t Turn Away From Reality (Scientific American)
Multiplication becomes artistic (sort of).
The Japanese Way to Multiply Is So Much Cooler Than Ours (Popular Mechanics)
This is another example of people not working as they are expected to.
Almost 50 Percent of Employees Quiet Vacation During 4th of July Week (Inc)
Gentle performance reviews are a bust as well.
The Gentle Parenting Bust (Business Insider)
Interesting reading on how companies make pricing and packaging decisions.
Companies are using ‘price pack architecture’ to get consumers to buy more (NPR)
Moments of crisis create opportunities for change only when we take the time to understand and have the courage to act.
Imposter syndrome is related to the Peter Principle – real and imagined. When people have success but attribute it to luck, with imposter syndrome, it is imagined. The real syndrome happens when someone’s success is rewarded with an opportunity for which they are not qualified.
How imposter syndrome sneaks up on high-performing people—and how to beat it (Fortune)
Too often, we label people as narcissists when they are very confident. When this happens, we devalue the individual.
Narcissism and Self-Esteem Are Very Different (Scientific American)
Quotes
“The privilege of a lifetime is to be who you truly are.”
- Carl Jung
“Civility costs nothing and buys everything.”
- Mary Worley Montagu
“Our similarities bring us to a common ground; our differences allow us to be fascinated by each other.”
- Tom Robbins
You can order The Leader With A Thousand Faces on the Recommended Reading Page of my website.
My goal is to make this newsletter as interesting and valuable as possible. Please share your thoughts and suggestions for improvement. If there are specific topics in leadership you would like me to focus on in future issues, please send them my way.
