“Jack of all trades, master of none, is oftentimes better than master of one.” – Proverb
Currently, career advisors advocate specializing as much as possible – the more narrow the specialty, the better. Don’t just become a doctor – become a surgeon who specializes in doing 12-hour pancreas removal operations. Don’t just become an accountant – become an accountant who only handles 403(b) plan audits for non-profits. Don’t just become a physicist – become a physicist who studies Higgs Bosons, which requires a $4.2 billion laboratory to study.
Specialization does have its advantages – if what you do is in high demand, you can work as much as you want and charge a high price. However, deep specialization has downsides that must be taken seriously.
Change Is The Enemy
Specialization only works if things don’t change – and things always change. The more you focus on developing any single skill, the less time you have to develop other skills that can help you in the event things in your environment change unfavorably.
A person who only knows how to do one thing exceptionally well is on solid ground for as long as that skill is in high demand, but if the environment changes to make that skill unnecessary or undesirable, they’ll have more trouble adjusting to the new situation. The very best high-rise architect in the world is screwed if no one wants to build skyscrapers anymore.
Many of the people most effected by the current recession are specialists – if you only know how to do one thing well, it’s hard to get another job if no one needs your current specialty, and if you decide to re-train yourself, you’ll have to deal with the disadvantage of competing with people who are already more flexible than you are.
Flexibility and Resilience
In contrast, a generalist is less optimized, but more resilient – having a variety of skills that can be used in combination is highly valuable due to the increased flexibility those skills provide.
Resilience is never optimally efficient – you may be investing in resources you’ll never need, but in the event you do need them, it’s better to have them available than not. Think of the human body: you have two of a lot of things – eyes, lungs, kidneys, etc. You’re capable of functioning with only one of each, but having a backup allows you to survive situations that would otherwise kill you.
The same principle applies to building new skills. Sure, you may not need a particular skill in your current position, but developing that skill opens up options you otherwise wouldn’t have. Jacks (and Jills) of all trades can do just as well as specialists by taking full advantage of their flexibility and command of complementary skills.
T-Shaped People Perform Best
In order to maximize your performance and flexibility, it’s useful to adopt two complementary strategies: (1) work on developing deep expertise in your primary field to increase your value, and (2) learn about as many different things has possible to increase your flexibility. Tim Brown, founder of IDEO, calls this “becoming a T-shaped person“:
“We look for people who are so inquisitive about the world that they’re willing to try to do what you do. We call them “T-shaped people.” They have a principal skill that describes the vertical leg of the T — they’re mechanical engineers or industrial designers. But they are so empathetic that they can branch out into other skills, such as anthropology, and do them as well. They are able to explore insights from many different perspectives and recognize patterns of behavior that point to a universal human need. That’s what you’re after at this point — patterns that yield ideas.”
Here’s an example of how I’ve personally applied this strategy: I got my first job out of college because I had three complementary skills, each of which I originally developed in isolation: (1) setting up websites, (2) creating graphics in Photoshop, and (3) developing different scenarios to test. That particular set of skills made me a good fit for developing a new customer relationship / direct response program, since I had skills the other members of the team hadn’t developed. In the meantime, I worked on developing my business skills via reading the books that later became the Personal MBA.
The business and marketing skills I learned in my first job came in handy for job #2 (creating new home cleaning products) and #3 (developing marketing materials to actually sell those products). Job #4 came about because I could combine those skills with my understanding of how to measure what people actually do on websites, which I learned over time by watching what people do when they visit this site.
Now that I work on my own, I use all of these skills every day – my knowledge of how businesses work goes very deep, but the skills I use to do my work are very wide. Personally, that fits me to a “T.”
Develop Your Core Human Skills
The skills I discussed in the Core Human Skills post are the skills that will maximize your flexibility, regardless of your area of specialty. If you’re skilled at learning new things, writing clearly, speaking, using mathematics, making good decisions, gaining allies, resolving conflicts, creating scenarios, planning ahead, etc, there’s very little you won’t be able to accomplish if you put your mind to it. That’s what the books on the PMBA Recommended Reading List are designed to do, and that’s what I’ll be writing about in my upcoming book.
Thoughts? Leave a comment!
(Photo credit: hogoff at sxc.hu)
{ 22 comments… read them below or add one }
We are living in a world that needs specialised generalists or general specialists, i.e. the T-shaped analogy.
I started out studying humanities in high school, went to college studying accounting, did stints in external audit, went to IT company to do IT security consulting and audits and now am in internal audit where I can do all sorts of interesting audits.
Most of my skills were developed working at different aspects. In between I also volunteered at non-profits to develop networking and people management skills which come in handy now that I’m in a more senior position.
Learning never stops and the human brain is really a very malleable tool at any age!
The core human skills are critical to future success. Dan Pink’s Whole New Mind would be an excellent addition to the PMBA list to further explore this concept.
As much as a strongly agree on your posting, I have to underline the idea of diversification has to be on a specific domain. For example, someone who is pancreas surgeon has to diversify his skill to practice on related surgery or he has enough skill to be academician since he has the real world experience to share his students. Sometime though, people diversify to the extent that it becomes distraction. I know someone who is English major and wants to sell his poem online struggled for months to create shopping cart by himself. Learning new things is one thing; digging deep in different discipline is a total destruction.
The point that I am trying to make is diversification should stay with specific or related realm.
I enjoy your postings a lot.
I have gotten jobs/opportunities for all sorts of esoteric and apparently unrelated things, like having taken one year of Russian and knowing a bit of Cyrillic. I have experienced convergence of my divergence interests many times and been benefited greatly from having wide interests (paired with the necessary specialization).
If nothing else, you almost always have something to discuss with someone: that is incredibly valuable, but difficult to put a monetary value on.
Developing a T-shaped sounds easy, but it takes time and some planning.
I studied communication, worked in merchandising, and learned a bit German. But I specialize in none of them and I don’t think they are interrelated to each other. I can’t find any real monetary value from them. But I do enjoy my time in communication and German.
I too agree with it! I did my BTech in ECE was crazy about embedded domain; after having more than 4 years of affair with embedded (worked with PHILIPS and Dvico, both being in Consumer Electronics domain), I was recessed recently!! ( Frankly I was recessed to be blessed!! )
3-4 months of joblessness in deep recession taught me to be flexible in life, I started modifying resume according to the job requirement, have completed the relevant topics in 2-3 night outs and attended interviews, and have added many topics to my resume starting from OpenGL to Fidessa tool to Java to Telecom domain…etc
I have finally landed in payment domain…Though I have started here from the ground, but I am loving it!!!..
For me, it comes down to being intellectually curious. Whenever I interview someone, I usually ask questions that are outside their expertise. The intellectually curious will engage in a dialog of how they might solve the problem while the narrowly focused will just say “I don’t know anything about that.”
Personally being intellectually curious has provided most of my opportunities. In some cases, even someone with deep expertise in a specific area is not the best person for the job since they could miss some key moment.
Any tips for getting past the interviewer at recruitment agencies?
They seem to think you have to be a specialist …
I work as a career counselor at an online university, and I have to say that I’ve never advised anyone to become specialized in any single area. Specializing without developing generalist skills (or “transferable skills” in career counselor-speak) is just poor career management. I like the “T” metaphor, as it captures well the blend of specific and general skills that highly employable people have or work to develop. Thanks for sharing, Josh.
Tom, the best strategy is to circumvent interviewers/recruiters and get to actual hiring managers. Recruiters are paid to be gate-keepers and keep people out, not let people in. Hiring managers are the people who let people in, so they are who you want to talk to. Networking, either on- or off-line, is the best way to get to hiring managers.
I don’t know that I agree with John’s above “[l]earning new things is one thing; digging deep in different discipline is a total destruction. [D]iversification should stay with specific or related realm” at all. Why should diversification stay with a specific or related realm?
Granted, the example you give is a good argument for that — a non-technical person wallowing for months in a technical field that they’re not terribly suited for, but I’ll bet at the end of the day that poet understands a lot more about online shopping carts than he or she did before.
Sometimes its worth enduring a couple months of pain in order to get a good understanding of a very different field. Then, once you get your tent staked down on two divergent ends of the skill spectrum, you can start filling in the space in between.
I’ve been spending the last decade of my life writing code and learning languages, and now that they’re starting to come together in interesting and unique ways I’m really happy I didn’t listen to anyone who said that I should “pick one thing” or “not cast my net too widely.”
I suggest looking to Peter Drucker ( http://tinyurl.com/6o6fet). In his book—Post Capitalist Society—he argued that knowledge has become the core resource of society. He didn’t say skills. He hardly mentioned skills. Drucker used to preach the generalist thing, but he recanted later in his life—he suggested that a generalist was someone who could rapidly switch from one specialized knowledge to another. Advances in society will have to come from specialized knowledges combining to form knew knowledge and on and on.
The folks in the American auto industry discounted what Drucker had to say and you know the rest of the story.
I think the best career advice is do one’s homework. Think about where “stuff” comes from and what it takes to get to us. How many generalist does it take to treat cancer? How many generalists created the iPhone?
Post Capitalist Society: http://tinyurl.com/8hq4ru
My 2 cents
Bob
Former Fortune 200 Fixer (generalist)
Former Former Fortune 200 Restructuring Executive
Former CPA
Current numbers agnostic (What did Shakespeare say about that?)
Thank you for sharing these thoughts Josh. And I liked this “T” analogy.
Personally, I come from a varied background: I was a commerce/accounting/economics student, who ended up as a private tutor and eventually opened my own classes; got my first PC (With the royal configuration of 2gb hard drive and 16mb ram in 1998) and got hooked to IT; I then designed web sites (in fact I even managed to bag a client) and eventually evolved into an Oracle DBA (My current role). Apart from that I also know how to repair my Motorcycle and Play the tabla (Indian Musical Instrument).
As for your website: I have a feeling that it attracts mostly the “T” kind of people because people who are not “T”, would do the *NORMAL* and stick to a traditional MBA
@John: Sir, I do not agree with your case, from the perspective that, if a person does have another area of interest (that is completely unrelated to his primary), then he will definitely be in a position to develop it, should the need arise. So if our pancrea surgeon also liked to bar-be-que, then who knows one day, he might end up opening the best beer & bar-be-que joint in town!
Once upon a time I was a high school student that loved science…and math…and art history…and literature…AND ALMOST EVERYTHING ELSE. I was born T-shaped (or even M shaped). My hero was Leonardo da Vinci. I wanted to be a great master at something–wait, let me restate that–at MANY things!
Then I went off to college at Michigan State to major in chemistry and biology with hopes of one day becoming a physician. After switching to a community college back home in California for my sophomore year, and then finishing two years of dedicated math and science, I was sorely missing the social sciences, humanities and arts. So I switched colleges again. This time I stuck closer to home and headed to UC Santa Cruz where I declared my new major to be psychology. After getting my B.A. in this relatively useless field, I fumbled about for a few decades working as a junior manager, a delivery driver, enlisting in the Army, teaching math, science and computers at a private school, running a rent-a-car business, being a corporate trainer, becoming an undergrad again (BSEE), being a military spouse and a homeschooling father, freelancing as an English teacher overseas, volunteering as an Army Family Team Building instructor and master trainer, then as a Seven Habits facilitator, and most recently working as a hotel night auditor. Being T-shaped has led to many interesting and low-paying jobs. Then again, I might be too verticality challenged to be a real T when it comes to specialization. Maybe I’m just a long underline, a dash (even a minus).
Today, I am 44 years old with a resume that is a lot like the Platte River: a mile wide, but only six inches deep. Fortunately, I have finally managed to begin a somewhat more career oriented job in corporate retail management. The upside is that I think I can do everything the job requires: recruit lots of good people, train them, inspire them, coach them, make teams of them, set and meet goals with them, and when all else fails, fire them. What’s interesting is that the Italian who gave me the wings I really needed wasn’t Leonardo, but Niccolò Machiavelli. Unlike Leonardo, he didn’t follow his heart, but his gut. For some reason it took reading “Judgment” by Noel Tichy & Warren Bennis for me to recall the wisdom of Machiavelli. I’m glad it was on the list!
Scott
@Scott: You seem to have an interesting story.
Don’t forget that in many ways YOU define your specialization. For most of us here we have a collection of general skills, some of which we are better at or more experienced at.
You can point to this one or set and say – this is what makes me different – this is what I specialize in. You lead with that and specialize in it and get known for it but it doesn’t change that there’s still this big ball of STUFF. And you can redefine what part of it you’re showing people and focusing on.
Hi Josh,
Would it be easy for you to add a print button to your blog posts? I like to print articles like yours to save them for later, but they don’t print very well (all the stuff on the right, in particular).
Thanks!
Dan
I understand my point is arguable. But I urge @Anad to stay with the big picture of Josh’s blog. He is talking about Job security. He is even talking about the recent recession. Can someone be a pancreatic surgeon and learn to be the best chef so that he maintains his life style in situations when his area of specialization is no more required? Probably but highly unlikely
Specialization opens doors without closing any of the doors that were already open, and it also teaches you how to learn other things quickly and efficiently. PhD students specialize to a ridiculous degree, but that process is valuable in that they learn how to learn anything and everything to whatever extent they desire.
I almost stopped reading after the first few paragraphs of this post because it sounded like the point of the post was to say that generalists have an advantage during difficult economic times, and I don’t believe that to be true. I think generalists are getting turned away all over the place because they have no specific, needed skill sets. They may be flexible, but if they can’t demonstrate a specific skill set a company needs, they’re expendable/not needed.
Thankfully, the post redeemed itself with the recommendation of becoming “T-shaped,” which should always be the goal. You need a specialty, but you should be able to adapt that to the requirements and challenges of the environment in which you work. You should also be able to branch out and take on additional, sometimes varied responsibilities that have nothing to do with your core specialty, especially if you want to be a leader. Few CEOs succeed without being generalists, and few get to that point without being specialists as well.
I just re-read my own comment and it sounds snippy/rude. I didn’t mean it to sound like that. I’ve been super impressed by your blog, Josh, and I usually agree with what you write from the first sentence to the last. Keep it up!
Ruel August 6, 2009 at 9:57 am
Great work. I knew something was up when I realized the value of multiple skills way back in 2002. My rap sheet:
I’m an RN with 15 yrs experience in multiple disciplines: Long Term Care to Critical Care (ICU/ER). 2 years ago, started studying Computer Science thinking I could go into Medical Info Systems. I switched to Mgt Information Systems because I saw less need for classes like Operating Systems Design and Physics (no offence to CS majors). I took Accounting and Business classes instead. Now, I know 3 skills: Medical; Computational/Business- I studied Calculus as well; and Information Mgt- I’m studying Java programming and database/systems design.
My goal: To be a Critical Care RN who can speak Java, read a Profit-Loss statement, design Business Intelligence systems and provide Decision Support to healthcare-related companies (not just hospitals). I think there’s money to be made with such a consultant.
Addendum: when I tell people I’m an RN wanting to be in Mgt Information Systems, I ALWAYS get the question: So, you want to get out of the Medical field? To which I respond: No, I want to work on Medical Info Systems. I always see the light-bulb go off on their heads. In the words of Stephen Covey: a “paradigm shift” just occured.
Learning and developing human skills not only increases flexibility to cope with change but also improves one’s Specialization.
This is why I like PMBA.