#PeopleOfManyTalents is about you!
and your multipotentiality!
It is your biggest strength, especially in today’s uncertain job market.
Classical Greece, Renaissance Italy & Victorian England all revered and rewarded generalists, for whom today universities have little or no space or patience. Enclosed departments in discrete spaces, with their own journals and jargons, are a legacy of lamentable, out-of-date ways of organizing knowledge & work.
A sense of success fuels sustainable development. There are three reasons why a sense of success is crucial: As soon as we get something done over time, our brains reward us by releasing dopamine. la dopamine Second, learning is done only by trial and error, as well as by assessing the experiences gained. Third, stories of rapid commercial success are signs of confidence for change skeptics, the observers or indifferent employees, as the changes are significant and achievable. These tangible goals can be achieved through sprinting, gaining or prototypes of new concepts.
In a world of dogmatic specialists, it’s the generalist who ends up running the show. Is the CEO a better accountant than the CFO or CPA? Was Steve Jobs a better programmer than top coders at Apple? No, but he had a broad range of skills and saw the unseen interconnectedness. As technology becomes a commodity with the democratization of information, it’s the big-picture generalists who will predict, innovate, and rise to the challenge fastest.
In Specialization, Polymaths and the Pareto Principle in a Convergence Economy, Jake Chapman explains that economists tell us how the history of human labor is one of continually increasing specialization. In the days of the hunter-gatherer, every member of the tribe would have been expected to command some degree of proficiency with each task.
As we progressed along the economic continuum from hunter-gatherer through agrarian and industrial and now into post-industrial economies, the labor force has become more fragmented, with workers having more and more specialized skill sets. … Historically, specialization has been a path to prosperity. Although specialization has certain economic advantages, in the era of technological convergence, well-educated generalists will be those who are the most valuable. It is time for a renaissance of the “Renaissance Man.” … The Renaissance thinkers recognized both the potential of individuals as well as the enormous value to being well-rounded. Unfortunately, somewhere along the way the idea of someone who dabbled in many fields lost its cultural appeal and we began to praise those who sought deep subject matter expertise.
We now live in a world where distinctions between formerly separate industries are breaking down and the real opportunities for growth are where those industries intersect. Harnessing these 21st-century opportunities will require people who are “jacks of all trades, masters of none,” or, perhaps more accurately, master polymaths.
The art of effective transformation needed today is to create movement and simultaneously ensure security by building pillars.
The VUCA world of today asks for stabilizing elements in any transformation: principles and values, attractive vision, truly active frames, communication events, temporary structures, strong team compositions or some crucial rules. A well-conceived interaction of stability and change requires continuous reflection and the desire of senior managers to view change as a personal and organizational learning process.
A human being should be able to change a diaper, plan an invasion, butcher a hog, conn a ship, design a building, write a sonnet, balance accounts, build a wall, set a bone, comfort the dying, take orders, give orders, cooperate, act alone, solve equations, analyze a new problem, pitch manure, program a computer, cook a tasty meal, fight efficiently, die gallantly.
