# Highlights:

• Several conversations about volunteering & why people do it. Ideas for designing genuinely interesting volunteering opportunities that allow them to grow in their careers.
• My little ray of sunshine 🙂

# Do you have personal stories or metaphors that can describe what it is to be a specialist or a generalist?

A common experience over the years has gone something like this: Get invited to a meeting as a specialist, individual contributor. Listen to a number of people talking about their own specialist domains. (feel like an impostor – why am I here, this deeply specialist discussion is well beyond my capabilities). Ask a “dumb question”. Realise that I’ve made the conversation stop, & the chair of the meeting raise the discussion multiple levels. I get asked to help reframe the topic of discussion, or to reframe the problem. Find myself being invited back as a cross-domain expert who can talk to multiple specialists/ groups. Find myself connecting multiple threads of conversations, and driving some of them myself. Get to a point of exhaustion, extricate myself. Rinse & repeat.

Today was a slightly different story. I ask a question about volunteering, & people’s motivation behind doing it. It was triggered by a sentence in Peter Drucker’s book, a chapter on how management in business must learn from management in not-for-profits. It’s triggered people’s stories and individual perspectives that will help someone (perhaps even me) to design a program or an initiative that taps into what John Hagel calls the passion of the explorer. I believe people, almost everyone, want to make a contribution to the world, to make a difference. It so happens that work is often not where they can also do that. My exploration has begun to find out if that is always true, or can small moves, smartly made, change this view of the world. I will be finding out.

Highlights:

• Little 18mo neighbour nestled comfortably in my arms, in rapt attention to my 11yo playing Bach on his cello. Wish I got a photo.
• A few pages of reading despite the cacophony of the day.
• Listening to a colleague, helping me to get a deeper understanding of the structure of a problem I want to communicate broadly.

I’m not in a mood to tackle a prompt today. Weariness is settling in, and I’m not fully functional at this hour either.

Highlights of the day:

“You’re messages are cryptic so I wanted to make sure I understand you”. “You articulate your ideas so clearly”.

Two statements I heard from the same person today. Which one of them is true? Are any of them true?

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Sat in on a hour-long cello lesson with my son. The tutor (I’ve written about her before) expects a lot from him. Gives her best, and expects him to do the same. Encouragement with expectations does wonders His cello playing has dramatically improved over the last few months.

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Our neighbour 15mo is a ray of sunshine. Minutes of play with him is enough to lift my spirits, and I feel he feels it too. He shows it in his toothy smile as soon as he sees me, and blows kisses at me

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Is there a difference in the way that a generalist and a specialist can stay relevant?

I’m not sure about the differences, but to “find common language, and communicate to understand” would be a common way. Call it recency bias. My recent experiences have all been trying to get specialists and generalists to find common ground, and it is a huge struggle!

“Staying relevant” requires self-awareness, and awareness of the environment around oneself. The mindset that we can learn, that our abilities are not fixed, that there are ways in which we can made a difference is invaluable. Being able to share one’s knowledge is easy these days. But that doesn’t mean it’s done.

Specialists can stay relevant in their domains by getting deeper into their subjects. They can be the experts to reach out to.

Generalists can stay relevant by improving the domains they have at least more than a surface level understanding. Go wider, not deeper.

# What is the value of specialism and generalism?

I work in the telco industry, where deep expertise is the norm. Folks have spent decades in the field (both literally & figuratively), and have earned the knowledge through hard yards (again both literally & figuratively). This deep expertise – or specialisation – is invaluable, when dealing with identifying the problems across the continent. The economics of the industry have driven a lot of the deep expertise out, presumably replaced by software or intelligent automation, but automation does not work well with previously unseen problems. The march of technology doesn’t mean that all insights, particularly tacit knowledge, is automated. This puts a high premium on the people with these skills, who are also heading towards the end of their careers, and lives.

Specialism isn’t all good either. Because the language and jargon is almost indecipherable, few of the non-technologists care to put in the effort required to understand it (not enough pay-off, too hard, squillions of reasons). The specialists tend to become siloed operators, rarely understanding the specialists in other fields & vice versa. There is a lack of common knowledge, or as my philosophy major colleague says “incommensurability”. Very quickly, it turns into a us-vs-them mentality, each viewing the other with skepticism.

I expect that generalists help bridge this gap to some extent. They are often given the titles of “general managers” with the authority seemingly vested in the title to connect various specialities. However, over the last decade or so, I’m noticing a trend of the GM’s actually being specialists with a formal generalist title. The silos get more entrenched. Communication & translation across domains is skill incredibly hard.

The few generalists I do see are worth their weight in gold. They make the boundaries between domains porous. They see overlaps between domains, and become the default translators. Specialists trust them enough to share some of their expertise, tacit and explicit, leading to better value creation. It is also very rare to find specialists in a highly technical industry, which is why I say they are worth their weight in gold.

 

# What is a generalist?

A jack of many trades. Knows enough of a subject and can recognise where it is applicable, and the principles under which it can be applied. Not an authority on it though.

Widely read. Has mental models or heuristics of the world. Can articulate the models with some level of competence.

Knows enough people who know more about the subject. May or may not have direct access to those specialists.

Breadth of knowledge & experience.

Self-confident, and able to hold one’s own. Not afraid to say “I don’t know the details”.

Ambitious, perhaps?

# What is a specialist?

 

# What do you want your legacy to be?

Answering that specific question is hard, because I have different ideas for different people. And so “I don’t know” is a normal response for me.

I take refuge in how Maya Angelou described it:

“You have no idea what your legacy will be because your legacy is every life you touch.”

Perhaps I should attempt to answer the question about legacy through the lens of different people I have in my life. My wife & kids. My closest friends. My extended circle of acquaintances.

My wife: Her best friend & supporter. Her lover. Her rock. Her refuge.

My kids: Their biggest supporter. A role model. A patient listener. A confidante.

My closest circle: An inveterate optimist. Compulsive sharer of insights & information. A patient listener. Connector.

Extended circle: Mentor. Enabler. Connector.

It was an interesting experience to read my colleagues recommendations on my professional social network. A focus on people. Strong communicator & storyteller. Genuine. Empathetic. How people see me depends on the context. And of course that’s self-evident. Where I am is who I am.

At a deep level, I want to have made a difference to a few people, to the community I am part of, to the world I live in.

# Have you ever withheld part of your repertoire in order to get your foot through the door?

More often than not. Maybe even always.

The most common rejection story in my job hunt:

I come across a role that asks for certain skills. I do my research about the company, the workplace, the people. I see possibilities in that role that I think everyone clearly sees, and particularly so with the skills that I have in addition to the ones that are asked for. I craft a resume for that role, write a cover letter that adds the color and the possibilities I see. I get a rejection letter (not even a call these days) that says the company has decided not to progress with my application. Progress (rarely) happens when I only craft a response specifically to that job role advertised.

More often than not, people I’ve worked previously recommend or introduce me to the people hiring. That progress far more and far quicker. In such instances, I am often prompted to explain more about the stuff that’s NOT on my resume. It’s no longer about getting a foot through the door, because I’m invited to bring my whole self in for a conversation, not to play footsie.

# Have you ever labelled yourself in order to be understood?

My professional qualifications are a way of signalling to the world that I’m an expert. They were gained due to much peer/social pressure. Growing up in a country where education was the ticket out of whatever station in life your parents were in.

The idea of careers was a binary choice between a doctor or an engineer. If that wasn’t the chosen path, you could feel the label of a societal failure, someone who brought shame to the family. I took a path less trodden and it did not go well with teachers in my life. One in particular burst out: “You’re a waste! What was the point of being a top student if you couldn’t take up medicine?”

Whether at college, or at work, I’ve been quick to adapt to whatever situation I found myself in, even if it made me uncomfortable. Few noticed my discomfort, and while they may have wondered why I was there, I was quickly treated as one of the tribe.

An example: I got a violin, and a handful of violin lessons when I was in year 3 or 4. I wasn’t quite sure why because I didn’t think of myself as so interested in music to learn it, although I did have several cassette tapes on endless replay. I remember just enough of reading sheet music at the time. Fast forward 5 years, I was nudged towards keyboard/church organ lessons. Again, I wasn’t keen enough to learn to play, while a couple of other older women who were taking lessons with me did. When I changed schools again in year 10, I noticed that the kids I hung out with were all ‘musicians’ – played at least an instrument. I learnt to play by osmosis, and got decent enough that I could play something during practice. They thought that I was a musician because I could keep rhythm, learn the tunes and chords quickly, and had better vocabulary than everyone else, so could pick up the lyrics to most songs. I labelled myself a musician at that time. It opened many other doors, teaching and performing with young kids at various competitions.

Similar episodes during my working career. In my first traineeship/job, having little experience on a computer before, I learnt how to assemble them from a client. I learned enough about hardware & software from that experience. I learned how to work on spreadsheets, and improve effectiveness and efficiency of the entire office. I was reasonably good at explaining what I was doing, & it gave me more opportunities and more confidence to take on tasks that none of the other office staff wanted to do. I hated the title they had “articled clerk” so I labelled myself “jack of all trades”, and I lived up to that label too.

When people ask me today what i do, I use one of the professional ones – accountant or finance guy, analyst or IT guy, or business engagement partner are most common. It may be a shortcut to explain what I can do – but it means I also sell myself short significantly. People who’ve worked me a while tell me so.

# Have you encountered difficulties describing what you do to other people?

There is hardly a day that goes by when someone asks me what I do. I’m still struggling to explain.

It depends. If I know the people or their background, I’m usually explaining what I do in language they understand. If I don’t know them, I don’t even try to explain what I do, opting instead to say “I work with technologists”.

If I use my formal title (Innovation partnerships), people often squint and ask me what that means. There are so many roles I play every day: confidante and listener, advisor, finance guy, coach, mentor, problem explainer, problem finder, analyst, translator, communicator, speech-writer, PPT creator, bearer of bad tidings (aka decliner), to name just a few. Its hard to explain it so I don’t even bother, instead choosing to joke about it and say “whatever needs to be done”. It’s an unsatisfactory answer, both for the inquirer and for me.

I’ve chosen to think of myself as a chameleon at work, adapting to whatever situation I find myself in. Sometimes it’s with senior executives, other times with folks involved with projects. I’m often talking to the people who actually do the work. In each case, I find it natural to simply say I’m here to listen and understand. I ask questions, replay my understanding, and iterate until I’m able to describe it to someone else in the simplest language I can.