Specialists and Generalists in 3D

 
David Armano over at the ever-excellent blog Logic + Emotion points to a great sketch posted by XPLANE CEO Dave Gray at Communication Nation.



It's simple but I think this diagram effectively helps to visualize a few important points:

1. Generalists and specialists need each other. They work in different ways and with different methods but ultimately they complement each other. Theory needs execution to accomplish anything real. Drilling requires proper scanning to maximize effort. We often need to remind ourselves of this because so much of our schooling, training, research and career movement is one-sided, naturally and unnaturally following a specializing/narrowing path. Lifting our heads to look around from time to time can be very refreshing...and valuable.

2. Linking is, well, often the missing link. More than just defining problems and goals for specialists to solve and execute, generalists are superb matchmakers. And in a world with so many niche fragments, the power of collision by way of introduction is immense. Observing specialized pursuits and recognizing potential synergies between specialists--and also bridging languages, disciplines and cultures, by the way--is where so much of our innovation and discovery comes from these days.

3. Projects grow exactly because of the combination of generalists and specialists. This is where Gray's visual comes in especially handy. Looking at the combined efforts of specialists and generalists in 3D on a cube, it's only a small leap to realize that the aim of any project should be to grow the cube completely; that is, across all dimensions. Imagination x collaboration x innovation = success.

4. Many people are generalists and specialists at the same time. Call them versatilists or t-shaped people, or, alas, creative generalists. It's not always an either-or thing. Dabbling dilettantes and irrelevant experts are only the famous extremes.

5. Organizations can be generalists and specialists too. All of the above applies to organizations of people as well as it does to individuals. Gray's cube could very well be an org chart.

(Thanks Dave. Some other good comments here, here, here, and here.)

Update: A more detailed v2.1, which generously integrates one of my above remarks:

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