Jack of All Trades, Master Bar None

When Charles Darwin popularized the theory of evolution and emphasized the natural law of the survival of the fittest, he was not pertaining to the strongest nor the biggest but towards the flexible and adaptive. As it was true for most of the fauna and flora that have managed to cross over from epoch to epoch in the known history, this principle also speaks true with businesses and careers in this day and age.

Society in general and formal education in particular, have taught us to be specialists in one way or the other. There are men's jobs and there female's jobs as well. People can choose to be carpenters, lawyers, doctors, plumbers, secretaries, among a long list of specific occupations. We were indoctrinated to prepare for our dreams from the early days of our youth. If you were to become an engineer, you were told to be good at math and building things while growing up.

There is nothing entirely wrong at starting very young in preparing yourself with your life goals. This however, presents a single linear path towards a focused life-long goal. It is as if we live for only one purpose, and one alone. And since there is a lot of preparation done to achieve this goal, chances are you will succeed.

And so what is the intrinsic flaw in this paradigm?

We grow up to be rigid and inflexible. We can be good with math but not in poetry and drawing. It can be the same when it comes to profession. Since we have been training and honing our skills in one area, we tend to develop familiarity and acclimatize in that field of expertise and encounter difficulty changing paths. For example, once a doctor specializes in a medical field such as pulmonology, it will be challenging for the same doctor to change specialization to let's say cardiology after several years down the road.

And so what we are driving at is that: to be able to thrive in the age of disruption, each us should be able to acquire the skill of adapting to various conditions and situations. In today's context of anything goes at work, we are no longer expected to be just good at our line of expertise but to be also good at adjusting to the changes that come and go with the times.

The same is true with business. The pandemic has underscored the volatility of the existing economic structures and practices as both big and small business were heavily impacted when the virus ravaged the world. Businesses which were able to pivot quickly were the early leaders in recovery and sustainability.

Circling back to my chosen profession of supply chain management, there was a time before the pandemic that the gold standard is to practice Lean and just-in-time (JIT) supply chain due to the obvious operational efficiencies they offer. However, the arrival of COVID-19 disrupted these ideal goods flow management and exposed the susceptibility of said principles to black swan events. Now, the common trend with companies is to establish buffer inventories and other relevant contingencies such as strategic sourcing and multi-supplier sourcing.

And so in closing, the most indispensable and important ingredient in the continued success of both businesses and professionals today is "adaptability". You do not need to be good at just one thing and stay there. The key words are learning and coping. Companies and people who are flexible and are able to adapt to the changing times will be the ones who will be left standing after the each great filter, Those who don't evolve will become extinct like the dinosaurs.

Arnel Gamboa

Arnel is a logistician by heart. But he also loves looking at various perspectives on leadership, self-improvement, process improvement and innovation.