Jack of All Trades. Master of...

A few hundred years ago, it was considered a virtue to know a little bit about everything. Such people even had a name: “Renaissance man.” Now, with the sum total of human knowledge literally at our fingertips, the same people tend to be tagged with a different term: “Jack-of-all-trades, master of none.”

This Watch Tells Time

Like many millennials (technically I’m Gen Z but…), I have been saddled with the need to distinguish myself in an ever-volatile job market. It’s no longer enough to be good at one thing, you need vast skills to get ahead. So, we get Bachelor’s, Master’s, PhDs, Nanodegrees, Professional Courses, Certificates and soon there’s no more room after our names to put all the abbreviations we’ve racked up.

And why not, the job market at home is crazy and the one abroad is cut-throat. How can we be satisfied with one job? How are you just a designer? How are you even going to get a job? How do you get promoted?

Ughhhh!! So, a graphics designer becomes a UI designer becomes a Web Designer becomes a Frontend Developer becomes a Backend Developer becomes a Mobile Developer and just keeps going deeper into the rabbit hole.

We all end up a little bit like the Apple Watch in the ad above. This watch tells time. This Watch tells time and takes phone calls; This watch tells time and turns on lights and opens up doors; This watch tells time and sets timers and sets your pace and warns you when it’s too loud.

And. That’s the keyword, isn’t it? This guy designs and writes content. This girl writes code and does digital marketing. Sounds a lot better than this girl is ‘just’ a digital marketer.

It’s a never-ending treadmill. And it gets even trickier when you find that you have a love for most of these things and you need to pick a career path. Where do you go? Which do you choose? Do you go deeper into a previous skill or pick up a new one? How many ‘ands’ do you need to add to stand out or should you just specialise?

So, when 2020 came around, I was stuck trying to find the answer to these questions. It was until I was at a retreat held by my company, a few weeks later that I got a hint.

Ten Straws, Two Eggs and Five Balloons

At the Reliance Enthuse, we were split into teams to work on an egg drop challenge. We were allowed plastic straws, tape and some balloons. The goal? Construct a container that will protect an egg when it is dropped from a certain height.

Typically, designed to test the skills of engineering and physics student, it’s also a useful tool for testing creativity and your ability to think outside the box. The trick is to see the materials as more than what they’re designed to do. The straws and balloons as more than just drinking instruments and festive decorations. This problem required us to overcome our tendency for "functional fixedness" which the psychologist, Karl Duncker described as a "mental block against using an object in a new way that is required to solve a problem”.

I’m The Master Now

In a study published in the Strategic Management Journal back in September, Frank Nagle and fellow researcher Florenta Teodoridis set out to find an answer; to specialise or not to specialise.

That is the question.

They discovered that when it comes to innovation, sometimes a Jack-of-all-trades is the master after all. This is hardly surprising if you’ve been following my train of thought. You’re probably thinking, we’ve all been trying to generalise and branch out because we know it’s better.

We find that generalists end up doing things not only earlier, but end up having more impact than folks who are more specialized when they engage with the new knowledge.

But you must recall the study says; when it comes to innovation. The keyword is innovation. If you’re going to be a generalist, you need to be innovative. You need to be creative. You need to solve problems. The findings suggest that people with a broader range of interests and skills may be more likely to be aware of developments outside of fields they have experience in, and thus quicker to jump on novel knowledge when it appears.

In other words, generalists are better at thinking outside the box.

I was inspired to write this article after a talk I had with my good friend Kelvin. What we eventually landed on was finding yourself a vision. A vision that sits outside your career.

Consider yourself a company.

Companies don’t just get better at one thing; the more successful companies make inroads into their whitespaces and adjacencies and grow. Always keeping in mind what their vision is and carrying across expertise from their core competencies with them. Wouldn't it have been bizarre; if Amazon bought Whole Foods and didn’t implement its distinct delivery options...or Google built a self-driving car and didn't use their map data. Sounds ridiculous, right?

These companies are able to grow in different ways because they're not focused on what they're currently doing, their visions allow for a wide range of activities. So as you continue to acquire new skills like these companies acquire new businesses, the onus is on you to apply your previous skills to your new endeavours in new and exciting ways that only you can.

I’ll end this with a quote from Nagle which says, ‘Having more diversified knowledge and being a Jack-of-all-trades actually allows you to master knowledge that is farther away from your expertise in ways that can be beneficial’. So when choosing to become a jack-of-all-trades, a Renaissance person; don't forget to become the master of the one thing you can do.

Being You.