The Hedgehog vs the Fox
In a famous essay by Isaiah Berlin titled "The Hedgehog and the Fox", he takes the famous Greek notion that "The fox knows many things, but the hedgehog knows one big thing." Basically, it is a metaphor for the kind of person who is a generalist (Fox) or specialist (Hedgehog).
In the professional business world, this difference is typically seem in the roles of executive/manager who typically has to be more of a generalist, verses a technician/engineer who are typically specialists. That is not to say an executive cannot be a specialist, as a good example would be a CFO that has a very focuses and specialized expertise in the finance and accounting of a company she/he is running. Likewise, there are high level software architects that have a very broad and generalized knowledge of many technical areas such as object oriented design, operating system architecture, database models, etc.
In a blog by Timothy Ferriss, of the "4 Hour Work Week" fame, he argues that being a generalist or "Jack-of-all-trades" is the way to go. He cites 5 reasons for his postition, and with the exception of his statement that "based on my experience and research, it is possible to become world-class in almost any skill within one year", which I find questionable, I have to agree with it overall.
Highly technical people in my experience, for example, do seem to pursue technical purity and perfection at the expense of getting whatever it is they are engineering done in consideration of usability, functionality and most importantly, within the strategic alignment and business goals for which the product is being developed in the first place. This probably accounts for why so many high-tech projects fail, are abandoned or have usability issues.
But why hold the belief that you can only be one or the other? I would rather take the phrase "Jack of all trades, master of none" to "Jack of all trades, master of a FEW". We are finite beings with a finite limit of time, resources and abilities, thus I think the most optimal way would be to work hard at being the best at some particular field, then having a broad enough mindset and general knowledge base to take that success and parlaying it into achieving a high level of success in another field.
This way, you get to experience and achieve success and expertise in a few diverse fields, while also expanding your experience, knowledge and skill sets. This seems to be the best of both possible worlds.
In the professional business world, this difference is typically seem in the roles of executive/manager who typically has to be more of a generalist, verses a technician/engineer who are typically specialists. That is not to say an executive cannot be a specialist, as a good example would be a CFO that has a very focuses and specialized expertise in the finance and accounting of a company she/he is running. Likewise, there are high level software architects that have a very broad and generalized knowledge of many technical areas such as object oriented design, operating system architecture, database models, etc.
In a blog by Timothy Ferriss, of the "4 Hour Work Week" fame, he argues that being a generalist or "Jack-of-all-trades" is the way to go. He cites 5 reasons for his postition, and with the exception of his statement that "based on my experience and research, it is possible to become world-class in almost any skill within one year", which I find questionable, I have to agree with it overall.
Highly technical people in my experience, for example, do seem to pursue technical purity and perfection at the expense of getting whatever it is they are engineering done in consideration of usability, functionality and most importantly, within the strategic alignment and business goals for which the product is being developed in the first place. This probably accounts for why so many high-tech projects fail, are abandoned or have usability issues.
But why hold the belief that you can only be one or the other? I would rather take the phrase "Jack of all trades, master of none" to "Jack of all trades, master of a FEW". We are finite beings with a finite limit of time, resources and abilities, thus I think the most optimal way would be to work hard at being the best at some particular field, then having a broad enough mindset and general knowledge base to take that success and parlaying it into achieving a high level of success in another field.
This way, you get to experience and achieve success and expertise in a few diverse fields, while also expanding your experience, knowledge and skill sets. This seems to be the best of both possible worlds.
posted by Don Kim at
10/10/2007
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