The Future of Generalist Work

Mihika likens the role of a 0-to-1 team within a large company to that of Hestia in Greek mythology, who is the “keeper of the hearth.” It is Hestia’s job to always keep the hearth burning, even while other gods go out on separate quests. This means always keeping the 0-to-1 project alive and helping it spread to others, mostly through setting... See more

Lenny Rachitsky • Vision, conviction, and hype: How to build 0 to 1 inside a company | Mihika Kapoor (Product at Figma)

the people who can start things will be the major beneficiaries in the coming years, because the barrier is no longer knowledge or skills, it’s courage.

Superhuman

While frameworks can offer valuable perspectives and guide decision-making, rigid adherence to them can lead to tunnel vision and unhelpful outcomes. Successful decision-making often requires a blend of framework-guided analysis and intuitive judgment, where the needs of both the business and the customer are carefully considered.

Lenny Rachitsky • Twitter’s former Head of Product opens up: being fired, meeting Elon, changing stagnant culture, building consumer product, more | Kayvon Beykpour

How to clarify a concept you can’t articulate:

1. Change mediums. Draw it. Photograph it. Sing it.

2. Change levels. Explain what is one level up (bigger picture) or one level down (finer details).

3. Change fields. What would this concept look like in different fields?

James Clear • 3-2-1: On hard conversations, how to ruin a good strategy, and asking for what you want

How great generalists think

Management systems have been designed to provide reliability and efficiency, not adaptability and agility. Many of the tools and practices of modern management are geared towards solving problems and eliminating deviations in processes, behaviors, and practices. Because of this framework, management training and leadership development is often... See more

Kotter • Why Change Capability Is The Most Important Missing Competency For Today’s Leaders

So many of the problems that teams have — communication, organization, strategy — are unrelated to the function.

23 Tactical Company Building Lessons, Learned From Scaling Stripe & Notion

Generalists can unlock solves to org problems specialists have trouble fixing.

Job titles are just the most visible ladder of them all. It’s interesting that pompous executive job titles were invented during the Victorian era. This is when we started the trend of calling a cleaner a hygiene technician. A bin man became a waste management and disposal technician. Later on, a call-center worker became a communications... See more

Anne-Laure Le Cunff • The tyranny of job titles: from vanity growth to personal growth

Generalists have shirked the the notion of a true job title to fit their work and have followed the thread of providing value and making an impact. No wonder there’s a group of talented professionals hiding in plain sight given how constricting the traditional job titles have become in affirming our professional worth.

These passion job organizations are burnout factories. Every year, a new crop of eager recruits comes in, grateful to have landed a job doing work “they love” — and every year, a significant percentage of the existing workforce churns out. Some have been there that single year, others for five. They leave not because they’re not good “fits” for the... See more

Anne Helen Petersen • When Your Profession is On Fire

Taking a nontraditional path will force you to grapple with what matters

The greatest benefit of a nontraditional path is that you have to figure out what you care about. Rather than an employer telling you what you should value, you have to do the hard work of determining what you value for yourself. This may sound self-evident, but in a world... See more