The Future of Generalist Work
Collapse the talent stack every chance you get .
As I reflect on the teams I’ve led and hundreds of start-ups I’ve worked with, there is a consistent unfair competitive advantage i’ve witnessed when the talent stack was collapsed - when the lead designer was also the product leader, when the front-end engineer was also a designer, when the designer... See more
As I reflect on the teams I’ve led and hundreds of start-ups I’ve worked with, there is a consistent unfair competitive advantage i’ve witnessed when the talent stack was collapsed - when the lead designer was also the product leader, when the front-end engineer was also a designer, when the designer... See more
scott belsky • Tweet
Hiring generalists collapses the talent stack, thereby improving decision making and synthesis of information, and giving companies to act quickly when time and resources are limited.
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
The researchers, Todd Rose and Ogi Ogas, were interested in people who took a less conventional approach to life. They interviewed hundreds of high-achieving, wildly successful “dark horses”: people who swerved in and out of jobs—and often industries—to find a good fit. From symphony conductors to chess masters, Apple execs to dogsled mushers,... See more
Simone Stolzoff • In Praise of the Meandering Career
Generalists are force multipliers.
This has been the core question I’ve sat with for the last decade—how to balance money and meaning on the entrepreneurial path. And there are three archetypal ways that I’ve seen people approach the question:
- The deferred life plan
- Being bivocational
- Choosing to integrate
Casey Rosengren • The 3 Ways to Balance Money and Meaning
“It is ironic that I was never categorizable and now I’m a category.”
Jimmy Buffett
We’ve created this world where left brain people are free to act on their fairly narrow rational behaviors without being policed. Whereas the burden of proof demanded of a creative act is literally 20 times greater.
– Rory Sutherland
Top tier executive assistants are great at many things but have critical core operational tasks and simply don’t have the wide strategic business context required for CoS-style work.