The Future of Generalist Work
“The beginner chases the right answers.
The master chases the right questions.”
The master chases the right questions.”
James Clear • 3-2-1: On hard conversations, how to ruin a good strategy, and asking for what you want
Generalists are masters in asking the right questions.
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)
Each drop is creative and rebellious, winking to the world that capitalism is a necessary joke. They do all of this with a team of 34 people, most of whom are generalists with no background in making physical goods.
Evan Armstrong • The Art of Scaling Taste
The magic that MSCHF makes with generalists is the stuff of legend
Generalists have the advantage of interdisciplinary knowledge, which fosters creativity and a firmer understanding of how the world works. They have a better overall perspective and can generally perform second-order thinking in a wider range of situations than the specialist can.
Shane • The Generalized Specialist: How Shakespeare, Da Vinci, and Kepler Excelled
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
Emotional labor is the opposite of the industrial economy’s task-based, measured output. Even if we don’t dig ditches, the offer for a certain kind of work was: Process this pile of papers and we don’t care whether you like (or pretend to like) your job. The labor is the easily measured stuff.
But AI and mechanization have turned this sort of task... See more
But AI and mechanization have turned this sort of task... See more
Emotional labor and its consequences
If consumer behavior is evolving as a result of technology, businesses either compete to get ahead of it, they perpetually react to it, or they belittle it. One of the most problematic aspects around digital maturity is that technology is both part of the solution and also part of the problem.
Brian Solis • Digital Darwinism: How Disruptive Technology Is Changing Business for Good
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
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
Simone Stolzoff • In Praise of the Meandering Career
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.