The Future of Generalist Work
“It is ironic that I was never categorizable and now I’m a category.”
Jimmy Buffett
Every. Single. One. of the startups that I've worked with have some
co-founder (or early team) dynamic that implicitly shapes their lasting culture.
These practices may be well-known and honored, or they may be hard-coded yet unspoken (like the pie in my story above). Either way, they are a part of the company’s DNA — its nature.
As an Ops Leader,... See more
co-founder (or early team) dynamic that implicitly shapes their lasting culture.
These practices may be well-known and honored, or they may be hard-coded yet unspoken (like the pie in my story above). Either way, they are a part of the company’s DNA — its nature.
As an Ops Leader,... See more
Amanda Schwartz Ramirez • Find the sacred pie
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.
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
And what you see internally is what I'll say is razor-sharp focus on reducing cycle time and bias to action and how do we reduce cycle time. I think it's basically the core of it culturally to me is getting people to think about smaller units of time for decision making. It seems obvious but I think you really have to reinforce it culturally. So... See more
Lessons from scaling Ramp | Sri Batchu (Ramp, Instacart, Opendoor)
“It's just to remind people that we don't work in years, quarters, weeks, we work in days. Each day matters and so never put out something tomorrow that you know can get done today. And that bias to action really permeates not just in the product teams but everywhere.”
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
The Silicon Valley small business, the SV-SB, is a hybrid of sorts — it intertwines small business values and discipline with big tech know-how and ambition.
- Founding teams may look like that of a “traditional” Silicon Valley startup. They’re native to Silicon Valley ethos, skills, and playbooks. But , beneath the surface, they’re different. You
Anu • Rise of the Silicon Valley Small Business
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
Steve Jobs explains the importance of both thinking and doing:
“The doers are the major thinkers. The people who really create the things that change this industry are both the thinker-doer in one person.”