Specialists vs. Renaissance Men (and Women!)

We have all heard the same advice. Find your niche. Be the best at it. SPECIALIZE. I have a problem with this.

The wonders of a free market come from what is known as the division of labor. When you have a lot of product or services to turn out, you amass a team of people each performing their singular task. The result is greater quality and productivity. This strategy has been applied to numerous fields. In football, you play on either offense or defense and then you find your position. In medicine, you can find your specialization and take it from there. Our society has become so highly specialized that we have people brilliant at one thing and clueless in all others. If you are having a heart attack on an airplane, the orthopedist two seats back can't help you.

This specialization does wonders for companies and society, but it does you harm as an individual. Lose your niche, and you have lost your life. Talk to an unemployed steel worker, and you will hear his lament. "I spent thirty years on that job. Now, it's gone. I'm too old to change and do something new." This is what happens when you put all your eggs into the one basket of specialization.

Clearly, it would make no sense for Tiger Woods to give up golf and switch to professional bowling. But it does make sense for him to learn business, finance, and other things. He can start businesses with his wealth and manage them or at least know who to hire to do these things for him. There is great value in knowing something more than how to swing a golf club. Plus, bowling is fun, too.

The path to go with is the Renaissance Ideal. Specialists deride this as anachronistic and impossible. You will be the "jack of all trades and the master of none." There is some truth to this. Any field or subfield can take a lifetime to master. Or does it? We know people who are masters at young ages, so clearly, this is not true. It takes time to learn Spanish, but children do it all the time. The same thing applies to musical instruments and what have you. These are not things you can pick up overnight, but I think dedicated study and practice will have you in a good place in 2 to 4 years.

Being the "master" of a particular discipline does take a lifetime. The reality is that a few exceptionally talented people devoted to a singular task turn out some amazing things. I don't think Stephen Hawking could have done what he did had his options not been closed off by ALS. But the vast majority of the people who aim to mimic these singular geniuses will fail.

The genius of the Renaissance Person is the ability to combine different ideas and fields. This was the genius of Henry Ford who combined meat cutting with automaking to give us the assembly line. Ford got the idea from the Chicago slaughterhouses where the carcasses went down a line and specialists cut their piece from the slab. Car making would never be the same. Often, innovative new ideas are simply combinations of old ideas, and this can only be achieved by a polymathic sensibility and a wide breadth of knowledge.

Specialization helps in having a day job. Like it or not, we all have to make money, and we don't all get to make a living from the things we are passionate about. But the advantage of a day job is that it frees you up to pursue other things. I know my own life has been a division between my work and my studies. I've been living the same lifestyle since I was a kid. I work and read, and I enjoy both equally as much.

Specialists abhor change because change diminishes their value. They don't want to learn new things. These are the old timers that still use typewriters or draw plans by hand. Specialists are static. Renaissance people are dynamic. This is why Renaissance people can handle changing economies while specialists can't. In short, expertise in a single area is overvalued and overrated. This is why mechanical engineers both make a lot of money and are also frequently unemployed. They ride a wider arc of the economic pendulum.

The biggest problem with being a Renaissance person is that learning takes time and money. But these are problems easily overcome. We have way more time than we realize, and I refer you to my article, How to Get Shit Done, for a wider treatment of this issue. You have more time than you think.

As for money, education is free. All you need is a library card. Books on every field are available at your library. More recent or available work may have to come through Amazon, but it won't bankrupt you. These are the same books you would read in a college class except they charge you for reading them. You don't buy an education in college. You buy recognition for work you can do on your own. In addition, licenses and examinations are the way specialists exert protectionism on their professions. Professionals are simply mercantilists who can't compete in a free market. Their talents are overrated.

I can't change this injustice. In order to be a lawyer, you need a law degree and to pass the bar. The same goes for doctors, engineers, or what have you. You have to jump through the hoop, but it is easily done if you are already a Renaissance type. Renaissance people solve problems in new and creative ways, so getting cash and passing a test are no big deal. But many fields are wide open to people. For instance, if you are bilingual, you don't need a license to speak Japanese. Combine that with a business degree, and you are very valuable.

Here is a Renaissance recipe for any person aspiring to a diversified skill set:

-Know a foreign language
-Know a blue collar trade
-Know math
-Know how to write
-Know business
-Be proficient in computers

These six things will make you fully employable. By themselves, they are not that valuable but combined in a single person they are very valuable. Companies save money when they have employees with a wide range of skills, and they are willing to pay more. A customer service rep who knows both English and Spanish is more valuable than one that only knows English. Throw in French, German, or Mandarin, and you can see why it matters. This enables an employer to hire fewer specialists which saves more money for the company and makes more money for you as an individual. I learned this from discovering that security guards at the airport made more if they were also licensed EMTs. This allowed the airport to meet their obligations with fewer employees.

This is also the refrain I hear from specialists. Ask them to do something outside of their specialty, and they reply, "That is not in my job description." Who wants to have someone like that working for them?

To be a Renaissance person requires certain character traits and disciplines:

-a dedication to lifelong learning

-flexibility and comfort with change

-confidence in one's ability to improvise and to solve all problems

The Renaissance person must also learn humility because he or she will be overlooked most of the time. The supreme value of a Renaissance person shines through during a crisis. Their flexibility and abilities are shown when the shit hits the fan. Being a fast learner and flexible is needed during the crunch times. Specialists abhor crisis, and they are pretty much useless. They crave routine not challenges.

I think specialists are needed, but let's face facts. Talent is as common as dirt. Specialists like to think of themselves as indispensable, but they often work with people with the same skill set they have. Their expertise is marginal. Fire a specialist, and you won't have much trouble finding a replacement. But losing a Renaissance person is like losing a limb. They are rare and indispensable. Talk about irony. Where can you find another employee as flexible and useful as that polymath?

If you do one thing over and over, you will be good at it. To be good at many things is a rare talent. Specialists will always emerge to deal with the common denominator, but the cutting edge of change and innovation belong to the Renaissance people. They live for the new and the different. Few people can make this commitment to constant change, but change is the only constant.

My advice is choose to be dynamic. Learn new things. Besides, it's more fun, and you can still keep your day job. A niche is merely a comfort zone which becomes rut which becomes a grave.

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