How are extraordinary products and services born? It is often in the crossing points of different crafts and skills.

Skilled generalist = a person who is capable to work in two or more different professions and has some knowledge in several professions

You have probably heard about t-shaped skillset before. Whereas t-shaped individual remains in the original role, a skilled generalist can change roles completely. A common example of that in tech companies is a designer who can code or coder who can design. However, the versatility of a person's skill set can be applied to any field, not just digital product development.

Example: What if...

HR departments in tech companies have been traditionally focused on:

  • Ensuring compliance with labour laws
  • Recruitment
  • Payroll and benefits
  • Employee performance improvement plans
  • ...and maybe keeping the spirit high by organising company-wide activities

While necessities, like following the law and taking care of the payroll take time, recruiting is undoubtedly one of the key activities growing organisations have.

What is required to get competent employees to join the company then? It helps if you have a great product that is open to the public to use...but still, a great product does not sell itself. If you are working in the SaaS industry, the product might not even be available for regular consumers to try.

That's right – you need marketing.

Now, to do high-performance marketing, you need to do marketing activities and need materials, like a website, a story, an event and media strategy...which require special skills. If the HR team does not have these skills, they have to ask somebody in the organization to do them. This puts them in the queue to the prioritisation list with all the other projects in the organisation – and they rarely top the list.

Leveraging Productivity to a Whole New Level

Let's get back to networking – the most crucial thing in tech company recruitment is to get skilled developers and designers on board. On the other hand, the HR department might not be well-connected to professionals of these fields. The networking is outsourced to tech and design team leads, who might see recruitment and HR activities from a different angle – just to get the recruitment done for their team and move on with the product.

If the HR team does not have these skills, they have to ask somebody in the organization to do them.

Now, what if an HR team would have:

  • Skills in completing marketing and design activities
  • Expertise in programming to understand, what programmers are looking for and where they are spending their time and how they want to work

This multidisciplinary HR team could implement employer branding activities, create a storyline for recruiting, move faster and get more quality leads for recruitment funnel. Imagine, if this would be an ongoing process with an analytical marketer, designer and programmer on board. If an HR team understands deeply the motives and goals of the current staff, they could leverage the goal setting and performance plans to a whole different level by coaching design, developer or marketing team members.

This multidisciplinary HR team could implement employer branding activities, create a storyline for recruiting, move faster and get more quality leads for recruitment funnel.

Of course, this can work the other way around. If employees with HR background would become programmers, they could make excellent tech team leads by leading, not just by managing a ticketing system.

What about an animator becoming a programmer? Why not. Or product manager becoming a designer. Sure!

How to Become a Skilled Generalist?

Becoming a skilled generalist is not easy and it demands a lot of patience. It is very hard to keep up with two crafts at the same time. Often it is not just about time allocation, but the different mindsets that are required by each profession. It is easier to learn one profession at a time.

As a product manager, you should be constantly interacting with various stakeholders to get as much information as possible to shape a great product. As a developer, you need a lot of time for concentration and streamline your tools to ship software efficiently. It is easier to learn one craft at a time.

It is very hard to keep up with two crafts at the same time.

The most obvious solution is to get an education from another field. That is certainly not a fast route and requires savings. That's the hard thing about hard things. Another option would be completing a course to get introduction to the field you are interested in.

Getting a job straight away for your newly-found passion can be difficult. Luckily, some organisations are flexible to let you move horizontally between the departments in case you are interested to change your role a bit.

Why Aren't More People Doing This?

If versatility and having multiple skill sets will lead to great results, why aren't more people doing this?

Traditionally, education focuses on producing an expert for a certain field. There are cross-disciplinary programs that have received very good feedback from participants – however, that is still not the norm in many universities.

An integral part of traditional education is that students start identifying themselves by the subject they are studying. That identity can also be a burden and delimit possibilities. They also get external acknowledgement based on the subject they are studying – since you are studying the subject and got into university, you are on your way to become an expert on that. And just that.

An integral part of traditional education is that students start identifying themselves by the subject they are studying. That identity can also be a burden and delimit possibilities.

Combining two different crafts might sound risky and take a lot of time. If you have just one profession, the alumni and mentors can show you the ladder to climb with realistic career paths. If you combine two different professions, there might not be suitable mentors available – you are doing something new or the mentors lean heavily on one of the professions.

After spending a lot of time learning two professions you have to figure out what to do with them.

The Hardest Part

So, you succeeded to learn two professions – is it easy from now on? The short answer is – no!

The more you know, the easier it is to connect the dots. Let's say you are an animator turned to a programmer. Now you wonder, why do all the interfaces look so static? Why aren't there guidelines on how to use animations in the app? How to organise the work to support informative and moving interfaces?

There simply might not be any knowledge of animations in the team, how to produce them or how to lead and support people who can make them. In the worst case, the team might not value animations, because they simply don't have any experience or knowledge of them. If you can do it on your own as a bonus in addition to your normal programming duties, that is most certainly ok. Leveraging this unexpected new knowledge in a team can prove to be difficult and frustrating.

So, you succeeded to learn two professions – is it easy from now on? The short answer is – no!

Smart leaders give multidisciplinary employees goals and budgets, not a set path to follow. Of course, you can decide to be in charge and start a company – but with the package comes a whole new set of problems to solve.

Why this madness anyway?

Competition never ends. Somehow there seems to be always a company out there that gets it right – whether it is employee branding, usable interfaces or great customer service.

There can be unexpected wins when two disciplines are combined. A partner of an education company went to work for an ad tech company for a year and then applied the new learnings to the family business – the sales went up over +300% in two years. This demanded multiplying the marketing budget and to target the messages for the right audience – which would have never happened without the new knowledge.

When you have more knowledge, you are not tied to your old constraints; a 50% increase would have been a great result with the old knowledge in that particular case.

A partner of an education company went to work for an ad tech company for a year and then applied the new learnings to the family business – the sales went up over +300% in two years.

The paradox is: where certain skills are needed the most, the life there can be the most difficult. There are an infinite amount of companies that could benefit from better design – but you might be the sole knight tilting at windmills. So the question is, will you go where things are nice and familiar or where you are needed the most? Or will you make your own rules?

And if you decide to go somewhere nice and familiar and bump into a skilled generalist, take that as a great chance, not as a bag of uncomfortable ideas.

So the question is, will you go where things are nice and familiar or where you are needed the most?

Is the skilled generalist really in the rise? One thing for sure is – and it is competition for better digital products, processes and organisations. Whatever enables the former to happen, will happen.

List of Dangerous Ideas

...and so on.

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