Specialization vs Generalization
I fear not the man who has practiced 10,000 kicks once, but I fear the man who has practiced one kick 10,000 times - Bruce Lee
Seek work for what you will learn, not what you will earn
Young people should seek work for what they will learn, more than what they will earn. Look down the road at what skills they want to acquire before choosing a specific profession and before getting trapped in the “Rat Race.”
When I graduated from the U.S. Merchant Marine Academy in 1969, Standard Oil of California had hired me for its oil-tanker fleet. I was a third mate, and the pay was low compared with my classmates, but it was OK for a first real job after college. My starting pay was about $42,000 a year, including overtime, and I only had to work for seven months. I had five months of vacation. If I had wanted to, I could have taken the run to Vietnam with a subsidiary shipping company, and easily doubled my pay instead of taking the five months’ vacation.
I had a great career ahead of me. Yet, I resigned after six months with the company and joined the Marine Corps to learn how to fly.
Specialization is a trap
In school and in the workplace, the popular opinion is the idea of “specialization.” That is, in order to make more money or get promoted, you need to “specialize.” That is why medical doctors immediately begin to seek a specialty such as orthopedics or pediatrics. The same is true for accountants, architects, lawyers, pilots and others.
Some people are thrilled when they eventually achieve their doctorates. Schools reward people who study more and more about less and less.
You want to know a little about a lot. Work in different areas of various companies. e.g. accounting department. Learn via “osmosis.” Pick up “jargon” and a sense of what is important and what is not. Work as a bus boy and construction worker, in sales, reservations and marketing. Sit in on the meetings with bankers, lawyers, accountants and brokers. Know a little about every aspect of an empire.
We have to learn to balance “Job Security” with “Learning”. Sometimes, we have to quit a high-paying job, from a career that offers high pay, great benefits, lots of time off, and opportunity for promotion.
If you go to Merchant Academy for school, you are not going there to learn to be a ship’s officer. You are going there to study international trade. So as a student, go on cargo runs, navigate large freighters, oil tankers and passenger ships to the Far East and the South Pacific. You can make decisions about whether you need to stay in the Pacific or take ships to Europe depending on where the “emerging nations” are… in Asia or in Europe. Study trade, people, business styles and cultures in Japan, Taiwan, Thailand, Singapore, Hong Kong, Vietnam, Korea, Tahiti, Samoa and the Philippines.
When it comes to wanting to earn more money, take a long view of your life. Instead of simply working for the money and security (which are important), take a second job that will teach you a second skill. Join a network marketing company, also called multilevel marketing, if you want to learn sales skills. Some of these companies have excellent training programs that help people get over their fear of failure and rejection, which are the main reasons people are unsuccessful. In the long run, education is more valuable than money.
Unfortunately, there is some truth to the old statement “You can’t teach an old dog new tricks.” Unless a person is used to changing, it’s hard to change.
But for those of you who might be on the fence when it comes to the idea of working to learn something new, life is much like going to the gym. The most painful part is deciding to go. Once you get past that, it’s easy. Once you are there in the gym and in motion, it is a pleasure. After the workout is over, you are always glad that you talked yourself into going.
If you are unwilling to work to learn something new and insist on, becoming highly specialized within your field, make sure the company you work for is unionized. Labor unions are designed to protect specialists.
Don’t take sides. See the need for and the benefits of both sides. If you do as school recommends, become highly specialized, then seek union protection. Because my life would be dedicated to learn a skill that was valuable in only one industry. If I were pushed out of that industry, my life’s skills would not be as valuable to another industry. A displaced senior pilot-with 100,000 hours of heavy airline transport time, earning $150,000 a year-would have a hard time finding an equivalent high-paying job in school teaching. The skills do not necessarily transfer from industry to industry, because the skills the pilots are paid for in the airline industry are not as important in, say, the school system.
The same is true even for doctors today. With all the changes in medicine, many medical specialists are needing to conform to medical organizations such as HMO’s. Schoolteachers definitely need to be union members. Today in America, the teachers union is the largest and the richest labor union of all. The NEA, National Education Association, has tremendous political clout. Teachers need the protection of their union because their skills are also of limited value to an industry outside of education. So the rule of thumb is, “Highly specialized, then unionize.”
The more specialized you become, the more you are trapped and dependent on that specialty.
Instead, “groom” yourselves. Many corporations do the same thing. They find a young bright student out of business school and begin “grooming” that person to someday take over the company. So these bright young employees do not specialize in one department; they are moved from department to department to learn all the aspects of business systems. The rich often “groom” their children or the children of others. By doing so, their children gain an overall knowledge of the operations of the business and how the various departments interrelate.
For the World War II generation, it was considered “bad” to skip from company to company. Today, it is considered smart. Since people will skip from company to company, rather than seek greater specialization, why not seek to “learn” more than “earn.” In the short term, it may earn you less. In the long term, it will pay off in large dividends.
You have to work harder and harder the more competent you become. You also become more trapped the more specialized you get. Although your salary goes up, your choices diminish. Eventually, if you get locked out of work, you will find out how vulnerable you really are professionally. It is like professional athletes who suddenly are injured or are too old to play. Their once high-paying position is gone, and they have limited skills to fall back on.
Know a little about a lot. Work with people smarter than you are and bring smart people together to work as a team. Today it would be called a synergy of professional specialities.
In addition to being good learners, sellers and marketers, we need to be good teachers as well as good students. To be truly rich, we need to be able to give as well as to receive. In cases of financial or professional struggle, there is often a lack of giving and receiving. Many people are poor because they are neither good students nor good teachers.
Book recommendations
“Range: How Generalists Triumph in a Specialised World” by David Epstein