I am a Generalist.
There. I’ve said it. In public. Out of the closet. Forever to be branded with the identity of being “not a Specialist.”
Guess that means I’m now a second-class citizen, career-wise, huh? After all, if you look up “specialist” at Thesaurus.com, synonyms include resume power-words like “professional,” “authority,” “consultant,” “veteran,” and so on. “Generalist,” on the other hand, doesn’t even return any results. Ask around what the term means, though, and you’ll get a whole lot of grief along the lines of “Jack of all trades, master of none.” If you want to pull in the big bucks, we’re led to believe, you have to become an expert in some specialized field. Depth of expertise is and should be the primary indicator of your value in the marketplace. Generalists are nothing more than shallow dabblers – leave the real work to the pros.
I disagree.
Broad Knowledge = Big Picture Vision
I believe the issue is not whether one approach or the other is better; it’s apparent instead that each is ideal depending on the particular circumstances. While the depth of knowledge of the specialist is certainly called for in situations where execution of a task or set of tasks intrinsic to a given field is required, it is often the generalist who, calling upon a breadth of knowledge gained across many related fields, is the one who identifies the problem and prescribes the task that is ultimately given to the specialist. The specialist is ideal for solving a narrowly defined problem, while the generalist is better equipped to see the big picture and its cross-disciplinary connections.
In my career, I have held many job titles: Graphic designer, web developer, technical writer, project manager, and more. Outside the workplace, depending on when you catch me, I might be an artist, a musician, a producer, and so on. And if at a given time I’m not actually practicing one of the above activities, chances are good I’ll be reading something for the sake of nothing more than intellectual curiosity. Archaeology? Check. Military history? Pretty weird for a liberal, I suppose, but I find the subject fascinating. Alternative energy, ancient religions…you get the picture.
Universal principles cross boundaries
The benefit I have noticed over my years partaking from the sampler platter of knowledge is that what I learn in one field often applies in others and yields insights that I may not have realized had I focused exclusively within one area. For example, while studying the construction of bass lines in music composition, I was introduced to an approach where, through a sort of stream-of-consciousness improvisational method, you come up with what amounts to a first draft of your part in the song. Then, through a more left-brain oriented analysis, you systematically remove components of the part that aren’t absolutely necessary to convey the rhythm, harmony, and overall spirit of the song. What you are left with after this process of reduction, often taking place over many iterations, is THE fundamental bass line for that song. The parts that don’t make the cut can always be used for embellishments and such in performance situations later on, but those extras always come across better when the foundation is solid.
At the time, I was working as a web designer. I tended towards what would be considered “busy” designs. Back then, I thought these were cool and sophisticated, with plenty of layering, decoration, and assorted pizzazz all over the place. This was in the ‘90s, so I suppose I wasn’t alone in using (abusing?) this aesthetic. But one day it struck me that the principles I had been employing in bass line construction were in fact universal design principles that could also be applied to visual design problems. I started stripping away the fluff in my web design practice, and discovered that the results were much stronger and flexible that what I had been producing before. This isn’t to say that I exclusively use this approach in all visual and musical design work since – depending on the situation, I’ll sometimes build up rather than pare down – the point is that what I learned in one field provided insights into another, ultimately strengthening my practice in both.
* * * * *
In this blog, then, I’ll be exploring topics of both professional and personal interest with an eye toward how they interrelate and inform one another. As a confirmed Generalist, I’ll be advocating for the view of generalists as vital to the balanced functioning of project teams, core staff, and of course, for the progress of civilization itself. 
But back to that “Jack of all trades…” crack that we hear so much.
I prefer “Renaissance Man.”
Or “polymath.”
Much more positive connotations there.
Can I put that on my resume?
