September 2022 – James Osborn

David Epstein’s Range argues that in the modern world it’s generalists who will succeed over specialists in a wide variety of situations.

There are a few narrow fields where early specialism may triumph. Easy learning environments where you get quick feedback on what went right or wrong. Things that have repeatable elements that you can reliably master. Chess, golf and playing certain instruments can all match these criteria, and we can all think of examples of people who specialised early and went on to be masters in the field.

However, wicked problems are not so tractable to the early specialisation. Things that take longer to see success or failure. Areas where novel thinking is required, or connecting multiple dots from different disciplines leads to success. In these areas, early specialisation can be harmful, the focus on mastery of a narrow area leads to solution blindness. Every problem is solved with a hammer, no matter if it’s a nail or not.

The book argues for early sampling before applying focus to attempt to achieve mastery. Most of the most successful people at even the repeatable problems try out a range of things before settling on the one that they connect most with, and that sampling time gives them confidence that they connect well with what they’ve settled on, and the grit to succeed.

It’s not the case that we don’t need specialists, they move forwards the state of the art, they go deep into problems and create something new. Generalists can span across these deep solutions, connect them in novel ways and bring to bear existing solutions from one domain, to solve a problem in a way a specialist would never be aware of.

Epstein also gives practical advice to make use of these generalist successes. Take the time to sample in an area. Support children who are doing so and don’t worry if they ‘fall behind’ early on, once they find fit they’ll accelerate ahead of the early strivers. Don’t get held up on grit to be successful, you need to want to be there before getting gritty matters.

Make use of existing tools. Learn from specialists and take the best of what they know to solve problems in your areas.

Create diverse groups to solve problems more effectively!

Range is a great book to look at what learning techniques and approaches work well in the wicked modern world, how we’ve fallen for some bad assumptions on specialisation and how we can balance the two to be more than the sum of our parts.

A great technique to fight against a Sunk Cost problem is to take it back to a blank slate. It’s all too easy to get stuck when we’ve invested a lot of time or money in a course of action, going back to basics is a way around it.

Consider a project that’s difficult, maybe not going how you’d expected and it’s overrunning. Rather than just continuing to bash away, stop. Get honest with yourself and the team. What’s left to do to achieve a valuable outcome? How long is it really going to take? What else could you be doing instead of this work.

To be successful with this review, you need to clear away the history of what’s gone before. You need to understand where you are, not the effort you’ve put in to get there so far.

It’s not an easy technique. It’s really easy to get attached to the work that you’ve done, or the investment made so far. You might not be successful the first times you try.

Watch out for statements that look back to what’s gone before. “It’s cost so much already”, “We’ve put in so much effort”, “We have to finish this”.

If you can’t break free from this, you might need to call in someone with fresh eyes. The quickest way to the blank slate is sometimes through a person who hasn’t been close to the efforts so far.

If it feels like a slog, that you aren’t getting there and you never will, then try starting from a blank slate to make a good decision with your future efforts.