From Expertise To Generalists And Lifelong Learning: The Case Of The USS Gabrielle Giffords
Atlantic
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7/1/19
“Minimal manning—and with it, the replacement of specialized workers with problem-solving generalists—isn’t a particularly nautical concept. Indeed, it will sound familiar to anyone in an organization who’s been asked to “do more with less”—which, these days, seems to be just about everyone… In 20 years, we’ll know a lot more about the costs and benefits of minimal manning and lifelong learning. But nobody on the Giffords was pondering that after the crew finished its unloading job… Everybody I met on the Giffords seemed to share that mentality. They regarded every minute on board—even during a routine transit back to port in San Diego Harbor—as a chance to learn something new.”
“The Case For Generalists”
Medium
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6/26/19
“The challenge we all face is how to maintain the benefits of breadth, diverse experience, interdisciplinary thinking, and delayed concentration in a world that increasingly incentivizes, and even demands, hyper-specialization. While it is undoubtedly true that there are areas that require individuals with Tiger’s precocity and clarity of purpose, as complexity increases — as technology spins the world into vaster webs of interconnected systems in which each individual only sees a small part — we also need more Rogers: people who start broad and embrace diverse experiences and perspectives while they progress. People with range.”