—or Just Easier to Organize?
We're told that if we want to become really good at something, we need to specialize.
Pick a field.
Choose a major.
Develop an expertise.
There's a logic to that. Time spent learning one thing is time you aren't spending learning another. If I want to become an exceptional pianist, practicing piano all day seems more useful than spending half of the day learning to paint. During my conversation with jazz pianist and composer Rick DellaRatta, another possibility came up: What if learning something different makes you better at the one thing you're already doing?
That led to the question, Is specialization supposed to, in theory, make us better at doing that one thing or does it just make it easier to market and classify who we are?
You're Supposed to Do One Thing
Rick studied at the New England Conservatory. He didn't arrive interested in a narrow form of music. He wanted to absorb as much as he could: classical, jazz, and other musical knowledge. According to Rick, eventually he was told, you're supposed to just do one thing.
He asked why.
He didn't think he was being asked to specialize because it was best for him. He thought he was being asked to specialize because it made it easier for the institution to move students through its programs.
It raises a question worth asking. Structure allows organizations to manage people and complicated systems. A university needs majors and departments. A company needs job descriptions. A hospital needs specialties.
What is easiest for a system to organize, however, isn't the same as what allows an individual to do their best work.
What Would Leonardo da Vinci Put on LinkedIn?
LinkedIn wants to know what you do.
During our conversation, I joked that people say how impressive Leonardo's résumé would be, if he were alive today. Imagine, if Leonardo da Vinci were looking for work today, what might he use as his LinkedIn headline?
Painter? Engineer? Inventor?
Designer? Scientist? Musician?
We tend to celebrate Leonardo da Vinci as he crossed boundaries. Put that same person into a modern systems, and one of the first questions is likely to be, So what exactly do you do?
Today it's likley someone looking at Leonardo's résumé would ask, “Are you an engineer or a painter? Who do you want to be when you grow up?”
That's where the specialization question becomes interesting. Maybe Leonardo wasn't remarkable despite doing all those different things. All those different things was what made him remarkable.
What If Knowledge Cross-Pollinates?
We've all heard: Jack of all trades, master of none.
That's possible. If I divide my attention among 50 things, I may never become good at any of them.
Rick suggested another possibility.
A person can master something and then carry what they've learned into another discipline. Now the second pursuit doesn't dilute the first.
Knowledge can cross-pollinate.
Imagine an engineer who learns photography. Photography might teach the engineer to notice composition, proportion, light and details other engineers overlook.
An artist who learns engineering may begin thinking differently about structure, materials and physical constraints.
A musician who studies mathematics may recognize patterns differently.
A scientist who learns to write well, may become better at identifying whether an idea can be explained clearly.
A businessperson who studies psychology may see a customer problem differently.
The second discipline doesn't compete with the first. It changes how you see it.
Expertise Changes the Way You Think.
When we become good at something, we don't just accumulate facts about it, we develop ways of thinking about it.
An engineer learns to think about systems, failure modes and trade-offs.
A musician develops sensitivity to timing, patterns and variation.
A photographer notices things other people walk past.
A writer learns to examine meaning and perspective in language.
An entrepreneur may become accustomed to making decisions with incomplete information.
Ways of thinking don't remain confined to their original disciplines. You carry them with you. That means learning a second discipline isn't starting again from scratch. You're bringing another toolkit with you. And when you return to the first discipline, you bring something back.
Specialization Exists for a Reason
It would be easy to take this too far. Specialization has value. I don't want a surgeon who spent half of medical school becoming better at watercolor painting instead of learning anatomy. Complex fields require tremendous amounts of knowledge and practice. Sometimes depth matters more than breadth.
The question isn't: Is specialization bad?
The question is: At what point does additional specialization improve performance, and at what point does it begin preventing useful knowledge from entering from somewhere else?
Organizations Have a Different Problem Than Individuals
An individual may benefit from crossing boundaries. An organization has another problem:
How do we manage everybody?
Imagine running a university where every student creates a unique education. One student wants engineering, philosophy and music. Another wants biology, sculpture and economics. Another wants computer science, psychology and filmmaking.
That might produce fascinating people. It would be harder to administer. Departments need budgets. Courses have prerequisites. Degrees have requirements. Professors have specialties. Employers need some way to understand what a degree represents. Standardization solves real problems.
Notice what's happened.
We've moved from asking, What's the best way for this person to learn?
to: What's a workable way to organize thousands of people?
Both questions matter. They're not the same. We shouldn't assume that the answer to the second is the answer to the first.
The Same Thing Happens at Work
Companies do this. Imagine someone who understands software, mechanical engineering, marketing and customer behavior. That combination might make the person extraordinarily valuable for solving certain problems. Where do you put them on the organizational chart?
Engineering? Product? Marketing? Strategy?
Organizations divide work into functions because they need to operate. Then something subtle happens. The categories created to organize the work, begin defining who people are allowed to be.
You're an engineer.
You're a designer.
You're in marketing.
You're in finance.
Stay in your lane.
Some problems don't stay in lanes. A product failure may involve engineering, human behavior, economics and communication. Understanding one piece extremely well may not be enough to understand the system.
Why We Need Both Depth and Breadth
There is a way out of the false choice. The alternatives aren't, Specialist vs. Jack of all trades. There's another possibility: Develop depth somewhere, then carry that depth elsewhere.
Master something.
Learn how it changes the way you think.
Explore something outside it.
Bring what you discover back.
That's different from casually dabbling in everything. It's different from spending your entire life inside one intellectual boundary. You can have roots and branches.
What Problem Is Specialization Solving?
Maybe that's the question we should ask, when we're told to specialize: What problem is the specialization solving? Is the field genuinely so deep, that concentrating on it will make me substantially better? Is specialization necessary for safety or competence? Am I deliberately choosing depth, because it serves what I'm trying to accomplish? Or am I specializing because a university needs me to choose a major?
Does a company really need to put me in a department?
Does a résumé need a job title?
Is it really that difficult to explain a career that crosses categories?
Specialization can make us extraordinarily good at something. Crossing disciplines can make us good in ways specialization cannot. The challenge may be knowing when to go deeper, and when to look sideways.
The boundaries between disciplines may be useful for organizing institutions.
That doesn't mean they're the boundaries in which our minds do their best work.
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Editor's Note
This article is based on my podcast conversation with composer Rick DellaRatta. The ideas discussed here originated in that conversation, while the structure, emphasis, and commentary are my own. Any errors or interpretations are mine, not Rick's.
Learn More About Rick DellaRatta
Rick DellaRatta is a jazz pianist, vocalist, composer, and founder of Jazz for Peace.
Learn more about Rick and his work at: https://rickdellaratta.com
Linkedin:
https://www.linkedin.com/in/rick-dellaratta-08199818
Jazz for Peace:
https://jazzforpeace.org
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About the Author
Daniel Stih (danielstih.com) is an aerospace engineer, software engineer, indoor environmental consultant, and author of 12 books. For more than 30 years, he has investigated complex problems spanning engineering, technology, the built environment, and human decision-making. His work explores how evidence, assumptions, and systems shape the conclusions we draw—and whether we're solving the right problem. Learn more about his approach in Why I Think This Way.