The Value of Varied Practice

Contrary to what conventional wisdom often tells us, it appears that generalists tend to be better at problem-solving and innovation than early specialists.

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(a blog post originally created for Intelligent Futures)

As a member of the Global Design House, I am fortunate to have deep connections with folks from across the world who are committed to using human-centered design as a way to affect positive social impact across fields. A couple of years ago, at one of our annual meetings in Madrid, our friend and UK-based digital strategist of Retrofuzz Matt Kendall introduced us to the concept of User Experience Mapping - an approach to understanding the journey of a customer to optimize their experience.

While Matt has deployed this in his work for retail clients such as Wrangler and Bear Grylls, Intelligent Futures has adapted a similar approach to understand the lived experiences of citizens in the communities where we work.

Thanks to the knowledge and guidance shared by Matt, and despite our very different set of professional experiences and skills, we have applied User Experience Mapping to understand lake safety, sense of place, and environmental issues in communities. The result is a much more in-depth, granular understanding of how folks live than we would discover in a typical broad-based community engagement process.

As a team of curious and diverse problem-solvers, we are constantly looking for new opportunities like this one to improve our practices. I recently read Range by David Epstein - a book that does a great job of highlighting the benefits of varied practice, particularly in the context of problem-solving and innovation.

Epstein argues that despite what conventional wisdom often tells us, we should aim to broaden the scope of our professional experiences and explorations rather than exclusively focusing on one area of expertise. His thesis is that generalists, not early specialists, tend to be more successful at problem solving and innovation.

1. Avoid tunnel vision

Before we begin exploring the benefits of varied practice, let’s first understand why overspecialization might be problematic. The most obvious reason is that if folks dedicate their lives to one and only area of expertise and set of experiences, they will begin to develop what Epstein calls tunnel vision. Years of experience can easily give specialists the sense they already know enough and that exploring alternative ways of approaching challenges is unnecessary and ineffective. For this reason, they tend to lean on tried-and-true solutions.

Tunnel vision is especially dangerous with wicked problems (a problem that is difficult or impossible to solve because of incomplete, contradictory, and changing requirements that are often difficult to recognize) and high context challenges where issues and communities are vastly different.

“In a wicked world, relying upon experience from a single domain is not only limiting, it can be disastrous.” -David Epstein

This is the space where we are working most of the time at Intelligent Futures. Our practices are designed to discover the unique contours of a community - its people, its history, its challenges. While we have a structured approach to our projects, the core purpose is to learn the varied and complex context of a community or organization that we are working with in order to find the right solution(s).

2. Adopt a beginner’s mind

To avoid tunnel vision, Epstein advises us to adopt a beginner's mind when approaching challenges. Looking at the world with a new pair of eyes is the first step towards finding refreshing methods and solutions that transcend regular practices. Like generalists who experience a range of different contexts, we should approach each situation we encounter with curiosity, open-mindedness, and humility. Instead of jumping into assumptions and conclusions or leaning on previous successes, we should aim to be patient, adaptable and embrace failure as part of the learning process.

“Whether chemists, physicists, or political scientists, the most successful problem solvers spend mental energy figuring out what type of problem they are facing before matching a strategy to it, rather than jumping in with memorized procedures.” -David Epstein

3. Dance across disciplines

In addition, Epstein claims that folks who sample and experience a range of different events, activities, fields, and ways of living have a broader inventory of potential analogies at their disposal, which can lead to more creative solutions. Even if they felt like misfits in the shadow of early specialists at some point, the multitude of their lived experiences will give them a richer perspective on life, and consequently, their fields. Besides intentionally adopting a beginner's mind when confronted with a challenge, they internally check their extensive inventory of analogies, which enables them to identify and connect seemingly unrelated events in ways that specialists can’t.

By letting go of the need to force things into predetermined boxes, we begin connecting dots and recognizing patterns in a much more creative way. For instance, at one point last year, we found extremely helpful insights on program evaluation for a biodiversity project from a sexual health initiative that we were leading at the same time. In the VUCA (volatile, uncertain, complex, ambiguous) world in which we live, generating creative ideas, problem-solving, and having a panoply of analogies at our disposal is a superpower.

“Everyone needs habits of mind that allow them to dance across disciplines.” -David Epstein

The key takeaway is to be an intentional explorer. Rather than settle into the comfort of doing the same thing over and over again, constantly challenge yourself to learn from a diverse set of experiences. Why don’t you switch roles within your organization for a week? Or enroll in a course not necessarily related to your field? At Intelligent Futures, we intend to keep connecting with the folks from the Global Design House in addition to bringing our varied personal and professional experiences to the table.

Our Design Lead Jeff, for instance, decided to revive his long-lost passion for skateboarding and explore its potential intersection with urbanism. In our most recent Monday Insights session, Jeff showed us how skaters can repurpose public places, imparting meaning to spaces where there was previously none. As Ian Borden (2008) put it beautifully:

“The meaning of the skateboard movement then in part takes its power and vitality from the fact that it comes out-of-the-blue, an unexpected and sudden eruption of meaning where society had been previously content to say nothing.”

This got us thinking: What does it mean to challenge a city’s built form and how it is used? How can that spirit be adopted by other groups? Can it be used to inform governance or does it, by nature, always exist outside of it?

So remember: avoid tunnel vision; adopt a beginner’s mind; take time to sample and experiment across different contexts. Be patient and embrace failure as part of the process. Then find out what analogies you can bring from those experiences to your professional life. Open the door for innovation to come in (perhaps on a skateboard), and if you are lucky, you will even have some fun in the process.

“Everyone is digging deeper into their own trench and rarely standing up to look in the next trench over, even though the solution to their problem happens to reside there.” -David Epstein