Generally speaking…
My journey to accepting I specialise in being a generalist, and 5 tips which helped me get there.
Leaving my hometown of Christchurch for Auckland in 2011 wasn’t nearly as intimidating as it would have been in the pre-earthquake world. I’d survived, and with this came a new awareness of the need to make the most of every opportunity. This pushed me to take bigger risks than before.
Since moving up, I have been part of 4 tech startups where the attitude is to just figure it out, try your best and get stuck in. You learn to be resourceful and snap up opportunities as you see them. Also, it’s up to you to do it — not someone else. You have to be a generalist. The definition of a generalist varies but, basically, it’s a person who is competent in several different fields or activities.
It took me awhile to learn to value my skills. This is because I thought if you didn’t specialise early in your career, you wouldn’t be able to get a good job later in life. Now, I realise I can specialise in being a generalist, and that this is a skill in itself (and a particularly valued skill in the startup community).
Figure.NZ is where I’ve been the longest, and as I approach four years here (that’s like 25 years in startup world), I’ve been doing some thinking.
I’ve witnessed Figure.NZ go from a startup to a successful and sustainable non-profit, but what is rarely discussed is the rollercoaster of feels you can go through when an organisation grows and you are in the position of generalist. You go from an environment where being able to do a bunch of things is essential — to a time where people who specialise are critical to move things forward. This can feel disheartening and discouraging, because a specialist hired for a particular role is likely to be better at that particular thing you used to do, as part of the 70,000 other things you did as part of your job.
As Figure.NZ developed and grew, the things I did on a daily basis slowly felt like they were being taken away from me. These were things I was part of creating and now they were being passed onto others. My babies! I started to think that perhaps there might come a time when I wasn’t needed, and that, I think, was my biggest fear — that I wouldn’t be required anymore.
Saying that, it was important for me to recognise that for a few things, this was a relief. One example of this was creating data content. When I came on board we would take the tables of data, tidy them up a bit in Excel so they were uniform and add the variables to a javascript template we had for each chart type. I would also do things like edit the title and labels.
We created these charts one by one, lovingly by hand, for others to use. But it would take me so incredibly long, and while I loved the bit where I could pretend I could write code, auditing the data was not my passion.
Then a development team called Opcode produced the very first version of Grace, after an all-day hackathon. This took out the need to use Excel or to understand the intricacies of javascript to display our content, and the chart creation process became a lot easier and faster.
Being part of building and testing the first version of Grace felt like we were moving forward. It became obvious though that we couldn’t create and audit content fast enough with all the other jobs we had on. So we hired Andrea, who would become our chief data officer. His knowledge of New Zealand’s public data and confidence in how to present it was seriously a blessing. Without him we would most definitely not have the tens of thousands of charts we have now. The efficiency of our data team is truly a beautiful thing.
So, what is the point here?
Well, I guess it’s important to remember that in any job, things will change, and should change! Without a generalist like me at Figure.NZ from the beginning, we wouldn’t have been able to grow it to where it is today. That isn’t me tooting my own horn by the way (best idiom ever), but I was in a position where I had knowledge of how previous startups had run, experience in digital media and a general passion for being helpful and learning. I knew how things could work and I got on with it. We had a shoestring budget at the beginning, and we worked within its confines to a point where we didn’t have to do that anymore. This was the goal within that environment.
5 things that helped me get to where I am today:
- When you start to feel insecure about your position, paranoia can set in. Trust that it’s about working together for a common goal, not about fighting to get to the top.
- Remember your value at work, the fear is real! It’s okay that sometimes you will need some reassurance.
- Be realistic about what you can and can’t do well; and remember the importance of letting go of some things so you can get better at others.
- Make a plan for the future. Where do you see yourself heading, what do you enjoy most? Having a plan for career development is important.
- Appreciate the wisdom you get from new people and the lessons learnt along the way.
What am I doing now?
These days my job title is product manager for Figure.NZ. My knowledge of the products we have built, the goals we want to achieve, and the relationships we have with our community over time come in handy here. I use the experience gained from previous roles within the organisation to understand the perspectives and needs of those internally and externally.
The awesome thing now is that while I’m still a generalist, I have more time to gain a deeper understanding of product management — something I didn’t know I would love without first doing a whole bunch of different jobs. Success now, for me, is being able to dive into concepts and problems to find solutions that achieve our goals. I’m still doing a variety of different things, I’m still learning and I can also help out in most situations. I now specialise in being a generalist.
Last thing, it does depend on where you work
At Figure.NZ we recognise the value that each individual brings to the table. Each person’s unique experience and knowledge adds dimension to not just their particular role, but also to help shape the organisation as a whole. Having multiple skills and knowledge in a range of areas are prized attributes. Each of us contribute to other teams with our experience and knowledge, participating where appropriate.
What is also totally valid is making sure you’re doing what gives you job satisfaction. This might sound corny but what I mean is: if you love being there at the beginning of a startup to nurture it to a point where it appears to take off, then that’s okay too. There’s nothing wrong with wanting to move on.
So, to finish up, I don’t think there is a right or wrong way. There is only your way, and being a specialist or a generalist is not better than the other, just different.
