A related anecdote, with an attempt to generalize and hypothesize after: Last year I started working for the Marine Corps, doing data analysis related to hiring and training, and serving on several committees that make high-level decisions regarding hiring and classification testing. One thing that made the position appealing, and which has made the job pleasurable thus far, is that the Marine Corps is seriously strapped for personnel and funding at all times. And by "all times", I mean more than long enough for it to be baked into the personality of the individuals and the organization. Even under the most generous proposed expansions of resources (under a pro-military President and a retired Marine Secretary of Defense) the Corps will still be strapped. Most Marine Corps Generals "wear several hats", meaning that they do 3-5 things for which all of the other services have dedicated generals. And this drifts down to most of the middle ranks of civilian and active duty employees. Thus, though they have to run their searches for civilian employees through the regular government hiring system, in which each job shows a fairly narrow specialty, what they need for almost all of their positions is a polymath, who is comfortable owning a couple of core jobs, and frequently being put into teams doing vaguely related jobs.
All of the officers I work with (Captains and Majors) had completely unrelated jobs, before they were ordered to get a masters degree and then work in my Division for 3 years, after which they will go back to their unrelated job. And even then, their Masters training was, at best, peripherally related to the tasks they have now (degrees in Organizational Research or Human Resources Management). Thus, while there is still a strong culture of telling people to "stay in your lane" when things get adversarial, most peoples' "lanes" are much wider than they would be in equivalent organizations. There is also no ability to maintain the illusion that you can get exactly the person you want for any open job, making flexibility a plus. This forces an environment in which 80% and 90% solutions are viewed positively, and in which many tasks are understood as "safe-to-fail" (given proper contingency planning and advanced notice to higher-ups). The situation that I am currently enjoying is an artificial result of being the Marine Corps being a relatively large (~200,000 employee) organization, which lacks independent control over many of the organization's decisions (because the legislature, and the Department of the Navy control many aspects of operations). While I am confident I was a solid first choice for the hiring manager (compared to others who applied to the narrowly focused job announcement), it is somewhat of a miracle that my resume made it through the HR gauntlet to reach her desk. Attempting to generalize from that: Polymaths would presumably be more crucial to a personnel-strapped organization. I'm not sure it matters whether that is normal operating procedure, or if it is due to an unanticipated shortage (e.g., due to unexpected growth, or an unexpected exodus). The inverse of that observation is that silos and narrow specializations would thus seem to be the natural purview of more mature and/or resource rich organizations. (And this fits with Roger Barker's excellent studies of small vs. large organizations, as well as much research since.) However, we all know that is being increasingly challenged in experiments wherein organizations try to see how big a corporation can get while still keeping a "start-up mentality". I suspect that a big chunk of succeeding in such experiments is - somehow - maintaining an environment in which polymaths can be common. As has been well-discussed above, growing bureaucracies have natural tendencies that make it harder for polymaths to get hired. Presumably it is also harder for their contributions to be recognized and rewarded (e.g., recognitions that go to singular contributions, rather than diffuse contributions), and the challenges created by bureaucratic territoriality. It would be interesting to know if any of the start-up-4'eva organizations have put in place mechanisms to specifically counter those HR and reward challenges. One would also hypothesize that the number of polymaths would correlate well with which organizations survived personnel-strapped phases. This requires, even for large, well-siloed organizations, having more polymaths than it seems like you might need under for "normal" operation. ----------- Eric P. Charles, Ph.D. Supervisory Survey Statistician U.S. Marine Corps <[email protected]> On Wed, Mar 15, 2017 at 10:24 PM, Marcus Daniels <[email protected]> wrote: > Steve writes: > > "Following your own principle (if I understand you correctly) of > diversity, every organization needs a few polymaths, but too many and it is > likely to lose coherence?" > > Polymaths attract people that want to be better and do good work. These > people and those that work with them live in the space of ideas and > accomplishments. In a big organization, the polymaths aren't the ones that > need to hire people -- the candidates are standing in line often with their > own funding. Then there are non-polymath professorial delegators that > need people to do work for them, and individuals with narrow skills that > want that work. I think Owen was talking about working in the first > situation, and others are remarking on the reality of the latter and how > odd it is to drift between the two. > > Marcus > > ============================================================ > FRIAM Applied Complexity Group listserv > Meets Fridays 9a-11:30 at cafe at St. John's College > to unsubscribe http://redfish.com/mailman/listinfo/friam_redfish.com > FRIAM-COMIC http://friam-comic.blogspot.com/ by Dr. Strangelove >
============================================================ FRIAM Applied Complexity Group listserv Meets Fridays 9a-11:30 at cafe at St. John's College to unsubscribe http://redfish.com/mailman/listinfo/friam_redfish.com FRIAM-COMIC http://friam-comic.blogspot.com/ by Dr. Strangelove
