Tuesday, May 16, 2006

The Frustration of Being a Creative Generalist

If you're looking for a job, whether online or in a newspaper, one thing you won't see advertised is a position for a "creative generalist." After reading this piece (below) by Dr. Terry Rock, I know now that I'm not the only one who recognizes this fact. With the writings of Daniel Pink, Thomas Friedman and others, I hope this changes.

"The whole thing is worth reading, but one thing I face, and I know others face, is how to translate generalism into organizational reality. For example… finding a job as a generalist is difficult because there really isn’t “a place on most org charts and [generalists] are frequently told by HR that they’re smart but ‘we wouldn’t know where to put you.’” The flipside is running an organization that “gets” the need for generalists, but faces constant pressure to specialize."

Dr. Rock is referring to an essay written by Steve Hardy regarding creative generalism. I wrote about that piece here. You can also find the original essay at Steve Hardy's blog.

1 comment:

Jo1day said...

This post describes some of my frustration with finding a job. I know I'm not as 'general' as some generalists, but I sure don't qualify for the specialty positions. Maybe I could try researching and coming up with a possible number of job titles.

One group that might be happy knowing about the "creative generalist" term might be the people who call themselves "scanners" (they like to do so many things that they can't confine themselves to just one) I believe the biggest group of those is over on Barbara Sher's website/forum. I don't know if the overlap is complete, but I do see something of a connection, there.