More than 11 years ago, in March 2013, when I was reading for my MBA degree at London Business School, I wrote this essay about preparing for the future of the work...
I completely forgot about this essay, until I recently found it when looking for some files on my old, old, old computers.
When I found this old essay and just opened it, I did not have much expectation....
After all, March 2013 feels like a completely different era. It was a time before GenAI, before Machine Learning became a sexy topic, before IOT, before multi-cloud connectivity...
At that time, a bitcoin was only $13 and the UK was still part of the EU.
I thought whatever was written there would already be expired and outdated by July 2024.
However, I was wrong...
Instead of finding old, irrelevant ideas, I found many of the ideas are eerily becoming more relevant than ever in this age of GenAI!
It seems that despite so many changes in the world, the fundamentals remain the same.
If we understand the principles of these fundamentals, we can somewhat see, predict, and prepare for the future.
For the sake of preserving the essay, I post the essay as it is. Perhaps, the approach outlined below can be useful for you.
Maybe, ten years later, I will find this essay again and see how much of its prediction has come true...
In this essay, I discuss the insights I gained from the Crafting the Future of Work elective.
To ensure focus, I describe only pieces related to the shift from a shallow generalist to a serial master.
The Need for Specialization
“Achieving mastery is crucial for success in the future.”
This statement struck me for two reasons.
Firstly, because I am a generalist today. I am currently reading for an MBA degree, which by definition is a generalist degree in business.
Before the MBA, I was a consultant for 8 years – again, a generalist in general management.
As a generalist who has served in 25 different industries, I know a lot about business—from HR, IT, Strategy to Finance, Marketing, and Sales.
However, I feel as if I have no specialization: a jack of all trades but a master of none.
Secondly, because I have come to realize the future referred to in the statement is not a far future but a very near future!
Even today the signals are clear.
As an MBA student who is currently active in the job market, I can clearly see that companies of today are looking for specialized skills.
Most companies want experienced candidates. Days when you can slowly learn on the job are fading fast.
Going forward, I believe work will become more and more specialized in the future because:
As technology becomes more sophisticated, work is becoming more complex and in need of highly skilled workers. For example, in the old days, knowledge of C++ was not required to be a good analyst. Today, proficiency in programming is one of the basic requirements to be a first-class analyst.
As software and robots replace many low and medium-skilled jobs, most of the available jobs in the future will be highly skilled ones. For example, if I want to run linear programming today, I will not have to hire a mathematician. With a simple add-on of Excel, I can easily create my model. The software will handle lots of problems for me. I will only need to consult an expert if I face a really complicated problem.
As world knowledge becomes digitalized and widely accessible, many medium-skilled workers will flood the job market. For example, if I did not know anything about LBO modeling today, I could do a quick search on the web and find instructions, guidelines, templates, and best practices for LBO modeling. In a very short time, I could teach myself a skill that used to be monopolized by a few PE professionals.
As virtual working/cloud becomes prevalent and connects billions of people around the world, the competition for jobs will be global and more intensive – thus, mastery will be the key differentiator. For example, in one of my consulting projects in London, I worked with a team of six experts who were located in Singapore, India, Germany, Spain, and the USA. We never met physically; we regularly coordinate ourselves via Skype. So much for the border protection by the governments.
As experts are gathering in the clusters of innovation, the frontiers of innovation advance rapidly and, as an implication, sophisticated skills will be a necessity for success in these clusters. For example, when I was studying in Boston, I was impressed with the concentration of biotech companies and experts in the city. Most of the professionals I met there were working in the biotech sector and were very knowledgeable about biotech and its trends. Many of the MBA students I met were aiming to join bio-tech companies and were developing bio-tech-relevant skills.
As you can see, all of these pieces lead to an undeniable conclusion: the currency of the future of work is deep mastery.
If the future is about deep mastery, then what can I, a shallow generalist, do?
The answer to the above question is clear, i.e., I have to develop mastery.
Choosing the Right Specialization
However, in what area should I develop mastery?
The forces of the future have provided me with opportunities in many areas such as healthcare, e-commerce, energy, sustainability, high-tech & robotics, entrepreneurship, social advocacy, and personal well-being.
Unfortunately, with limited time, I cannot develop mastery in all of these areas and have to choose one.
Reflecting back on my career, I identified five potential areas of specialization for me:
Business unit strategy: Designing winning strategies for companies.
Corporate turnaround: Improving the business performance of companies significantly.
Big data & analytics: Leveraging IT and mathematics to solve business problems.
Executive coaching: Helping business leaders grow their problem-solving skills.
Corporate communication: Writing internal and external communication materials for companies.
But, again, how can a generalist choose?
The VRI-ME framework, I found, is useful in helping me choose my ideal area of mastery:
The above VRI-ME heat map suggested I analyze Corporate Turnaround deeper.
A deeper analysis is important because, in the future, specialization will be highly specialized.
Using a medical analogy, a cardiologist is not special enough in the future—one has to be a neuro-cardiologist.
The second level of VRI-ME analysis, shown below, suggests that Turnaround PMO Execution is the best specialization for me.
Therefore, I will take a bet by focusing on developing expertise in this specialization.
Mitigating the Risk of Specialization
Yet, specialization is risky: what if the forces of the future change significantly in 2025 or 2040, and expertise in PMO Execution becomes irrelevant?
It is dilemmatic.
On one hand, building mastery requires a single focus but a single focus means narrowness and inadaptability to the changes in the environment.
On the other hand, being a generalist means being adaptive to changes but does not develop mastery.
So, what is the right balance?
The answer, I believe, is not in doing both approaches at the same time because half deep, half general skills will not differentiate me enough in the future; but in alternating between the two approaches regularly.
We can consider it as a cycle of mastery reinvention.
First, be focused and gain deep mastery in an area of choice.
When the external environment starts to change, as indicated by signals, be adaptive and explore a new area of mastery.
Once the changes have been understood, be focused again.
This way, I can reinvent mastery and develop a series of mastery.
So, as long as I can develop serial mastery, the risk of specialization is actually minimized.
At first, I was skeptical about serial masteries as research (popularised by Malcolm Gladwell) suggested that 10,000 hours of deliberate practice are required to develop mastery.
However, the more I think about it, the more convinced I am that serial mastery is possible.
After all, I can develop an adjacent mastery instead of a completely new mastery.
This way, my learning curve will be much shorter because I can leverage my existing competencies.
If I were a 100m sprinter, it would be easier for me to develop winning skills for the 400m race than for gymnastics because the core competency is more similar.
Furthermore, I can leverage the digitalized world knowledge to quickly learn the basics of a new mastery and virtual network to gain access to the relevant communities.
Unlike in the old days, I do not have to spend many hours accessing vast amounts of learning materials (thanks to platforms like MIT-OCW) and building a wide network (thanks to platforms like LinkedIn).
Also, if I am located in the right cluster, it will be even easier for me to find mentors, learn the latest developments, pursue opportunities, test skills, and gain experience.
All of these advantages accelerate the learning process significantly.
Implications for My Future of Work
All of these reflections make me realize that to prepare for the future of work, I have to make choices now and live with the consequences today.
The implications of the future of work are indeed already here.
For me, the decisions that I have made are as follows:
Attain a deep mastery in Turnaround PMO Execution. I will quit consulting and find a post-MBA job that will allow me to develop mastery in this area. I, therefore, will relax other job-search criteria such as reputation and size of the company. Also, to ensure I can keep up with the latest innovations in the area of PMO Execution, I will need to become part of the turnaround communities. Therefore, developing a professional network with turnaround experts and living near the right cluster becomes crucial. The target milestones will be:
Be proactive in detecting the signals of change and dedicate time to think, reflect, and practice the new skills. I will read books, be involved in social media, keep up-to-date with the latest tech trends, learn new IT tools, and network with a wide variety of people to detect, capture, understand, and exploit the signals of changes. I will also allocate special time to think and reflect (e.g. 1 hour in the morning and the evening). This is very important in reinventing my mastery. Once I identify the next area of mastery, I will take time off regularly to learn and practice new skills.
Manage self-branding actively. To promote my newly built mastery, I will create visibility and branding in the invisible (but transparent) job market of the future. I have to learn how to manage my blog and LinkedIn, Facebook, Twitter accounts more effectively.
Spend more time with family and friends. I need time for myself, my family, and my friends to rejuvenate my emotional capital. Without emotional capital, it will be very difficult to develop mastery.
If I am able to do all of these points above, I will be able to reinvent my mastery.
This serial mastery will benefit me, the company I work for, and society.
It seems that the future of work can be summed up with this one statement:
“Achieving mastery is crucial for success in the future.”
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