Forget Polymaths, maybe we should be “socio-techs”

The polymaths get much media attention. I’ve seen Elon Musk called a polymath, and few people attract attention like he does. The thing is, I think polymaths are rare geniuses, unusually gifted individuals. People whom nature / God have favoured with remarkable talents in multiple domains. Outliers on the talent spectrum.

If this is true, then the entire concept of polymaths is fairly useless to us more ordinary people, other than a source of entertainment and inspiration. To be fair though, the more attainable concept of “generalist” and “integrator” has also received a fair amount of attention, particularly recently. I saw Bill Gates (who is started to appear in my writing a little more than is healthy) reading a book called Range, which encourages breadth of experience over depth of experience (I haven’t read the book).

Being a generalist by nature, it’s tempting to believe this idea. After all, it allocates value to being “a jack of many trades but a master of none,” which loosely describes me. My experience however, has tended to indicate that specialisation, at least at first, is really important. A specialist, in my observations, can then branch out more broadly, and achieve many of the benefits of generalisation, but only after specialisation.

My experience fits neatly with the concept of “T” shaped people - a concept that seems to have been popularised by IDEO’s Tim Brown. Here’s a quote from him on what T-shaped people are:

“T-shaped people have two kinds of characteristics, hence the use of the letter “T” to describe them. The vertical stroke of the “T” is a depth of skill that allows them to contribute to the creative process. That can be from any number of different fields: an industrial designer, an architect, a social scientist, a business specialist or a mechanical engineer. The horizontal stroke of the “T” is the disposition for collaboration across disciplines. It is composed of two things. First, empathy. It’s important because it allows people to imagine the problem from another perspective- to stand in somebody else’s shoes. Second, they tend to get very enthusiastic about other people’s disciplines, to the point that they may actually start to practice them. Tshaped people have both depth and breadth in their skills."

— Tim Brown - IDEO, Interview with Chief Executive Mag.

In the interview, he also says that I shaped people, and people with only the cross bar of the T, are both not ideal in a creative team environment. I agree - I’ve always personally wished to have deeper experience in one of the domains / skills I’m already decent in (say renewable energy, or systems engineering etc.)

T shaped people are now out of date though. As is the nature of things, some level of skill inflation has happened and now we need Pi shaped people. And combe shaped people. Essentially people with depth in multiple domains/skills.

Again, I tend to agree. But with a slight elaboration. Here’s my take on it: Pi shaped people should have depth of experience in two different areas: one technical, and one social. And then they ought to still have the cross bar for collaboration and integration etc.

These people, the “socio-techs” (and I hereby lay claim to the term!), are Pi shaped peeps with both technical and social depth. This combination is much better, in my view, than say, having two technical competencies.

But what is “socio” and what is “technical”?

This one still stumps me, and I’ve thought about this one and off for years. Which skills lie in the social domain, and which ones in the technical domain? I’ve long been a fan of socio-technical systems, but really sitting down to distinguish between the two is tough11 Here’s a paper that I’m still reading that been helpful in framing the quesition. This challenge is one of the reasons I’ve chosen to garden about this, since, like many people, writing is one of those things that force clarity.

The best I can do, at this point, to distinguish these spaces is the following heuristic: “Do you spend more time thinking about the mechanics of systems made by people and nature, or do you spend more time thinking about the behaviour of people?”

Yes, yes. Humans are a system made by nature. This is not a perfect solution, but it seems to make better sense to me than most other approaches I’ve explored. The easy examples: if you’re someone who fixes large machinery at a mine, you think about the mechanics of a system made by people. Thus you’re a technician (a term which is also often the actual job description of such people). If you’re a cardiologist, you think about the mechanics of the heart, a nature-made system. Thus you’re a technician (known as a doctor).

If you’re a psychologist, you think more about people’s behaviour, so a “social” (the words “socialist” and “socialist” don’t work here, so I’m going with the crude “social”22 “Socialian” seems like a decent sounding term, with no particular baggage). If you’re a sociologist, well, the answer is in the name.

But every job is on a spectrum and the above are just closer to the extreme (I think). The tricky bits are in the middle. What of, say, a journalist?

Writing is clearly a human-made system (language and communication), and is often considered “technical”. But almost all of the time, the journalist is thinking about their reader’s behaviour, and how the reader might receive the piece. A good journalist, I think, is very much pi shaped and is fluent in a technical skill (writing, words, grammar, editing etc.) and a social one (understanding the psychology of readers, and the sociology of the society they’re writing for).

Another interesting case is a financial modeller. Modelling complex debt structures together with a hundred parameters covering inflation and escalations is spending time thinking about the mechanics of corporate finance and the economy. But if you’re modeling a country’s debt, and trying to predict future macro-economic developments, you’re thinking about people’s behaviour (the politics and sociology of countries). So financial modellers can sit closer to either end.

Crypto-currency people (those building them) might also be splat-bang in the middle. Thinking at the same time about the technical mathematics of cryptography as well as the nature of money, seems like perfect mixed bag to me.

CEOs are on the “socio” end I suspect. Most CEOs spend their time managing people and setting organisation / company strategy. They spend, in other words, most of their time worrying about the behaviour of people. Employees, customers, suppliers, partners, competitors, regulators etc.

Why be be a socio-tech?

Socio-techs (pi shaped people with a technical and social competence/depth, plus a range of collaborative skills) are, in my view, more likely to be successful at problem wrangling (not problem solving - a post for another day) then T shaped people. For example, I saw this tweet the other day:

Figure 1: Patrick Collison Tweet

This is an example of two very successful CEOs (of Github and Stripe) contributing code to side projects. They built something and put it into production. This kind of reaching over from the socio dimension of being a CEO to the technical dimension of writing code, does in my view make them better at their overall jobs of problem solving / wrangling.

Similarly, in more recent times, much has been said in the energy modeling world about the need to have models that better reflect the reality of energy transitions. This is, in effect, technical people (energy system modelers!) reaching over to the socio-political end of transitions. And thereby, again, better contributing to improving these energy transitions.

Thinking more abstractly for a minute, I think that a psychologist who deepens their technical skill (say in being able to help clients measure and quantify their challenges, or learns how to fully use apps like meditation apps) can significantly improve the overall quality of care provided to their patients.

How to be a socio-tech:

I’m not sure yet tbh. Maybe another gardening post. For the moment, perhaps it’s useful to use the pi framework to understand your current skill-set, and if it’s more technical, pick a social one to develop. If it’s more social, pick a technical one to further deepen.

This is something I’m still thinking about.