Idiagram Ideas: Specialization

Specialization

Issues with Specialization:

More complexity = more specialization
As the world grows more complex, and our knowledge expands, individuals become more and more specialized: we've come to collectively know a great deal, but individually know very little (of the whole). Consequently, it's become all too easy to lose track of the big picture.

If we lose the big picture – if can’t see how our ideas and our actions fit into the larger scheme of things – we run the risk of solving the wrong problems precisely. We may be right in detail while our overall performance continues to decline. We may meet all our small goals and yet miss our big ones.

More specialization requires more coordination
Complex problems are, by their nature, multi-faceted, transdisciplinary, and involve many different stakeholders. If we are to 'see the whole system' we need the shared knowledge and collaborative creativity of many different people: people from different parts of the system, people with different expertise, different experiences, and different perspectives. Rather than competing for dominance, these different perspectives must be brought together into a coherent vision.

Broad engagement is key
Because we can't deal with complexity by ourselves, we must enlist as many minds and as many constituencies as possible. We must help people understand and feel part of the bigger-picture. We must convey the requisite complexity of the situation, strategy, or product without using technical jargon or assuming specialized knowledge.

Visual Methods to Deal with Specialization:

There is nothing inherently wrong with specialization in response to growing complexity, but there is always a larger picture that we must pay attention to. To insure that our individual specialties and our individual actions are contributing to the operation of the whole we must have some idea of what the whole looks like.

Visual modeling and facilitation can provide a place where different viewpoints can be brought together, acknowledged, challenged, reconciled, and integrated.

Clear and compelling communication is key to engaging the critical mass of people required to make real and sustainable progress on complex distributed problems. Coherent self-organized action is dependant the shared understanding and commitment that only effective communication can generate.