A Troubadour Walks Into a Bar…
by Peter Bruinsma
A troubadour walks into a bar and sits down next to a crafty looking guy wearing all black.
What, you are a blacksmith? Cool! Wow! That’s interesting. How do you get into that? Are there a lot of blacksmiths? What, 3? Wow. Are you guys friends or competition? Can I get you another drink? You make your own tools too? How did you bootstrap? Do you get a lot of clients? What’s the most unusual thing you’ve ever been requested to make? What does the future look like for blacksmiths? Etc.
I could have a conversation going on for hours with this guy. I might share a bunch of tangential things, covering my knowledge of the blacksmith trade, blacksmithology, how being a blacksmith is the same as being a software developer and discuss the bright future for blacksmiths in a post-crash de-industrialized society. I will feel like an impostor but I’m having a good time and we part, each with new ideas.
Hi, I’m Peter. I’m a generalist. So goes my new story. I’m at a junction in my career. Some days, it feels like I just woke up in a coffin in Tijuana, scratching my way to the surface with my fingernails. On other days, I think about my CV and dream of being Consultant for the preparation of a new biodiversity / sustainable land project for South Sudan, or Independent Advisor to a United Nations Senior Liaison.
I wonder, what do generalists produce? What do they practice? What do they do? Besides make good conversation at a bar.
Throughout my professional career I have witnessed the value and importance of specialization, building skills, mastering them, becoming an expert and achieving recognition (certification, degrees and LinkedIn recommendations). Now, more than ever, I’m realizing that in today’s employment market, having a very specific and often narrow skill set backed up by years of experience and accomplishments is a fundamental requirement for getting a foot in. And if you haven’t played the game, tough luck!
Today, everybody seems to be looking for a rock star, or wants to be one. The truth is though, rock stars are in limited supply. For most, even a life long commitment may not result in mastery, rock star status. That’s what I tell myself at least. But at job interviews it seems that one is expected to audition as a rock star anyway.
It’s at this point that I realize that I’m not a specialist at all, contrary to claims on my CV. I do not possess encyclopedic knowledge of any single topic, field, technology, art or craft. Neither have I achieved sufficient mechanical or available knowledge to practice any particular task, process, art or craft without relying on an external source for lookup, inspiration or support.
Instead, I get by. I figure it out. I familiarize myself with new things as wanted or needed and I’m always on the steeper end of a learning curve, rarely on the plateau. I get along with people. I find my way in systems. I even get things done.
I don’t want to be a rock star. I want to be a troubadour!
According to Wikipedia, there are eleven theories of what a Troubadour is. It’s kind of like asking eleven different people what a consultant does and you’d get eleven different answers.
Troubadour comes from trobar, to compose, to discuss, to invent and signifies originality, as opposed to joglar (juggler) who is a performer of very specific skills.
A troubadour often stayed with a noble patron of his own and entertained his court with his songs. Court songs could be used not only as entertainment but also as propaganda, praising the patron, mocking his enemies, encouraging his wars, teaching ethics and etiquette, and maintaining religious unity.
Surely, the troubadour position seems like a cocktail of marketing, PR and consulting. The consultant’s songs can be used as entertainment or propaganda and marketing’s poems can likewise be very entertaining.
Let’s not get confused about what a juggler is. We often say we are keeping many balls in the air. The balls are not the skills, they are just balls. The skill is to keep the balls in the air. It’s just one trick really. All it takes is practice, dedication, or being a woman. There is a reason a juggler is a juggler and not a troubadour. It’s the difference between being a composer and a performer. If you really need an underwater juggling welder, you really need one who won’t drop a ball. In that case, I may not be your man.
So now I’ve established that I don’t want to be a rock star or a juggler, but rather a troubadour type person, an inventor, communicator, commenter, one who makes up things for various purposes. The question is, how do I sell that?! The last time someone was looking for a troubadour was around the middle ages. I would be dating myself and that’s not a good start. I’ll have to employ language and do a little reframing around my skills.
“I’m a troubadour and I can juggle three balls on demand. Successfully juggled three swords once and had a positive impact.”
It’s a start.
So let’s look a little closer at Skills (You keep using that word! I do not think it means what you think it means!). To me, skills are roughly equivalent to interests. If it’s not a skill now, it will be one sooner or later, since I’m interested! How does it matter whether I have done X. I could learn X, on demand!
I have a sense, however, that it may be practical to make sure that my interpretation corresponds with that of the rest of the world (Wikipedia).
A skill is the learned ability to carry out a task with pre-determined results often within a given amount of time, energy, or both.
There you have it, constraints, granularity, expectations! And you have to already have the ability, on hand!
There are labor skills, soft skills, hard skills, people skills, social skills, communication skills, animal skills (I just threw that last one in there) and there has been a lot of deskilling. What a can of worms.
I’m slowly making progress towards a new CV, but too slowly. What I’ve got is, “troubadour” and a bunch of homework.
In the mean time, if you’re doing something interesting and important in or for Africa, I’d love to discuss with you at the bar (or on Twitter).
Read Part 2
