Are you a Specialist or a Problem Solver?
Defining and measuring the true value of your work in a company.
At some point your parents probably told you, “To be successful you should learn a practical skill. That’s valuable.” Therefore, they wanted you to study medicine or something of that nature.
Sorry parents. That’s not how it works anymore. From our work studying the increasingly automated and digital marketplace for work, it’s no longer obvious that one skill will make you a winner for life. In the tech-economy era, how do you figure out your value within a company, a market, or a country’s economy?
Defining your value is a broad personal project, and while there are many questions you can ask yourself to assess, here we’re dissecting one specific question, “Within my organization, am I the Specialist or the Problem Solver? How do you tell the difference between the two? “
The Specialist
As the name suggests, the interest of the Specialist is usually in a specific technologies or task (e.g. cybersecurity/API’s/Data Analysis). Their professional development strategy tends to be “go deep” rather than “go wide”. You’re a Specialist if you answer yes to the following questions:
- Am I the go-to person for this technology or task?
- Do I love doing this thing so much that I want to be the best in the world in it?
- Compared to the average person in the market who does this, can I perform at a 10x magnitude of speed, accuracy, and quality? In other words, am I capable of doing what the average person does in my sleep?
Once you identify yourself as a Specialist, the follow-up question becomes, “How do I get paid more in the marketplace for work? What companies, industries, or regions need this task to be performed exceptionally well, often enough that it that it will sustain my desired income and provide a career path?”
The sustainability of your salary depends on two factors: the technology you’re specialized in and whether your area of expertise is in alignment with the market. How good you are compared to the next Specialist matters a lot less. Then, what scales your salary within your work-market is the level of difficulty of your skill-set. Meaning, if it’s scarce and hard to learn, you’ll be able to increase your price. For example, if all of Kenya’s banks need to automate credit scoring, financial-data expert in Kenya, you’ll get a premium on your work.
It’s less about how good you are and more about how rare you are.
If you’re considering this option, keep in mind, Specialists tend to exist in bigger corporations rather than startups. In their infancy, startups can’t afford people with such a high level of specific expertise. Startups can grow Specialists, but are unlikely to buy them.
The Problem Solver
Sheryl Sandberg describes a textbook Problem Solver in her book, “Lean In”. Lori Goler called Sheryl about a month after the former had joined Facebook and cut straight to the chase, “I want to apply to work with you at Facebook. So I thought about calling you and telling you all of the things I’m good at and all of the things I like to do. Then I figured that everyone was doing that. So instead, I want to ask you: What is your biggest problem, and how can I solve it?”
You’re a Problem Solver if you answer yes to the following questions:
- Do I have an eye for spotting problems and gaps in diverse system, like a business or product, far earlier than others?
- Can I figure out the exact nature of that problem, build a solution to a high degree of quality, and ship it to the market?
- Do I have the required social skills to connect with other key players whose knowledge might be needed during the problem-solving process?
There are pros and cons to being a Problem Solver. On one hand, Problem Solvers tend to write their own job descriptions, and come as a blessing to hands-off managers who say, “I have this problem. Just make it disappear.” Several CEO’s have told us they higher leaders for this exact reason: “They just solve it, I only hear about the results.”
However, they might find work very difficult under toxic leaders who have a greater tendency to micro-manage. This happens because, even if they do end up solving a problem in the end, micro-managers might find the way they solve problems nebulous or not in line with their idea of how things should be done. It’s also a problem if the person hiring you already knows what they need to build or execute.
Let’s illustrate the difference. A lawyer is usually a Specialist. They are given a lawsuit case and told to win it. A Problem-Solver might come up with a product change or marketing campaign that solves the problem. Their not a marketing expert, but they resolved the lawsuit.
If you’re a problem solver, it’s important that you’re very picky about the environment you work in.
What drives value for the problem solver is the type of problems you can solve. This is usually based on a portfolio or set of case studies with a thematic connection between them. You need to demonstrate how much value you create for organizations in terms of concrete outcomes like lower cost or risk, or increased revenue and faster growth. What scales your salary is creating larger direct outcomes.
As a final word, it’s important to understand there’s room for both types of people in the market, and both can build their career so their salaries scale with their experience or portfolio.
So which are you? Are you a Specialist or are you a Problem Solver? Need help choosing? Get in touch.
Authors
Ibanga Umanah is a Cofounder and the Head of Strategy for Brave Venture Labs. Brave is a people science company uncovering the drivers of performance for better recruiting and talent management.
Amina Islam has a Ph.D. in engineering and is currently putting her skills and academic background into doing evidence-based research on the impact of informal learning programs.
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