The Da Vinci Curse and the Transformations of Work
You may wonder what Da Vinci has to do with the transformations of work. A lot, in fact. I borrowed the phrase from the title of a book by Leonardo Lospennato: The Da Vinci Curse: Life Design for people with too many interests and talents, which deals with people with multiple talents.
The symptoms described by Lospennato seem eerily familiar to many of us and are increasingly widespread: multiple (sometimes contradictory) interests, bursts of enthusiasm that soon fade, and the feeling that we are not really doing anything — at least not seriously. People with multiple passions often think they need to “grow up” and find their “true calling”—that is, some profession that they’re going to stick with for the rest of their lives. Most often they don’t find it and blame themselves for not finding it.
The point I’d like to make (along with Leonardo and a few others I’ll mention) is that these people aren’t really cursed. They’re evidence, instead, that we’re in between paradigms. Those cursed people are in fact pioneers showing us the way to the future of work.
It’s wasn’t a curse for Da Vinci
One of the words often used to describe Da Vinci is the word polymath, which refers to “a person whose expertise spans a large number of different subjects” (Wikipedia). Polymaths can draw on complex and varied bodies of knowledge to solve problems. They develop intersections between different bodies of knowledge.
It wasn’t a problem for Da Vinci because he was part of a small elite of “Renaissance Men” who had access to books and could spend time with fellow erudite geniuses. Most great men from the Renaissance and Enlightenment excelled at several fields in science and the arts. Da Vinci’s areas of interest included: painting, sculpting, architecture, music, science, mathematics, engineering, geology, poetry, literature, cartography, etc. He has been called the father of paleontology and has been credited with many inventions, among which the helicopter.
There was no barrier between subjects as these had not yet been solidified in rigid academies. Da Vinci’s insanely high level of creativity had an impact on what would become many separate disciplines.
Then hyper-specialisation happened
For at least two centuries, the academic world has encouraged and generated a hyper-specialisation of all subjects with little cross-fertilization. Polymaths aren’t promoted … nor can they freely express their multiple talents.
Likewise in companies and the professions, specialisation has been an unstoppable trend. Richard and Daniel Susskind wrote about it in The Future of the Professions. Professional expertise (such as law or accounting) was developed to justify erecting regulatory barriers to protect the exclusive rights of professional bodies against potential competition. Professionals often discourage the recipients of their services from investigating their problems for themselves. “Our professions, as presently organised, discourage self-help, self-discovery, and self-reliance”, the Susskinds write in their book.
For the most part, workers have accepted specialisation, either by pursuing mastery in one field (and being fine with it) or by pursuing another passion in the form of a hobby ‘on the side’. Accepting it meant they had one defined place in their organisation, a clearly defined professional identity, a linear career. Other interests could only be pursued privately in a different space and time, as amateurs.
Why the Da Vinci curse? (Is it really a curse?)
Many books, TED talks, articles deal with that exact same subject. They deal with a growing malaise and mismatch between people with multiple talents and the organisations that could employ them—and society at large. Different phrases are used to describe the “curse”: for example, Emilie Wapnick calls people with multiple talents multipotentialites. In her TED talk, she made the case for multipotentialites and their creativity. “Why some of us don’t have a true calling”. “Your unique mix of interests may turn out to be your very own super power”.
Another expression is a very old English expression, “Jack of all trades, master of none”, used in reference to a person that has many skills, but spends so much time learning each new skill that he/she cannot become an expert in any particular one. This expression was used as early as during Elizabethan times, with a negative connotation, by Robert Greene to refer to William Shakespeare!
A few days ago a blogger called Jon Westenberg used it when he titled his blogpost “I want to be a Jack of all trades”. Like Emilie Wapnick in her talk, he tries to highlight the high value of versatile people—there’s another word for them!
The opposition between full mastery in one subject and interest in many subjects isn’t new. Those who aren’t specialised are generally accused of being superficial. They are relentlessly attacked and disparaged. They’re accused of flitting mindlessly from one thing to the next, of being disloyal, of being superficial dilettantes or amateurs. Notice how both words are also used as insults. You dilettante! You amateur! With a scornful tone…
So it IS a curse only in so far as the Da Vincis aren’t always welcome or appreciated. It doesn’t make their lives easy.
The Da Vinci curse is evidence of a change of paradigm
A change of paradigm? That’s the subject of Frederic Laloux’s Reinventing Organizations.
Laloux matches “levels of consciousness” with types of organisations. More people are frustrated with their work because they are in between two paradigms:
- Between “Conformist-Amber” and “Achievement-Orange” for example: the “conformist” paradigm gives people a fixed place but doesn’t allow ambition and mobility, while the “achievement” paradigm pushes people to pursue money and prestige. Achievers stuck in a “conformist” administration are miserable. Having multiple talents in an organization that operates from an Amber paradigm can definitely be a “curse”.
- Between “Achievement-Orange” and “Pluralistic-Green” for example: the Orange paradigm focuses on money and career, while the green one leads one to question whether there isn’t more to life than the pursuit of a career. “Multipotentialites” who seek well-being rather than success are a mismatch for Orange organizations.
The Reckoning
More of the Da Vinci “cursed” speak out today. They may be showing the way to the next paradigm.
Here are at least six major changes that have been affecting the way we define work and ushering in a new paradigm.
1. The lines are increasingly blurred between professionals and amateurs. Because of new digital platforms, taxi drivers are “threatened” by Uber drivers, hotel professionals by Airbnb hosts. For more than a decade, journalists have been threatened by amateur writers and bloggers. It’s still hard to say on which side the higher quality is (sometimes on the amateur side).
Increasingly ALL professionals are affected by the arrival of new competition from non professionals. Sometimes the competition is all the more dangerous and “unfair” as the competitors don’t even expect to get paid! Because they’re not “working”. In the world of encyclopedias, Wikipedia killed Britannica.
2. All the specialised knowledge is available online. People can’t be expected to refrain from seeking access to that information. Doctors see patients who’ve already googled their symptoms. Sometimes patients just want the prescription they’re not allowed to write themselves. (Now I’m not saying this would be safe. Barriers here are also meant to protect patients.)
3. The world of education has been transformed. You still “validate” an education programme with a degree, which serves as a “signal” for recruiters. But increasingly many new students, often in emerging countries, take courses online and learn a computer language without the “validation” of a degree.
New schools are created that target people who hope to change careers. There are many coding academies in Paris, London and Berlin. One such school, established in Paris, just recently opened shop in London: Le Wagon.
4. The firm that gave people a fixed place is being shaken. Ronald Coase, Nobel-prize in economics, explained that the firm was created because of high transaction costs. It made economic sense to internalise these transactions.
Before him the classic economists like Adam Smith and David Ricardo had made a case for division of labour. Ricardo’s theory of comparative advantage is a theory about the work gains from trade to individuals, firms or nations that arise from differences in their factor endowments, i.e. their specialisation. It all led to modern Taylorism, and greater Taylorism…
This all worked in the industrial age. Today it’s less relevant because transaction costs are down with digital. So it’s now often cheaper for a company to have freelancers do the work. Every day there are more independent workers and new models that “deconstruct” the firm. Entrepreneurs seek and encourage “cross-fertilisation” to foster innovation.
5. Expert knowledge gets obsolete increasingly fast. A lot of tomorrow’s jobs don’t exist yet: they will require skills and knowledge that can’t yet be taught. In the field of computer science, there is no knowing what computer languages will be used tomorrow.
Increasingly, it makes more sense to develop one’s cognitive abilities, generic rather than specific skills. Our cognitive abilities can be developed in lots of different ways. Rather than specific knowledge, what will matter more is our ability to develop a growth mindset rather than a fixed mindset. The Da Vincis are very familiar with the growth mindset!
“While we cannot predict precisely what workers of the future will be doing — what future wants and needs workers will be satisfying — we can predict some things about how they will be doing it. Work will take on an experimental, trial-and-error character, and will take place in an environment of rich feedback, self-correction, adaptation, ongoing improvement, and continuous learning. The social order surrounding work will be a much more fluid descendant of today’s secure but stifling paycheck world on the one hand, and liberating but precarious world of free agency and contingent labor on the other.” (From Venkatesh Rao’s Breaking Smart)
6. Artificial intelligence and automation are unstoppable trends: day after day there are new tasks that can be automated. It used to be that only very repetitive unqualified jobs could be performed by machines. Now all kinds of qualified so-called ‘intellectual’ jobs are affected as well. Will we still have to “work” in 10 years?
The development of automation questions the very nature of work. Some pessimists believe it will make most workers completely redundant in the near future. Some argue revenues should therefore be separated from work: they claim we should opt for a universal basic income.
Conclusion
The way we work is being transformed like never before: the rise of amateurs, the blurring of all lines between work and leisure, automation and artificial intelligence doing better work than humans.
The questions that worry us are: how do we define our identity and make a living? Should we now separate identity building and livelihood?
The Da Vinci curse is not really a curse, but only the visible sign of a profound paradigm shift. The “cursed” are pioneers showing everyone else the way. They’re makers and hackers who question the old paradigms. They’re artists who’ve found a different solution to the identity/ livelihood equation.
They’re slashers and freelancers who don’t have a boss. Or they bring their multiple talents to work with new jobs that they “craft” themselves. The future of work belongs to the hybrid workers who can combine things the way Da Vinci did. Really, it’s not a curse, it’s a super-power.
“Twenty years from now you will be more disappointed by the things you did not do than by the ones you did.” (Mark Twain)
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