Range: Why Generalists Triumph in a Specialized World

The Generalist Edge: Happy Accidents, Outward Focus & Selling Before You Build

He started two companies - Raleigh Group International and Elsenor Technologies - on $2,500 and a business plan that said "We're smart guys. We'll figure something out." Most people have an idea and then start a company. He started a company and then looked for the idea. The most important thing you can do in anything is put yourself in play.

Happy accidents are a strategy. You bump into the people who buy your company at trade shows, at conferences, in hallways. The way you increase the probability of happy accidents is by having an outward focus - knowing more people, being in more rooms, being curious about more things. Most people are too insular. They don't know enough people.

The CEO's job is sales. Not making sure the copy machine works. Not managing costs. The job is outward: finding clients, building partnerships, doing deals. Lou Mobly - who founded the IBM Executive School - put it simply: managers get things done. Leaders decide the things worth doing in the first place. If you're doing the wrong thing, you should be less efficient. You don't want to get it done. The distinction matters: manage inward, lead outward.

Rockefeller's rolodex. David Rockefeller, CEO of Chase Manhattan Bank, was asked the secret to his success. He picked up his rolodex - 500 cards. "This is the secret." It's who you know. Everything in life is who you know. The job of leadership is to provide the why so that other people can come up with the whats and the hows.

Your product becomes a feature. What puts technology companies out of business is not their direct competition - it's someone figuring out how to turn your product into a feature in a larger product. Da Vinci Systems built email. Microsoft made email a feature in Office. Lotus 123, WordPerfect, WordStar - all gone. This is why you have to constantly ask: what is the bigger thing that makes mine just a subset? Aim past the target.

Generalists connect dots specialists can't. His office bookshelf had no business books. He used philosophy, spirituality, and psychology to solve business problems - because those are the bigger frameworks. Creativity is a function of analogy. The more raw material you have crashing together in your head, the better your analogies become. He closed a deal with a hard-nosed Turkish executive by asking about Suleiman the Magnificent. The man had been in America 30 years and had never met an American who knew anything about it. "I will do business with you." You need general knowledge because a butterfly waving its wings in Africa might put you out of business.

Sell the MVP before you build it. Advertise a pre-market version. If enough people buy it, build it. If not, don't. Dollar votes only. People will say they'll buy anything on a phone call - but cash changes the conversation. UPI went bankrupt three times because executives kept building and hoping they'd come. Action bias is the alternative: get off your ass and find out if there's a market before you build the product.

Decision-making is a learnable skill. You build your gut by making decisions, tracking them, finding out if you were right, correcting when you were wrong, and repeating. Little by little you groove it in. He didn't set out to be rich - he set out to be wise. Because once you're wise, all the other decisions follow. Wisdom is the Swiss Army knife. Start there.