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Roger Federer is arguably the greatest tennis player of all-time. During his career, he’s won 82% of his 1,500+ matches, 20 Grand Slam singles titles (tied for most all-time), and GQ Magazine even dubbed him “The Most Stylish Man” in 2016 (so there’s that).
What I didn’t know was that Federer played countless other sports—from soccer to squash and rugby—before getting serious about tennis. His story runs contrary to the “early specialization” approach of many aspiring professional tennis players (and parents).
I learned about Roger’s early experimentation listening to an episode of the podcast, ESPN Daily. It resonated with me, since I’ve been thinking a lot about skill building and career development.
In the marketing world, there’s this nagging set of problems we face when deciding where to focus our training: The playing field is always changing. The tools and platforms are always evolving. The audience is never exactly the same.
So what’s the best way to grow?
It turns out the answer might be to simply follow your curiosity.
Learn a little bit of everything before picking a lane and encourage your team to do the same.
- Take that Masterclass on gardening
- Sign up for the local Improv troupe
- Attend that design conference
You don’t always need to know how what you learn will help you do your job before you do it.
There’s exponential value in having a breadth of experiences—and there’s research to support it. Behavioral scientists Emye Soyer and Robin Hogarth talk about two types of learning environments in their book, The Myth of Experience.
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Kind: “Where [we] receive abundant, immediate, and accurate feedback on [our] actions and the rules of the game remain largely constant.” (So, like pretty much nothing in life).
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Wicked: “Where our experience is constantly subject to a variety of filters and distortions.” (That’s a little more like it, but could be misleading).
Since Kind environments don’t reflect reality, and Wicked environments distort it, what’s a learner to do? A little bit of everything.
While there is a case for specializing in a “thing” (show me a printer/scanner/fax machine that’s better at printing than just the “printer”), there’s also an undeniable advantage to experiencing a wide-variety of decision making scenarios.
The last thing I expected when listening to a podcast about sports—something I love—was to draw a connection to “learning and development” or “the marketing industry.”
But as it turns out, curiosity is often the perfect conduit for learning.
~ From Brent, and The Team at Clique
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