I recently discovered the term “job scanner.” It’s someone who has so many interests that they move from job to job, constantly exploring various interests. I love being the optimist; I like success stories. I love finding new ways of doing things and big ways to buck the system. And this is one concept… that I think is ripe for misuse and completely misguided. Frankly, I think this is a pretty dangerous idea.
For the record, I am one of these people with a zillion different interests. At any given time, I have one or two hobbies going on. Over the last ten years, I’ve run the Chicago triathlon, taken drawing classes at the School of the Art Institute of Chicago, taken improv classes at The Second City, taken piano lessons, a CPR class, and a master swimming class. I’ve discovered pilates, taught myself guitar basics, written a book, started my own business, gotten an MBA, skied a 60-degree chute, built a bathroom, a swingset, and nearly as many couch forts as I did when I was a kid. I invented the “dessert lasagna” (picture layers of blueberries, bananas, raspberries, and mascarpone between sheets of phyllo dough), completed every level of a couple of video games, read over 100 books, vacationed in Greece, Italy, France, Spain, England, and Mexico, visited Hong Kong, San Francisco, New York, New Orleans, Arizona, Florida, Washington, DC, Portland (Oregon), Omaha, LA, and Providence … and I’ve loved every minute of it. When Margaret Lobenstine writes about the Renaissance Soul, I get it. It’s me.
And generally speaking, I find the concept compelling.
Yet over the past seven years, despite changing employers in a continuous slide toward self-employment, and despite an active and ever-changing list of hobbies, I’ve managed to keep my career focused on a single goal. I’ve developed a set of skills by religiously building upon a single foundation. Especially when it comes to building careers, I think this subtlety is lost.Or maybe it’s sacrificed to the gods of whimsy and self-indulgence.
I’m starting to see and interact with a growing number of lost renaissance souls. More accurately, I’m starting to interact more with indecisive people who avoid dealing with their indecision by claiming to be renaissance souls. Aka scanners. They avoid recognizing the difference between flaking out and energetically pursuing multiple interests by putting the same clever title over both approaches to life. And maybe I’m getting ahead of myself, but when these two things are confused in relation to jobs (which they are), and then layered on top of a talent shortage (which we’ve got), I smell trouble. The flaky amongst us seem to be using the moniker “scanner” (especially now that the term is credible enough to merit a book unto itself) a little too carelessly. Or putting a little too much stock in an idea that is as half-baked as the people it refers to.
A jack of all trades, a master of none.
Everyone wants to be “an idea guy.” Guess what: good ideas are a dime a dozen. Want a good idea for a business? Call me and I’ll give you one. For free. Forever. Ideas have no value until someone commits to executing them. It’s enticing to want to overlook this little fact. It’s also the first step in a very costly, very common mistake.
To master nothing is to relegate yourself to the bullpen of life.
It’s easy to underestimate the skill required to truly master a subject, especially if you’re used to skimming the surface. I’ll never be a concert pianist, and I don’t care to be, so I’m content with basic lessons. But when it comes to work, I’d like the security of knowing that I can control my own destiny, so work like mad to be the best at what I do. Imagine this: I even focus on elements of my job that I don’t like so much, in order to be better at those areas that I do like to focus on! For instance, I don’t quite love doing executive assessments as much as I am crazy about speaking and training, but I know that it’s the combination of skills and stories I develop from assessing that make me good in front of a room, so rather than cut assessments out, I do them and work to be better at them than anyone. I do them with everything I’ve got. And I guard against this risk of flaking out by giving myself development goals that are milestone-based and devoid of arbitrary end dates. And I don’t quit until I achieve them.
The scanner’s career disadvantage.
There are already built-in career shifts as you progress in an organization–any organization, of any size, including entrepreneurial ones and one-person ones. These shifts occur once you start to master the functional requirements of a job. At that point, your focus shifts away from functional activities to more managerial and social ones; from there you move to more strategic and political realms. (And by political, I don’t mean Machiavelian… I mean engaged in the inevitable process of making trade-offs, which is required to align the interests of diverse group members, who despite their shared goal, differ wildly in their opinions about how to achieve it.) Anyone who has had to sell a piece of work to a client knows that building a widget is a far cry from selling one, and anyone who has ever made a major investment in a business knows that building a widget is also a far cry from anticipating the widget market three years down the road! Jumping from job to job to challenge yourself at the functional level prohibits you from leveraging your mastery to move to more social or strategic realms. Not that you should park yourself at one company and stay there, but job hopping every 2 years does have it’s price.
Here’s where the two different camps of renaissance souls start to split: the ones who get it hold onto an anchor–they develop some core skill that allows them to move out of the functional realm and into higher ones–while the flakier scanner-types simply bop from job to job without building an area of expertise. As I start to see more people job hop to satisfy their curiosity at functional levels, I can’t help wondering if they’re missing important opportunities to learn how to manage or lead. Actually, I don’t wonder. I know it; I know it because I’m often involved coaching executives who got promoted due to functional skills and who are suffering for want of social and strategic and political skills, and so I can picture scanners trying to run a business with relative ease: they’re the managers who think the big thoughts and then routinely underestimate how much time, energy, and manpower will be required to implement the idea. They’re the managers who get called to the carpet for missing their numbers and who then try to blame their subordinates for not being smart enough to figure out the details.From an organizational culture standpoint, scanners at high levels are toxic.
The scanner’s other career disadvantage.
Interestingly, they more they job hop, the more scanners reinforce their view of the world in terms of functional tasks only, and the more likely they become to underestimate the skill required to lead a diverse group. Their self-awareness suffers as a result; I’ve watched more than one person fall flat on their face because they confused mastery over a task with mastery of leading others in executing that task. I watched one person get herself fired by refusing to pay attention to the social aspects of her job, (she refused to believe her boss when he told her that the scathing emails she liked to send to subordinates were inappropriate), and another fail when he grossly overestimated his ability level… and attendant salary requirements. (He spent two years unemployed before taking a job with his brother-in-law.)
First gear is just that: first gear.
If you’re not careful and deliberate in your approach–if you don’t build a core set of skills–then moving too quickly from interest to interest can be sort of like falling in love with first gear and wanting to try it out on every make and model car you can find… One day, years from now, when you’re ready to drive 70 mph like all the other cars on the highway, will you kick yourself for never having had the patience to learn how to use the four higher ones?
Look, if you’ve got the energy of a Ferrari, then have at it, since first gear may be all you ever need. But if you look in the mirror and don’t see a Ferrari, be very careful about adopting the scanner approach to your career. Hobbies I don’t care about. Flit about to your heart’s content. But your life’s work is something else. It’s one of the ways in which you define yourself. It’s how you support not just yourself, but your family, too. Protect it. Avoid the temptation of slapping a fancy title on yourself and then using that title to excuse indecision.
People don’t buy half-built cars, half coded software, or half grown vegetables. Finishing is everything. Your ideas won’t have an ounce of value until you decide to do something with them, so don’t jump around until you see at least some of them through!
