Hedgehogs and Foxes: The Power of Diverse Teams

“A fox knows many things, but a hedgehog knows one big thing.”

There are several dimensions to how organisations and teams can be diverse ¹ and ways in which diversity can strengthen the problem-solving and creativity of teams and organisations. Here the focus is on the difference between generalists and specialists.

It is perhaps accepted wisdom that you need to be a specialist to succeed; to identify a niche or narrow field of knowledge and become a recognised expert. In his book, Range: How Generalists Triumph in a Specialized World (2020), David Epstein argues that while specialists are clearly necessary, particularly in technical contexts, there is also an important role for generalists in a world that is “unkind” or “wicked” in the sense of being unpredictable, subject to rapid and continual change.

Specialists thrive where boundaries are clearly defined, and repeated experience is beneficial. Epstein gives the examples of chess masters and firefighters, whose domains, though challenging, are “kind” learning environments in the sense that patterns of events repeat and are predictable. We rely on specialists every day to get it right, to provide accurate advice, to make the correct decision, but when it comes to “wicked” domains, where the rules are not established, specialists may be at a disadvantage.

Generalists know relatively little about a lot, have a broad range of skills and experience. They tend to be curious and can transfer their knowledge and experience between disciplines, applying concepts from one domain to solve a problem in another, unrelated field. Generalists can see problems in the abstract, releasing them from their conventional, contextual straitjackets. Making (unexpected) connections through analogical thinking is the secret to the generalist’s power to solve problems. Introducing ideas from non-related contexts, outside of the team’s comfort zone, will help it come up with better answers in an unpredictable world.

Isaiah Berlin’s influential 1953 essay on Tolstoy’s view of history, “The Hedgehog and the Fox”, was inspired by a fragment from the Greek poet Archilochus, “A fox knows many things, but a hedgehog knows one big thing”. Berlin speculates that, taken figuratively, these “words can be made to yield a sense in which they mark one of the deepest differences which divide writers and thinkers, and, it may be, human beings in general”.

In his 20-year study of the accuracy of the geopolitical forecasts of almost 300 experts, psychologist Philip Tetlock drew on Berlin’s essay, distinguishing between two types or sub-groups: ‘hedgehogs’, who know one big thing, and ‘foxes’, who know many little things and integrate them. Tetlock found it was the foxes who are more likely to be correct in their predictions, although as Daniel Kahneman points out in Thinking Fast and Slow (2012), these predictions were still largely inaccurate (it is a challenging thing to predict the future).

Kahneman elaborates on the distinction of types. As a hedgehog “acquires more knowledge, they develop an enhanced illusion of their skill and become unrealistically overconfident”. Accounting for events within a coherent framework, they are “especially reluctant to admit error”. In contrast, ‘foxes’ “recognise that reality emerges from the interactions of many different agents and forces”.

Hedgehogs (by analogy, specialists) do one thing very well, and tend to want to bend reality to fit their experience and hard-won expertise. Foxes (generalists) have a broader understanding of multiple disciplines, tend to be more curious, more open to ambiguity and ready to listen to counterarguments.

Faced with the uncertainty of today’s wicked world, it is important that teams, particularly those working in technical contexts, have a mix of hedgehogs and foxes, specialists and generalists. Innovation and problem-solving happen when teams include individuals with diverse backgrounds, bringing wider perspectives, from within and outside the norm. Diverse teams can apply the vertical thinking of their specialists, working within the detail of the core technical framework to address more familiar problems, while availing of the lateral thinking of their generalists for the unexpected.

Working with technical teams, generalists tend to be ‘outsiders’ in that they are not initiates in the core discipline(s). However, as Epstein argues, generalists can have the “outsider advantage”, bringing new perspectives and techniques to what seem intractable problems to insiders. Insider hedgehogs tend to focus on what they already know within their discipline, industry, or profession, being invested in their specialist knowledge and attached to tools and techniques with which they are comfortable and familiar. When teams are faced with unfamiliar problems, such attachments can lead to disaster. For example, the Space Shuttle Challenger Disaster in 1986, in which the lives of all seven crewmembers were lost, discussed by Epstein in a chapter titled “Learning to Drop Your Familiar Tools”.

Challenger disintegrated 73 seconds after launch due to a damaged ‘O-ring seal’ in one of its solid rocket boosters which failed to contain pressurised burning gas. Engineers from a contractor company outside of the NASA organisation had spotted an unfamiliar problem with the O-ring seals and asked NASA to postpone the launch based on their qualitative opinion. However, NASA refused the request because the outside engineers could not quantify their opinion – it did not fit with the quantitative tools and techniques of NASA’s established culture. Faced with an unfamiliar situation, rather than adapting, the NASA team behaved like a collective hedgehog and tried to bend the problem to the one they had experienced before.

To deal with the unexpected and unpredictable, to drop familiar tools when necessary and adopt new approaches, while also excelling at the core purpose of the organisation, its ‘business as usual’, teams need specialists and generalists, insiders and outsiders, hedgehogs and foxes. And while congruence has been the hallmark of effective organisations, where all are aligned with vision, goals and leadership, a level of incongruence, of ambiguity, is also healthy to counter the less beneficial effects of conformity, such as ‘groupthink’, or applying old tools to new problems, failing to adapt. An effective problem-solving culture balances standard practice with different perspectives, knowledge and experiences. Diverse teams of specialists and generalists (or of individuals who can combine and balance these traits) will expand the range of organisations to cope with today’s wicked world.

Michael Diviney
Executive Head of Thought Leadership