That sentence is often uttered by insecure blowhards with small d*ck energy. But it’s also a trap which perfectly well-meaning experts risk falling into when they’re caught (embarrassingly) off-guard.

And it’s understandable.

Imagine spending hundreds of thousands of dollars on a top-tier education, then working your entire career to become an expert in your field, only to have some random chick with very little understanding of your complex engineering discipline walk into a meeting and solve an unsolvable problem.

And as the random chick in this story — no one was more surprised than I was.

👉 Don’t assume the experts have all the answers.

👉 The best solutions often come from people outside of the field.

👉 If you’re a generalist, own it. Your ability to think laterally is truly badass.

And now — the story behind why this advice matters. 👇

Fun fact— 

Hospital deaths decrease in the weeks when cardiologists are all away at big national conferences.

You read that right. When the heart doctors are not around to do their heart doctoring, fewer patients die of heart-related issues.

I can’t think of a more poignant example of the dangers of over-specialized thinking.

When heart surgeons are present in the hospital eco-system, they tend to overdo interventions, eager to showcase the skills they’ve worked so hard to develop. And to give them credit, I imagine their eagerness is also tied to a sincere desire to help people. 

But when they’re absent, general practitioners take over, opt for less invasive treatments, and —surprise!— more people survive.

Researcher David Epstein breaks this down beautifully in his book Range: Why Generalists Triumph In A Specialized World (which was probably the most validating read of my entire life). The book explains why people who “think relationally” —meaning they’re able to blend ideas across disciplines— tend to make better decisions than hyper-specialists, who drown in their own expertise.

And no one blended ideas across disciplines better than the OG polymath, Leonardo da Vinci. That guy spent years dissecting corpses (probably left behind by those cardiologists) to understand human musculature.

Kind of an unsettling hobby.

But this is why his paintings boasted next-level realism. While other artists were studying, ya know, art, da Vinci was studying anatomy, physics, mechanics, and hydrodynamics. He famously studied mathematics with Luca Pacioli to better construct believable three-dimensional spaces, and organize compositions. He obsessed over gears, levers, balance, and motion to form an understanding of how bodies move under force.

This is what relational thinking does. It lets you borrow wisdom from one field and apply it somewhere unexpected.

Let me be clear—

I’ve never treated a cardiology patient or dissected a corpse to test the limits of my own relational thinking. But I did save a project millions of dollars by stepping into the shoes of an engineer.

One of the most exciting ventures I’ve ever had the pleasure of working on was the redevelopment of Manhattan’s Seaport District and Pier 17, following the destruction of Hurricane Sandy.

And the jewel in the crown of this iconic redevelopment is Pier 17’s rooftop.

The rooftop is a transcendent 65,000 square foot space, sitting five stories high and jutting 300 feet into the East River, with dramatic views of lower Manhattan and the Brooklyn Bridge. It’s a breathtaking venue.

The rooftop was thoughtfully designed to be activated seasonally with concerts, events, and even ice skating. To achieve this, the roof itself is buttressed by an invisible grid of support beams, with each “square” in the grid engineered to sustain a certain amount of weight. So anything that gets built on the roof needs to comply with the weight restrictions on each little square.

Easy peasy, right?

The year was 2017, construction on the pier building was nearing completion, and it was time to move on to the fun stuff — the seasonal rooftop activations.

Award-winning architects had spent months designing the winter activation. The engineers had spent months figuring out how to build it. And it was only then, after the design had been finalized, construction methods had been decided, and materials had been sourced, that we discovered we were overweight on one of our grid squares.

Shit.

Our problem was simple, but the solution was not. The square that was overweight had two hugely heavy things positioned on it:

Both were non-negotiable items. 

The chiller was powering an ice skating rink, and heavy ballasts were required to weigh down our buildings because we were on a windy roof in the middle of the East River.

Efforts to deploy small redesigns to address the problem all resulted in chain-reactions that caused crucial elements to… well… fall off the building. The rooftop was packed with stuff. And it was stuff that we needed.

So the engineering team, bless their overly-specialized hearts, felt there was only one solution— 

Rip up months of planning, and redesign the entire damn project. 

That solution would literally cost millions, and we’d be precariously close to missing critical deadlines. And for the dozen people in the room, who had all committed so much time and talent to this project, it was a depressing blow.

As we took a moment of collective self-pity, I had a spontaneous thought. Before my brain could run that thought through my internal filtering system, my mouth jumped in, and I blurted out:

I explained that the chiller was definitely heavy enough to hold down the building. Plus, it would be enclosed in a steel cage, so it had plenty of places we could tether the building to without touching the mechanics of the unit.

Certainly this was an avenue we could explore?

The room went quiet. I could feel my face getting hot. Oh shit. Had I crossed a line?

The lead engineer finally spoke:

“That won’t work.”

Up until this point, I had truly enjoyed working with him and his team. They weren’t assholes or anything. They had my respect, and I theirs, or so I believed. So when he simply dismissed my idea without explaining why it wouldn’t work, I sat back in my chair, and decided to shut the f*ck up. Because clearly I had embarrassed myself.

So I was stunned when the VP of Development, (the buck-stops-with-him-decision-maker in the room), intervened. He said “Try Kristin’s idea”. Then he stood up and walked out of the room, completely shutting down the possibility of a debate.

Everyone just sort of… blinked.

And just like that, my little idea got a shot.

We had our directive to explore the idea, but the engineers continued to battle me. Their egos were broken.

When the math proved my theory to be plausible, they shifted their attention to the vendor providing the chillers, claiming that the company would never allow us to adapt their equipment to our weird use case.

But I had been personally working with that company for years, and they valued their relationship with me. (I gave them a shit-ton of business.) So when I explained the situation we were in, they were eager to be part of our solution, and even offered to help us test it.

And it worked — flawlessly.

The engineers were forced to adopt a solution from a non-engineer. Because it had been proven, without question, to be the best plan.

As we moved into construction, and implemented my plan, nobody ever said, “Hey, you were right!”. But it still felt great to see everything work out.

Specialists are have indisputable depth in their field, but that depth can make them blind to alternative solutions. That’s why it’s important to mix in a generalist. Generalists can connect dots across disciplines, and come up with solutions specialists miss.

The world needs both. 

Cheers! 🍻

-Kristin :-)

P.S. — I don’t just write Drunk Business Advice — I bring it to life on stage. And I’d love to speak at your next event. Hit reply or click here to learn more.