Kind Polymaths

The brilliant Jill Chase, when she was on the board of /dev/agents, came to meet the team one day and remarked to me, "You have a team of all kind polymaths." This phrase really stuck with me, and the more I think about it, the more I grow to appreciate it. It concisely captures all of the most important traits I look for in teammates. It's only two words, but it's all in there.

"Kind" seems very obvious. Who doesn't want to work with nice people? But kindness and niceness are not the same thing. Kindness is treating people with genuine care. It might be nice to avoid telling someone directly that they are failing at their job, but it isn't kind. A truly kind person will tell you you're blowing it and you'll be able to accept it because you can tell they are doing it out of a desire to see you succeed.

To me a polymath is someone who is interested in a lot of things and does something about it.

They are, of course, smart. Polymaths are often people who are endowed with so much mental horsepower that, like a working dog, they must keep their brain occupied with a job at all times to keep it from chewing up the furniture.

They are the right balance of humble and confident. Polymaths are by definition curious people. Curious people are by definition incapable of believing they have it all figured out. But the serially curious know from experience that anything can be learned. Each new field you learn is a little less scary than the previous one. If you're doing anything interesting, you will be entering unknown territory, and you want to do it with people who both respect the unknown and know how to move through it.

Polymaths make terrific teachers. The most common way to learn something new is by way of analogy: seeing the new thing in terms of something you already understand. Who has a bigger library of analogies to draw from than someone who has immersed themselves in several disparate fields?

Lastly, this ability to analogize from far and wide is rocket fuel for invention. Polymaths can see connections that are not obvious to single-domain experts. Of course you think about designers and engineers here, but polymaths are found everywhere. They are mathematicians who can reformulate an old problem in order to unlock a different set of tools. They are lawyers who can turn a seemingly unrelated case into the foundation of a winning argument. Polymaths are the best in their field precisely because they don't confine themselves to their field.

It really is that simple. Smart and curious people who want to see each other succeed can do almost anything.