Obsessing over specializing in tactics is like being an obelisk. An Obelisk is tall, impressive, but narrow. It looks solid, until it gets knocked sidealks.
When you think about getting better at what you do, do you default to the visible layer, tools, outputs, or execution? Do you think in terms of what skill you need to learn next or how to improve what you are already doing? Most of the time, that thinking is already pointed in the wrong direction. The tendency is to focus on specializing in tactics, tools, technology, and software. But tactics do not expand your opportunities, especially when they become obsolete or automated. They do not expand your vision or your understanding of how things actually work. They keep you operating within what you already know. Learning does something different. Especially when it is broad and diverse, it expands what is even possible. That shift was a huge unlock for me.
The way this actually works is that you start with the fundamentals. Not the tools, not the medium, not the execution layer, but the underlying principles that govern how something works in the first place. If you take design as an example, the fundamentals of good design are not specific to graphic design, web design, or product design. Fundamentals apply across all of it. What changes is the context in which those fundamentals are applied, not the fundamentals themselves. Then, layers of specialization are added on top to create expertise in distinct schools of design. Then tactics and tools. This is how you go from a hobbyist to an expert.
More Thinking, Less Doing
That idea shows up in brand consciousness as well: the difference between reacting at the surface level and actually understanding what’s shaping perception beneath the surface. Without that layer, everything stays tactical. With it, your work starts to become directional.
What tends to happen instead is that people skip that step entirely. They learn how to use the tools, how to produce within a specific lane, and get good enough at it to function. Over time, that turns into a capability stack that is narrow and vertical. There is depth there, but it is confined to a limited context, and that limitation becomes more obvious the moment they are forced to operate outside of it.
There’s a phrase people like to repeat in defense of specialization—a jack of all trades, a master of none. It’s usually used as a warning, a way of saying you should stay in your lane and go deeper rather than broader.
But that’s not the full quote.
A jack of all trades is a master of none, but oftentimes better than a master of one.
(source)
The part people leave out is the part that actually matters.
To Solve Real Problems
When your understanding is confined to a single lane, your ability to interpret and solve problems is also confined to that lane. If you are approaching something like a design or marketing problem without any real understanding of how the business operates, how sales works, how marketing shapes perception, or how the customer actually makes decisions, then your point of view is inherently constrained. You can produce something that looks correct within the bounds of your discipline, but the impact of that work will always be capped by the limits of your perspective.
This is where expanding your creative consciousness starts to matter. It’s not about adding more skills for the sake of it. It’s about increasing your ability to see what’s actually going on, connect different layers, and understand problems more completely.
That pattern is not isolated to design. It shows up everywhere. It’s one of the main reasons people struggle to access the opportunities they believe they should be getting, and why operators and CEOs struggle to find people who can actually help them solve meaningful problems. In both cases, the issue is not effort or ability. It’s that most people are operating from a narrow range of understanding that doesn’t extend far enough to engage with complexity.
Latticework Thinking
Expanding that range is not about abandoning specialization, and it’s not about trying to become an expert in everything. It’s about building enough context to understand how different systems connect. That includes understanding how businesses actually work, how decisions are made, how value is created, and how different functions influence one another. It also requires exposure to different perspectives, environments, ways of thinking, and people who don’t see the world the way you do.
This kind of cross-domain thinking is often associated with what Shane Parrish calls “latticework thinking”—building a network of mental models that lets you connect ideas across disciplines rather than staying confined to a single one.
As that range develops, the structure of your capability stack changes. It stops being a narrow vertical line and starts to take on a broader shape. The practical effect of that shift is that you are no longer limited to solving a small set of problems in a familiar context. You can engage with a wider range of situations because you have more reference points and a more complete understanding of what you are looking at.
This is where things start to open up. Not because you learned a new tool, but because you can see more than you could before.
Creating Opportunities
The people who consistently create opportunities for themselves are not necessarily the most specialized. They are the ones who have built enough breadth to recognize patterns, ask better questions, and spend more time understanding the problem before attempting to solve it. They don’t rush to answers, and they don’t default to whatever they already know how to do.
From the outside, it can look slower. In practice, it’s the only way to actually get to something that works.
If you’re on the other side of that—trying to solve something inside a business—the difference becomes obvious very quickly. There’s a clear gap between someone who moves directly to answers and someone who is willing to stay in the question long enough to understand what’s happening. The first gives you something fast and familiar. The second gives you something that actually reflects the problem.
Most meaningful problems don’t exist in isolation. They exist across multiple layers, and solving them requires the ability to move between those layers without losing coherence. If someone’s understanding is limited to a single layer, their ability to contribute will be similarly limited.
This is also why the constant search for quick answers tends to lead nowhere. The path forward is rarely missing. It’s usually just not visible from the perspective you’re using.
When people ask why they’re struggling, why the opportunities aren’t there, why the work feels capped, it’s easy to point to external factors. In reality, it’s often a function of what they can and can’t see. They built themselves into an obelisk.
Expanding what you know and your opportunities isn’t about doing more.
It’s about seeing differently.
And that’s what changes everything.
