The difficulty of moving across domains
The difficulty of moving across domains
Being a chess master doesn't make you a master of strategy
Do you think a chess master would make an excellent military, or corporate strategist? Can a used-car salesman sell software? Would a good BBQ bishop convert to a successful rotisserie rabbi?
I’m no social scientist, so I’m not going to reference any studies, but I am familiar with the general phenomenon of expertise often being very domain specific and difficult to transfer.
Can you apply Chess strategy to business?
As I picked up chess as a regular hobby a few years ago, this an example I can comment on. Here’s an article chess.com about "How Chess Can Make You Better At Business". The headline is misleading, it should be “Some parallels between being a successful chess player and being successful in business”. The examples it uses are all of very basic and broad points like “be aware of your/your opponent’s weaknesses” and “have a plan” etc.
In the article, it includes a video of a Chess grand master pointing out a beginner’s early move setting up for a weakness later on. This makes my point and the opposite point of the headline - you need to be a master of chess to spot a weakness in chess. I’d be fairly confident that if that chess grand master started a business, he’d be a beginner again and a veteran entrepreneur would be able to quickly flag up potential weaknesses that he wouldn’t spot.
Domain skills are often like language skills
When you learn a language you build up some intuitive understanding of language, or linguistics - subject, object, verb etc. This is helpful for learning a second language, as languages tend to have a lot of overlapping concepts, so for example there’s no need to learn a new concept for “subject”.
If you’ve learnt a second language, you’ll be even better equipped for learning a third language, for example you’re used to the awkwardness sounding like an idiot again when trying to speak. However despite all this, learning a new language is still a momentous task, and the skills you’ve acquired from learning one or two languages only slightly shortens the journey to fluency.
I think this is a good metaphor for the transferability of skills across domains - some parallels between mastery within domains doesn’t mean a fast track to mastery when crossing domains.
So why is this useful to know?
I think this is a helpful insight in several ways. Firstly before you start down the road to master something you should know that it probably doesn’t have many (or any) paths leading elsewhere and you’d better be happy with where it leads. I like playing chess, but I’m under no illusion that the hours I’ve put in have much benefit other than fun.
It’s also a good way of identifying rare talent. A track record of successfully crossing domains is great endorsement. For example Netflix pivoted from DVD rentals to a gargantuan streaming service and producing their own films - that’s the kind of management investors keep an eye on.
Finally an obvious takeaway is that it’s a good idea to accrue skills that are more transferrable than others.
Are there skills that do transfer across domains well?
Here’s a few counter examples of skills which do transfer to some extent.
People skills
I think people skills a lot more transferable across cultures/societies. From my travels and observation of living in different societies, I think it’s different to languages - that fuzzy skill of dealing with people transcends the cultural/societal rules. Cultural and societal rules are significant, but they are the easier part to learn.
You can consider leadership, management, sales etc as specific examples of people skills.
Entrepreneurial skills
I know a lot of people who have started businesses, and can definitely see a pattern that some people develop, it’s almost like they can smell money. Successful entrepreneurship is a mysterious cocktail of skill, luck, persistence and a certain common-sense like quality that highly intellectual types often lack.
Programming skills
Software development is a good counter example, as programming languages have some parallels to spoken languages but it is the opposite case in programming language. The abstract concepts behind programming languages are much more of the work, and the specific syntax and conventions of each languages are a much smaller part of the work. It took me a few years to get good PHP and web development, but it would only take me a matter of weeks to convert to Python, I can’t say the same about learning Chinese after having learnt Japanese.
Learning how To learn
Finally, there’s the skill of learning, as a kind of meta-skill. Although this isn’t strictly crossing domains - since each time you learn a new skill, you are still learning, it’s very useful to get better at learning.
Related reading
As an interesting ending to tie this altogether, I recommend the boot The Art of Learning: An Inner Journey to Optimal Performance (2008) by Joshua Waitzkin.
Joshua is (or was) a chess prodigy/grand master and then went on to become a master of Taichi push hands.