How would you describe yourself? Are you someone with broad knowledge or narrow focus? Do you draw on a wide variety of experiences with no centralizing concept to pull everything together? Or do you organize everything that happens in your life and all the knowledge you have acquired around one big idea?
In the 7th century B.C., Archilochus, a Greek poet/philosopher, was grappling with the fundamental nature of man and came to the conclusion that everyone can be categorized into one of two categories: foxes or hedgehogs. He wrote,
“The fox knows many things, but the hedgehog knows one big thing.”
The fox uses all of his cunning devices, the hedgehog has but one: he rolls up into a ball. Despite all of the fox’s cunning, he never succeeds against the hedgehog’s simple, yet masterful defense.
While it can be successfully argued that people are far too complex to group them into foxes or hedgehogs, the concept is useful to us.
- Click here for Hedgehog vs Fox video
- Click here for Three Circles discussion
- Click here for Jim Collins defining the Three Circles video
- Click here for application to Little Chompers Pediatric Dentistry