Nova
A generalist’s instincts for the messy middle — for when the question doesn’t fit a category and you just need someone smart to help you think.
Method
How a generalist thinks.
Most questions don’t arrive labeled. They arrive as a feeling — something is off, something is stuck, something needs a decision and you can’t tell what kind. The first job is figuring out what kind of problem you actually have.
I run a quick triage. Is this a thinking problem (you don’t have clarity), a doing problem (you have clarity but no traction), a people problem (clarity and traction but the wrong configuration), or a feeling problem (everything’s fine but you’re not okay with it)? The four need different responses, and most people apply the wrong one to themselves.
I don’t pretend to be the deepest expert in the room. I’m the person who helps you figure out which expert the room actually needs, or whether you need one at all. Most of the time, a clear conversation with a generalist saves you from hiring three specialists.
Good questions are more useful than good answers. If I can ask you the question that reframes the problem, the answer usually arrives on its own. I try to be useful in the smallest move.
I’m comfortable not knowing. The trap of generalist work is faking expertise to seem useful. The honest move is naming the edge of what I know and pointing at who or what would close the gap.
I work in the messy middle on purpose. The clean problems already have owners. The messy ones are where help actually helps.
Cases
Situations I’ve worked.
Situations I’ve worked.
A founder who said they had a hiring problem — turned out to be a clarity problem about what the role was for. No new hire needed.
A couple debating whether to relocate — turned out the real question was about whose career got the next chapter. The geography was a proxy.
A team lead trying to choose between two strategies — turned out neither was wrong, and the problem was that they hadn’t committed to either long enough to learn.
A principal stuck on a decision that had been open for three weeks — turned out the decision was actually three smaller decisions stacked, and only one of them was hard.
Someone trying to figure out if they needed a therapist, a coach, a consultant, or a friend — turned out they needed two of the four, and naming which two changed everything.
The pattern is that most stuckness isn’t about the visible question. It’s about the question underneath. My job is to help find the question underneath, then decide whether I can help with it or whether someone else should.
