Wait, did a hedgehog design this?

I first heard this phrase used by Dr Jim Bright, and it stayed with me because it so neatly describes what often goes wrong in career education and advice, especially when we’re working with young people.

It’s not that the career advice students and young people receive is wrong.

It’s often right, it's just that it's being used at the wrong level.

Much of what has traditionally been offered in career guidance is built on what works in general. Trends, averages, patterns, large datasets, and matching models drawn from groups of people.

But careers aren’t lived in general.
They’re lived by complex individuals.

And small differences between people, their interests, confidence, timing, support, opportunities, and circumstances can lead to very different outcomes.

When we forget that people are so individual, even well‑intended advice can miss the person it’s meant to help.

Why 'generally right' so often fails real people

This problem shows up whenever we try to use tidy tools and clear predictions in untidy, human situations.

Lives don’t unfold in straight lines. Careers change direction. Small events can have a huge impact down the line.

From a systems and complexity perspective, this makes sense. Careers are complex human systems. Linear tools, simple rules, and neat predictions don’t work particularly well in complex systems like lives.

What works on average frequently falls apart when applied to a real person in their real, untidy, complex life.

Why the difference between hedgehogs and foxes matters

A well‑known philosophical metaphor identifies distinct ways of thinking,as being either hedgehog thinking or fox thinking. 

I’m not a philosopher (and I don’t really get why it’s a hedgehog either), but the metaphor is useful.

Hedgehogs like one big idea that explains a lot. A grand, elegant plan that wraps everything up.

Foxes gather lots of data and can have several ideas bubbling at the same time. They notice context, are more comfortable with nuance. They adapt as things change. 

In career education, hedgehog thinking tends to show up in neat pathways, standardised tools that lead to confident predictions about the future.

But real lives and careers are lived by individuals and success requires a bit of fox-like thinking. Guidance that helps individuals be ready to respond to uncertainty, take in data about setbacks, accept growth and change.

Advice that can handle multiple ideas and hold complexity without rushing to close it down.

This distinction captures a core problem: in career education and guidance we tend to take ideas that are broadly, statistically, and population‑level true, and apply them to individuals as though those complex people's lives are predictable and precise.

They rarely are.

So if we work with young people, or have children of our own, we need to be foxes. And we need to teach them to be foxes too, to be okay with multiple ideas but to be testing, comparing, taking in data and thinking critically as they shift and change.

Generally right, specifically wrong: futurist predictions

As humans, we like certainty. We like it when experts can tell us what will happen next.

“Young people today will have 17 jobs across 5 careers” - we're sure you've heard this one. It's one of the most persistent predictions in career education.

But it doesn’t mean what it’s often taken to mean.

In Australia, it traces back to a McCrindle Research article on job mobility, which showed an average job tenure of around 3.3 years, based on HILDA and Department of Employment data.

From there, two assumptions were layered up. First assumption: that a person works continuously from roughly age 18 to 75 with similar job tenure throughout. Second assumption: that people change careers after every three jobs. Those assumptions were extrapolated to arrive at the now‑familiar claim: '17 jobs across 5 careers'. 

Yes, the job mobility data is real, and yes, change will undoubtedly be a feature of many working lives. The conclusion, however, is not an evidence‑based prediction of individual people's career journeys. It's a large scale modelling choice, a general calculation in abstract and general terms.

It was never intended to be used as personal advice for young people or their families. Yet I’ve heard it presented in classrooms and parent conversations many times as a fact to be considered in career planning.

This is just one example of what happens when population‑level insights are misapplied to individuals.  Used this way, what’s generally right becomes specifically useless. Using population‑level data as though it forecasts a particular young person’s working life doesn’t build confidence or adaptability. It creates anxiety or false certainty.

Why this matters

When we’re supporting individuals with career decisions, we've got a close-up view on a real life. We know more. We see the context that broad labour market data and general advice cannot.

Career guidance isn’t a prediction problem (forecasting the 'right career'). It’s a complexity problem (having the skills to design and create a path for yourself in the context of a complex and changing life).

Population‑level information still has value, but only when it’s held lightly and used as one input among many to be analysed and tested in context.

Because in careers, as in life, what’s generally right is very often specifically wrong.

Read more about how our 'BECOME Your Own Career Advisor' and Secondary programs support complex decision making, particularly for those students leading up to subject selection and their senior years of schooling. 

• Berlin, Isiah (2 June 2013). Ignatieff, Michael (ed.). The Hedgehog and the Fox An Essay on Tolstoy's View of History (2nd ed.). Princeton University Press. 
• Stodd, J. (2018). Generally right, specifically wrong. LinkedIn.
• Bright, J. (a collection of open source publications on the Chaos Theory of Careers is available here)