The Specialist vs the Generalist

merch · #1 03-13-2010, 12:59 AM

The Jack of all trades. He gets a pretty bad wrap these days. What use is a guy that has dabbled in all sorts of things but never seemed to master anything? People these days are programmed to believe that they need to learn one thing. Learn it well and try to be the best. There are schools of all kinds popping up offering different programs focused on only one thing or another. The message is that in a slumping economy the best thing you can do is learn a new trade. The up and coming technology perhaps. Focus, get good, and when the boom comes you’ll be positioned to capitalize on the new opportunities. I can’t really argue that I suppose.

But then there’s Jack. The perpetual generalist. His actions are often misinterpreted as unskilled or unfocused. To the specialist his behavior can appear downright offensive or a nuisance. The specialist sees Jack as an unqualified hack who always leaves a mess of everything he touches. Jack drives the specialists nuts.

Jack wasn’t always thought of this way though. Jack used to be revered as a free thinker, a renasaince man. The guy that was called in to handle the trickiest of problems and was always inventing new ways to approach old or new problems. Jack never got bored because he had a thirst for knowledge he always took the time to quench it with new experience. It wasn’t until the “master of none” was stuck after his moniker that people began to perceive him as less valuable than he was.

Jack rarely has the problem of falling into the same kind of traps the specialist does. The specialist is programmed to see things one way. The way he’s been trained to see them. This is good, because we need the specialist once we know what the problem is. But the trap of the specialist is always set by himself. He always sees the problem in terms of what he knows. He lacks the ability to see it from different angles. He lacks the knowledge to understand that the problem may be a result of, or caused by something completely different. The specialist forces the solution into terms he understands. The specialist often fails to see beyond or outside his comfort zone. Specialists in all fields suffer from this problem. The specialist also has the most influence over those who know less. This makes the specialist very dangerous. Confidence can be comforting but it can also be fatal.

Jack, the generalist, avoids this trap. He always understands that there could be more to the problem than just the one thing. His mind remains open to all possibilities. There is no black and white to him only the colors in between. Jack’s world is much more colorful than the specialist’s is.

Jack makes a good fisherman. He keeps his mind open and doesn’t place restrictions on possibilities or situations. He knows that things can change in an instant and his process is always running in the background ready to react to a new set of conditions. But the specialist goes home when conditions change. The specialist always has an answer for why he’s not catching. The answer never involves self assessment. The specialist has gone home to write his report. The specialist needs Jack to find the fish but he’ll never admit it.

Never underestimate Jack. After all, if it weren’t for Jack, the specialists of the world would not have disciplines to call their specialties.