Generalist vs. Specialist

"In our time, specialists of all kinds are highly overrated. We need more generalists people who can provide broad perspectives. " An analysis.

With the evolving nature of the work environment, the distinction of a specialist and generalist is getting blurred. Rather the degree of specialization and generalization is changing rapidly to adapt to the changing requirements. A specialist cannot be a good specialist unless he can put his speciality in the perspective of the overall scheme of things. Similarly the generalist needs some specialist knowledge of the domain he is in. No longer would someone be successful if they have strict notions on thier speciality or generality.

Thus speaking, I feel specialists are not overrated. With increased sophistication in technology, its very essential for people with highly specialized skills to be available. Yet, for them to be successful and productive to the company, they would need to be aware of how they and their work would fit into the big picture. It needs an understanding on their part their role vis-a-vis those of other specialists.

In my field of Computer Technology, we have lots of brilliant specialists. They produce wonderful software or hardware. Or rather I should say, most often, they produce wonderful pieces of a particular hardware or software. Given the depth of technology and the sophistication, very rarely does a single person produce the entire product. For their part to work great and seamlessly with other components, they need to understand the working of the other components. Personnel experience tells me that while it is so easy to produce according to a very definite specification, it so much more difficult to integrate it with the other components. If the specialists designing the individual parts are aware and understand the other modules, then it would go a long way in what we all aim for - a great selling product. A specialist would not be judged not just with her depth of knowledge but also with her ability to apply it in the right context.

All said and done, a generalist would still be needed to manage the show, to provide a vision, to provide a direction. A generalist can be considered soneone who does not have adequate knowledge to design and implement the individual pieces but has the knowledge to understand the working, the roles and contribution of the individual pieces. While they may not be able to claim ownership to any particular part of the product, I would attribute a lot of the success of a product to the generalist who actually identified what needs to be built, what feature needs to be there and what not and when and how does it need to be made. While they may be a generalist with respect to the components that goes into a product, they may be a specialist when it to comes to the various products within a company. They might be a specialist in that product as a whole.

That brings us to the granularity of specialization and generalizations. A specialist is a generalist at a certain level and vice versa. Its imperative for a specialist to know about other things for his speciality to be productive and useful. A generalist needs to have minimum level of speciality knowledge to qualify as a generalist that spans that field. I strongly believe a specialist is not over rated. They may be wrongly rated if they are rated only according to the depth of their knowledge in their field.