Some time ago I wrote about a phenomenon I chose to call I have reportees therefore I am, a way of thinking which is based on the notion that we are more important, or valuable to an organisation the more people we manage. It seems people often counter this fork in their career path - to learn more about their chosen subject area (and become a specialist) or to move into a role with more people management responsibilities instead. For some warped reason the latter is invariably more appreciated and better paid, than the former.
However, what most businesses need is not more generalist manager-types with a dwindling understanding of their field as their knowledge is gradually tweaked in favour of an increasing number of management courses. Thus, it is very possible to end up a manager with very little or no clue of the specialism of the individuals one is managing. To me that is the recipe for bad managers, but it is also the recipe for an increasing amount of overhead costs and waste within a company, when more and more individuals are not concerned with generating income for the company, but simply adding to the cost of overhead. Or as Jeremy puts it in his comment to the most excellent post on How not to lead geeks :
The problem isn’t bad management, it’s the whole concept of management: the idea that decision making can be separated from the actual work. It’s ludicrous when you think about it, and the whole mythos of the managerial class is to give us the illusion that management is adding value..
A pretty damning comment, but I quote it again because it hits the nail on the head. Why is it that being a specialist is equated to being a grunt? That one is not rewarded for excelling in doing one's job, but according to the number of people one manages? Why is managing people more attractive rather than being a really good [insert career here] - is it really all about money or is it that it gives us more power, makes us feel more important?
In fact I believe the conversation needs to move on further than that. It comes down to our definitions of what makes a generalist and a specialist. It is often thought that a generalist knows a little about a lot of things, but not a lot about anything and that the specialist often knows a lot about a particular subject and to the detriment of seeing the big picture. The accepted truth seems to be that you need both in your team and that a 'generalist' manager is what you need to head up the team.
I beg to disagree. In today's increasingly inter-connected world where companies compete tooth and nail with each other to provide better value, more meaningful experiences, better products - none of these can be achieved without both a deeper understanding of the specialism of the company as well as a broader view of how to deliver these benefits to the consumer. To be able to deliver these solutions we not only need to know our own area of specialism intimately and deeply, we equally need to understand how other disciplines are needed to support our own and how all of them working in tandem deliver the superior value our consumers are willing to pay for.
Me, I'm a designer. My specialism lies in not only understanding manufacture, design, materials, art direction, play features (as I design toys), children's psychology, but equally in understanding marketing, communications, business cases, on-line content - you name it. I'm both a generalist and a specialist at the same time. My specialism allows me to add value to the product development process through the knowledge and abilities I bring to it and my generalism allows me to respect, appreciate and better work with specialists from all the other disciplines to make it all come together into an award-winning product. I believe this is valid for any profession, which requires more than one person to deliver the final product.
Why is it then that we still persist with a kind of Fordian view of how to split up the process of adding value into modules, which cannot function on their own, when we should in fact be perfecting our skills, acquiring deeper knowledge of our specialism to continuously strive to become better, more capable and more valuable to the process? Being a generalist only is a cop-out and people who believe they are a generalist are failing to understand where their strengths and talents lie. Or perhaps our job descriptions need updating? In fact, not just the job descriptions, but also our reward structures!
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