Are you a specialist or a generalist?

The Unawak­ened always rewards Speci­ficity.Only the Mas­ters enjoy Bal­anced Versatility.

Image by Argen­berg

Spe­cial­i­sa­tion is highly regarded in this mod­ern world.I have dis­cussed career goals with many pro­fes­sion­als, and I am yet to find some­one who tells me “I want to develop a broad range of skills — I want to be a gen­er­al­ist”. But as the quote above (from an arti­cle by Steve Ilg) says, only the true mas­ters enjoy bal­anced versatility.

There is that pesky word again: Bal­ance. I don’t remem­ber ever using it as often as I have over the last 18 months of my life.So why is ‘bal­anced ver­sa­til­ity’ so important?

Because its alter­na­tive — exces­sive speci­ficity , or ultra-specialisation — comes with a price tag that we should all realise is just too high for most of us. Truth is, no one has noticed.

Let’s talk about careers. Devel­op­ing highly spe­cialised skills is rewarded by higher salaries. As the sup­ply for those rare skills in the mar­ket place is smaller, the price for the ser­vices increases. This is true in pro­fes­sional sports, in the cor­po­rate world, and even in the med­ical sci­ences. Pro­fes­sion­als seek to gain a deep level of spe­cial­ist knowl­edge, so that they will even­tu­ally be recog­nised as ‘experts’ in their field; write insight­ful arti­cles; and receive awards at inter­na­tional conferences.

You can also look in the direc­tion of social rela­tion­ships. Peo­ple advise you to develop your unique per­son­al­ity and flaunt it. Be generic, and no one will notice. Be unique, and peo­ple will appre­ci­ate you for your indi­vid­u­al­ity. This advice, we are told, has proven to work in today’s world.

What about the sci­en­tific domain? Same thing. I chal­lenge you to find a sci­en­tist who wants to be a math­e­mati­cian, chemist, and philoso­pher, all at the same time. No, the knowl­edge domains are too vast to have a gen­er­al­ist knowl­edge base. Sci­en­tists accept as proven wis­dom that you’re bet­ter off choos­ing a very spe­cific topic and becom­ing well-recognised for the high qual­ity of your work. I am sure some­where out there we can find a PhD dis­ser­ta­tion on the phys­i­ol­ogy of the left cornea of red­heads in rural North Ireland.

Behind all these exam­ples is the insid­i­ous influ­ence of the indus­trial rev­o­lu­tion. With the arrival of organ­ised indus­try in the late 18th / early 19th cen­tury, we started accept­ing that high degrees of spe­cial­i­sa­tion lead to effi­cien­cies of scale, mass-production of items at low cost, and larger eco­nomic mar­kets. Along the indus­trial rev­o­lu­tion we then saw a social rev­o­lu­tion that applied the same prin­ci­ple to the fab­ric of our own cul­ture and society.

Unfor­tu­nately, this rev­o­lu­tion came with some nasty side effects. A high degree of spe­cial­i­sa­tion has a sig­nif­i­cant and often hid­den cost. Over-specialisation stiffles cre­ativ­ity, gen­er­ates work and social envi­ron­ments lack­ing on diver­sity and its ben­e­fits, and reduces the level of inno­va­tion. In the sports arena, over-specialisation will lead to unhealthy and unbal­anced indi­vid­u­als. Don’t believe me? Just look at this pic­ture of an ultra-endurance ath­lete. Can you guess how old she is?

She is only 45!!

Over­spe­cial­i­sa­tion, like most things taken to an extreme, is not healthy. The ques­tion is what are you try­ing to become: a gen­er­al­ist, or a specialist?

Tagged as: Essays, Philosophy, Reflections, Religion, Reply to other blog post