No Generalists Please!
Specialists, Versatilists and Generalists
The knowledge world is no longer divided between specialists and generalists. A new group-let's call them “versatilists”-has emerged. They apply depth of skill to a progressively widening scope of situations and experiences, gaining new competencies, building relationships and assuming new roles. They are capable not only of constantly adapting, but also constantly learning and growing in a fast-changing world. -Andreas Schleicher, OECD
Some years ago, I was thinking about a curriculum for children and young adults that would prepare them for the future (which is already here, by the way). That led me to the quote above and got me started thinking about generalists, specialists and versatilists.
Early in my career (in my mid-20s), I worked as a business consultant. This was in the mid-90s in an India where the license raj had ended and many industries were liberalized (i.e. thrown open for private participation without the need for a ‘license’ to operate in that industry). It was a time when business houses were looking at entering new business areas and diversifying. They knew little about other industries, new opportunities and this was all in the pre-internet era- most information was still in hard-copy form. Most of my seniors and I were generalists. I was a nearly ignorant generalist- my only weapon being access to information we had collected about different industries painstakingly. My seniors had much more context than me by virtue of experience, but they too were generalists by and large- very few had actually worked in a line function. As consultants, we were certainly able to add value to businesses looking at external opportunities- by virtue of being a 3rd party who could look at things with a fresh eye, by virtue of having invested in collating information and researching it, and being able to do some extent of strategic thinking.
Yet being generalists, I think we were also naive in important ways- we did not really understand what kind of competence a business did or did not have and whether they had what it took to succeed in a new area that required a particular set of competencies.
My sense is that from the 50s/ 60s to the 80s, generalists typically held the highest positions in many organizations. They were good at asking insightful questions of specialists, seeing the big picture, networking… or just using their ‘old-boy networks’. ‘Owners’ was a different class from ‘Workers’ and the term ‘Knowledge Worker’ was still a new one. As the rate of change started accelerating though (think of 3-year product life cycles in a semiconductor company vis-a-vis a life cycle of a couple of decades in traditional products), the need to keep adapting, understanding technology trends and the dependence on the ‘knowledge worker’ went up exponentially.
It became difficult for generalists to see the whole picture.
More accurately, ‘general’ generalists perhaps lost their relevance. (I expect research to show that CXOs in the last 2-3 decades are more likely to have been specialists in the first part of their careers and the nature of work of Big 6 consulting firms has moved from ‘strategy advice’ to more tangible areas). There were always ‘versatilists’ probably who looked like generalists on the surface. One of the greatest business minds had seen this long ago, when he said
The only meaningful definition of a “generalist” is a specialist who can relate his own small area to the universe of knowledge.- Peter Drucker
Thus, while a specialist can make clear contributions in her area of specialization, a ‘general’ generalist is too shallow to understand things in today’s world to contribute substantially. Here is where Peter Drucker’s meaningfully defined ‘generalist’ and Andreas Schleicher’s ‘versatilist’ come in.
Putting together all of this, I attempt to define the versatilist-
Versatilists have depth in 1-2 disciplines and breadth in multiple disciplines. This characteristic allows them to see problems and possibilities far more clearly than either generalists or specialists. They can also see what other expertise is needed to tackle a challenge and can co-opt relevant specialists/ versatilists. For example, an ecologist looking at issues of clean water may see water seeping through cracks in rocks and entering a spring, and seek out a mathematician to study crack patterns in natural ‘filtration systems’.
The idea of versatilists is not an entirely new one. IBM has used the metaphor of the ‘T shaped individual’ for quite a few years to develop their people.
In conclusion, I would say that-
Versatilists are best suited to both adapt to the world of the future as also solve complex problems and create the world of the future. The more versatilists we have, the better off we will be.
We will continue to need deep specialists- they invest in developing deep expertise and make clear tangible contributions in that area.
The age of the generalist has ended. If you are one and would like to defend your case, please comment below :-)