The myth of specialization - Aditya Yadav

1. *
“Running an Agile Fortune 500 Company”
Aditya Yadav, aditya.yadav@gmail.com
in.linkedin.com/in/adityayadav76

2. * A Typical Global Company
* Fortune 500/1000
* 200 Divisions
* 40 Countries
* 25000 Employees
*

3. *
@ Acme Inc.

4. * Original Question “We need more efficiency
and productivity shouldn’t we hire more and
more Specialists?”
* The Correct Question - “Should we be moving
all specialization to Ph.D.’s and everything else
to Generalists? Would that work?”
*

5. *
And The Philosophy Behind The Answer

6. *

7. * Herbivores are divided into generalists, animals that eat a wide variety of
plants more or less equally, and specialists, animals that rely on one food
source, often to the exclusion of all other available foods.
* An example of a specialist would be the Koala bear (Phascolarctos
vulpecula) of Australia. They eat Eucalyptus (Eucalyptus spp.) plants only.
* There are relatively few mammals (generalists) that specialize on a single
plant species as their primary food source
* Koala virtually got extinct in the 20th century and is only found in eastern
and southern parts of Australia. Most of Specialists (Human Professionals)
also face such issues
* Mammals have gone ahead to dominate virtually the entire planet.
* But I’m not going to argue about Generalists based on Survival. That
would be too narrow an argument and I’m not too worried about Koala’s
survival but more about World Domination (In the business sense)
*

8. *

9. * McKinsey is a Generalist or Specialized Generalist Firm. They are the
most reputed in the world. Others are Boutiques that specialize!!! in
a few things.
* They virtually don’t rely on domain knowledge at all “We cannot
know the domain more than our Customers who have done it for 20
years day in and day out”
* McKinsey relies on (i) First Principles, (ii) Structured Reasoning, and
(iii) Fact Based Decisions and Strategy
* They are called in at a bomb consulting rate when (i) All your
Specialists have failed to deliver, and (ii) All your domain experts
have also failed miserably, and most of the times brought the
company to the brink of bankruptcy.
* Every Fortune 500/1000 company and basically everyone who can
afford McKinsey has relied on them to solve the toughest business
problems for them since 1926. That’s a consistent record of
reputation, success and reliability for 86 years.
*

10. * A Global Business is a complex organization in a really
complex dynamically changing world
* What worked yesterday will not work today and in the future
* Specialists Professionals and Groups make it virtually
impossible for the [Traditional Command and Control]
Management to co-ordinate globally and execute consistently
* And besides every Specialist Professional/Group can only
achieve the Tactical Local Optima. For a Global Company to
succeed requires a Dynamically Changing Global Optima
* Niche Specialists by themselves cannot create this Global
Optima
* If you have run a Global Company then you can understand
the Criticality of the last two statements
*

11. * There is no job on the planet that requires such an effort of
specialization that you cannot generalize and add a dozen
more skills. Specialists and Generalists can both evolve into
Generalized Specialists with Work Experience and then move
away in a new role and start as a Generalist.
* Domain Skills may get a tactical advantage but assuming
someone has reasonable Domain Knowledge to survive
tactically; for Global Success you have no alternative but to
go the McKinsey [Generalist] way
* “Given a complex enough global business problem a group of
generalists will beat a group of specialists many times over”
* For everything else there are Ph.D’s
*

12. * Honestly “Does your argument rest on the premise that Generalists are
inferior to Specialists?” Don’t confuse Generalists with Incompetent
* Empirical evidence shows that for anything that doesn’t require a Ph.D. or
Post Doctoral Experience the Reality is actually the other way around.
* Does your argument start with “How can a Database job be done by a Perl
Developer?” The reality is that a generalist who knows Perl, DBA, Linux
and Python delivers more strategic business success than a DBA specialist
who can at most excel Tactically in the short term.
* Rule: Everything that was Specialist yesterday is becoming Generalized as
time passes by. Just 50 years ago Data Entry into mainframes required a 2
year specialization/experience -J
* More Specialist Knowledge mostly being brought in by Researchers [Ph.D’s]
* Don’t assume this presentation is saying “Everyone in the world can do
everything in the world” That would be a Strawman Fallacy Attack on this
presentation.
*

13. * "We’ve become a society that’s data rich and meaning poor" "A rise in
specialists in all areas—science, math, history, psychology—has left us
with tremendous content but how valuable is that knowledge without
context?" Context, he says, which can only be provided by generalists
whose breadth of knowledge can serve as the link between the hard-
won scientific breakthroughs and the rest of the world.
* Only by understanding the work within fields to the right and the left
of your own can you understand the bigger picture, he says, whether
you’re talking about a corporation (sales analysts understanding the
supply chain as well as internal operations) or the world as a whole.
"We’ve become so focused on specialization, but just as there are
truths that can only be found as a specialist," he says, "There are
truths that can only be revealed by a generalist who can weave these
ideas in the broader fabric of understanding."
*

14. * Never hire a Specialist unless you need a Ph.D.
* Always hire Generalists and Generalized Specialists in good
combination. Latter if skew towards Tactical survival [skills
gained through experience] though could be limiting
strategically in the future.
* Anchor the team with someone/few with reasonable Tactical
survival knowhow, beyond that is not needed if you want to
conquer the world.
* Use First Principles, Structured and Fact based Reasoning to
run your business.
* Back to point #1 If you need something absolutely niche Hire
Ph.D’s (Who ideally should be the ONLY specialists in your
organization)
*

15. Aditya!!!
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