The best career advice still applicable to today’s economy is to specialize. With specialization comes expertise, and becoming an expert in your field is the surest bet for job security and advancement. Traditionally, I think most people think of specialization as mastery in one subject, but in my field (management and strategy consulting) I work with a number of world-class experts who specialize in being generalists. One of the key sources of value we consultants are able to provide our clients is an ability to “connect the dots” and think outside of organizational or industry silos.
To support this business model, most consulting firms organize their people around markets and capabilities. For instance, you may be a domain or market expert in the auto industry and are the go-to person for general industry knowledge and strategic thinking within that sector. Alternately, you might specialize in a functional area such as Enterprise Architecture or Supply Chain Management and apply those skills across markets or clients, be it Ford, Microsoft, the World Bank or Proctor & Gamble. Some of the best consultants are those who combine market/domain expertise with a functional skill set.
Aside from the consulting business model, high-value work in an increasingly knowledge-driven, globalization-infused economy requires intense specialization. So…should you specialize in one area, or many? The top person in any field is always in demand (even in dying industries), but the demand for those “dot-connectors” or those who can see “above the weeds” is also increasing.
Interestingly, one general trend is that the shift from traditional manufacturing to a more service-driven economy has led to an imbalance of specializations. A key reason unemployment has remained resiliently high is because there is a huge mismatch of skills in the supply and demand for labor resulting from this shift. There are plenty of machinists looking for assembly line work, and plenty of job openings for cybersecurity experts. This is why companies are reporting record profits, have tons of open job requisitions to help them grow and scale their businesses, but still aren’t hiring. They simply can’t find the “right” type of people. I believe the reason why can be traced back to education.
It’s no surprise to readers of this blog that I’m critical of the way higher education works in the U.S. Simply put, it fails most students. Dropout rates astronomically high and the ROI of degrees continues to plummet (and that’s not even looking at the supposed virtues of law school..). A major component of this problem is the division between generalist liberal arts schools and specialist technical/vocational/engineering schools. By far, the majority of college students in the U.S. are pursuing liberal arts degrees. When enrolling, most of these students are led to believe that a broad education will provide them with the skills needed to succeed in the global economy. With few exceptions, this belief no longer holds. If you aren’t one of the students who ends up dropping out (taking your debt, but no diploma), and are maybe even “lucky” enough to attend a top school (and pay top dollar), you’re still extremely limited in the careers you can pursue, either due to your lack of skills, or the fact you need to earn a lot of money to pay off those student loans.
Given this conundrum, I’m convinced the only value in pursuing higher education is if it cultivates analytical or creative faculties. No offence to communications majors, but that degree generally fulfills neither. The advantage in developing creative and analytical skills clearly lies with tech, trade and engineering schools. (side note: one of the reasons I’m a proponent of the consulting industry as a great place to work is because of the unique crossover in creative problem solving and analytical analysis).
But the point of this post is not to discuss the failings of higher education, but to discuss the merits of specialization.
So, going back to an earlier point, is it better to become a jack of all trades, or a master of one? Does one of these lifestyle/work choices provide for a more interesting/secure/happy/fulfilling life? I’m not prescribing to have an answer to this question (it varies from person to person as well), but when looking at career options, it’s helpful to ask yourself “what makes me more uniquely qualified to do this job than someone else.” Invariably, the answer to this question will come down to your expertise – which is really just another word for specialization.What you specialize in as you’re building your career is up to you.
March 30, 2011 at 9:09 am |
The beauty of consulting and working on different projects is that you can tailor your resume with enough experiences to show yourself as being ‘specialized’ enough to be bid on specific roles on projects…but this does become a tricky situation when writing your resume and marketing yourself outside your consultancy when finding a new job. Then you need to figure out – which way do I market myself and what sort of character am I building for myself? I do agree that you need to show that you are good and the go-to for something to be recognized in an organization, but am undecided as to if you should pigeon hole yourself right away, i.e. take on only BPR roles or with performance metrics. While you do need to be known as the go-to for something, it seems that in an early consulting career (and most careers for that matter), managers are more interested in just having a person that is a jack of all trades, a quick learner, and can just adapt and do whatever is needed when asked.
Per your comment about the Liberal Arts majors – while it is not as “marketable” and does not show focus to an employer, most people do not use the skills they learned in college (in the classroom) in their daily jobs, or work in a field different than what they studied. So I don’t fully agree to the statement that our schools are failing us fully. There is a whole other issue that students just need to be taught that what matters is having internship experience more than what major they have. Having helped recruit for different firms, I prefer to hire someone who has two internships under their belt and holds a liberal arts degree with a focus in photography, verses a chemical engineer who has no prior job experience when coming out of college. And to note, the class I took in world hunger opened by mind and helped me think on a broader scale and “connect the dots” more than most of my business classes put together, so not all classes in tech, trade and engineering are created equal.
March 30, 2011 at 1:57 pm |
I think you hit it on the head that being a “generalist” is a specialty in and of itself. Thats the key, is you have to treat it like it’s own discipline. Plus you really have to work hard to make sure you really have comprehensive knowledge.
The other piece is knowing how much information is neccessary. Different comptencies require a different level of investment in order to be “useful” in that area. For example it really doesn’t require much knowledge/skill to be useful at creating documents… however it may require a lot more learning and investment to have a useful level of knowledge at troubleshooting Oracle 11g.
March 30, 2011 at 1:58 pm |
Great post and comment- Thanks!!
March 30, 2011 at 5:46 pm |
What a thoughtful post, and insightful comments too! This gives a person a lot to think about. (And as a student just getting my masters in creative non-fiction writing, I must say, well written)—Thanks~
April 2, 2011 at 12:18 pm |
[...] D Patrick Johnson A blog about what I’m reading, writing and thinking about. « Specialization: Jack of All Trades, or Master of One? Lessons Learned from Consulting. [...]
July 3, 2011 at 2:00 pm |
Mr. Johnson, you have written an extremely intelligent and helpful article for those of us who are young students at a point in our lives where we must make the decision of selecting a path which will more or less determine our line of work for the rest of our lives. I am completely perplexed and I am finding it very difficult in deciding which specialization I should focus on.