Becoming a Generalist

Commentary on a lecture given by Rob Horlacher at Brigham Young University Hawaii on September 3, 2011. Rob studied economics and finance at BYU Provo. In this lecture, he turns to economics to illustrate some key business lessons that he has learned such as when it's important for one to handle work themselves and when it's important to turn to an expert.

Word Count: 719

When I was young I didn’t know what it meant to be an entrepreneur but I wanted to do things that were interesting. I had a very short attention span loving to the feeling of being involved and anxiously engaged in causes I found interesting. When I was younger, I thought everybody was like that and so I thought it’d be fun to get my friends involved and we created a series of paper routes we did together. Eventually I moved on to work at Mcdonald’s; my first-time full job after graduating from high school. Then I went to work for a company producing credit cards that could be sold as fundraisers to high schools. When there are opportunities out there, I have been blessed with the ability to see those and have a desire to be involved with them.

When I go back and think about what I was going to study in college to prepare me to be an entrepreneur, sometimes it was a difficult question. I ended up studied economics and really enjoyed it as well as studied finance, something I figured went well with economics and the rest is history.

So today we’ll talk about economics, something I’m passionate about and have a quick Econ 101 class. I don’t know who teaches Econ courses here at BYUH but I think everyone ought to take it. If you want to learn about the decisions you already make and the costs of how to make those decisions more effectively, take economics.

Two concepts that I want to discuss are: Absolute Advantage by Adam Smith and Comparative Advantage by David Ricardo.

Absolute Advantage: If you are better at something than someone else, then you ought to specialize and make that and by being highly efficient at what you’re making, you can train someone else. And if someone else specializes in another skill, you can both trade and learn from each other. So you both learn and make money and succeed. Most of the time we think that if one person has more money, that means the other must make less money – but that’s not true. Both can make equal amounts of money and succeed at the same time.

Comparative Advantage: I don’t want to be critical of Adam Smith, but absolute advantage really doesn’t exist in many places, but David Ricardo says that in comparative advantage, in comparison with somebody else, I am more efficient at making something, which takes us back to the idea of specialization – something that we’re both really good that allows us to create a product.

But I’m not here to advocate today for either one, but to tell you that I am, and advocated for being a generalist.

Generalist: A person whose knowledge, aptitudes, and skills are applied to a field as a whole or to a variety of different fields (opposed to specialist).

And we love specialists: If I’m sick, I want to find a doctor who specializes in what I’m sick with. If my house is on fire, I want a specialist firefighter, I don’t want someone whose hobby is firefighting. There are great specialists that are good at what they do, and I’m not suggesting that there’s no value in that but what I am suggesting is that what we sometimes call common sense could also be called generalist behavior.

In entrepreneurship, sometimes it’s hard to transfer over the term “common sense” in all the decisions that we need to make on a daily basis. It’s in these times that we often just turn to the experts, but we also need to remember the principles of being a generalist and the value that making our own decisions has in our business.

We also have to remember fundamental principles we can see in our Father in Heaven. The three I would like to point out are that he is: Omnipotent, Omniscient and Omni-loving. He is all powerful – He  is involved in all aspects of our lives. He is all knowing – He knows how to be an accountant, a lawyer and an entrepreneur. He is all loving – He understands us and supports us in those things that we love to do too. He can inspire and strengthen you! Don’t forget that He is our ultimate support in our entrepreneurial endeavors.

Personal Reflection: I agree with Rob - I tend to be a generalist! I am a firm believer in the principle that we should value the differences we find in others as our own. Creating unity in diversity is essential not only in building relationships but understanding the business world better and those we are trying to help through creating our businesses. By being a generalist, we can have a more wholisitic persepctive and be inclusive rather than exclusive when it comes to people, ideas and business. Obviously there is still need for specialization but we can find appreciation in trying to find application of skills in a wider variety of areas.