Generalists and Specialists: Importance of Diverse Talent Groups in Organisations

Amitav Mukherji | Executive Vice President - Human Resources, ITC Limited.?

Firms deploy a diversity of talent to create value for their customers. Generalists and Specialists are part of a continuum of talent capabilities, though with significantly different spheres of impact in the value chain of a firm. At one extreme are enterprise leaders such as chief executives, chief operating officers, and employees in leadership roles in business development and strategy, followed by functional leaders. Such employees orchestrate and coordinate resources across the firm, take decisions on the deployment of capital, new lines of business, and determine or influence product-market strategies. Conventionally referred to as ‘generalists’, most often such employees have grown in a specific function and to that extent have function-specific skills and capabilities. In addition, they also possess an appreciation and understanding of how value is created within the firm, the nature of the interaction between functions, and how functional strategies impact the firm’s competitive positioning. They tend to be involved in work that requires a fair degree of inter-functional coordination, application of widely available functional knowledge to firm specific challenges and manage significant task variety within their functional domains. Generalists are also commonly referred to as ‘line managers’ and typically represent the large mainstream functions in organizations.

At the other end of the continuum are Specialists who have, through qualification and / or application and experience, capabilities that are narrow and deep. Such resources apply technical and subject matter expertise to create and design novel solutions, offer advice, interpret information, solve problems and often create proprietary intellectual capital, though in a very precise area or discipline. Specialists could be functional experts, industry experts or even individual contributors with tacit knowledge specific to the firm.

To illustrate, in a typical CPG firm, marketing, operations, supply chain management would constitute ‘line functions’ and usually talented managers in these functions will grow to functional head roles, and from that cohort, a select few to enterprise or business leadership. Amongst Specialists, functional experts in such firms could be found in Legal, Public Relations, Secretarial, Regulatory Affairs, and Data Science to name a few. Specialists who are industry experts would typically be found in functions like product development or technology design or packaging solutions talent pool. Individual contributors would be managers who have over time developed a mastery and deep knowledge of certain critical functions or processes within a firm and are valued for their expertise in that specific task. Their subject matter mastery is a combination of a natural flair, opportunity and continued and consistent focus and may not be necessarily transferrable to any other context or firm. Examples could include management of relationships with key stakeholders outside the firm, or responsibility for negotiations with certain large customers or training of others in a specialized area.

Generalists and Specialists will need different career, reward and performance management strategies. While generalists will often grow through larger spans of control, responsibility for business and functional results and accountability for outcomes that often involve multiple teams and functions, the Specialist growth trajectory is more bespoke. Industry specialists, for example, may grow through mastery of a critical area; being called upon to solve progressively more technically complex problems. They may also grow through oversight of a larger number of technical experts and projects, in their body of specialism, culminating with leadership responsibility over a group of such technical experts. Unlike generalists, progression does not necessarily imply greater scale and size, larger budgets or a bigger geographical footprint. Most large enterprises have now created distinct career ladders or specialist career tracks which enable formal recognition of potential and visible progression, without necessarily any changes in budgets, team size or geographic scope. The foundational progression criteria remainsremain technical problem-solving capability and the capacity to create innovative solutions, ahead of industry peers. Often firms may require or encourage periodic certification, internal technical assessments, patent filings or publication of papers in peer-reviewed journals as part of the progression criteria.

Remuneration strategies for line managers will typically be a function of the responsibility level / job grade with adequate and relatively easily determinable market benchmarks. Specialists, especially those with industry specific skills or individual contributors, will constitute a niche group, with limited external reference points. Often firms, will reward such personnel based on their intrinsic value to the firm in achieving its strategic goals. In view of the impact and nature of the specialist roles, remuneration design may include a combination of short and long-term milestone-based incentives. To illustrate, a product development head’s short-term incentive could be associated with product renovation, cost optimization of a recipe or improvement in the sensorial qualities of an existing product while long-term incentives could be about new products, new platforms or a new feature in an existing product. Recognition strategies often include sponsorship ofr participation in industry conferences, academic programmes, membership to boards or advisory councils of academic institutions or industry bodies, access to knowledge libraries and journals, and the invitation to participate in strategy development forums within the firm.

Remuneration and recognition decisions for Specialists are a function of the uniqueness of the skills and knowledge and the extent of value added in strengthening a firm’s competitive position. Consequently, service terms can be quite distinct from mainstream line functions. It is not uncommon to hear Specialist roles being positioned higher than mainstream line functions and at variance from the conventional organizational hierarchy.

Firms build sustainable competitive advantage through capabilities that are hard to imitate and create value for their customers. A useful construct to appreciate the contributions of generalists and specialists is the Lepak & Snell framework (1999) on value and uniqueness of human capital. Generalists are deployed in functions and roles that create value but do not represent unique or rare skills. Specialists, on the other hand, generate value but tend to possess proprietary knowledge and capabilities. These skills tend to be rare in the talent market and because of their uniqueness and value to the firm, such skills tend to be ring- fenced from competitive poaching. Organizations with enduring competitive advantage invest in differentiated talent strategies, recognizing the potential of both streams to create value and promoting a partnership between these two critical talent groups rather than choosing between either of them