The Power of the Competent Generalist

“Jack of all trades, master of none” 

That’s the old standby quote I hear when someone decides that they need to hire someone with a very exact set of skills and won’t consider someone with some experience in what they want, but a wide variety of other skills. It’s what I like to call, “the curse of the job description”. Hiring managers as well as HR professionals often create this ideal candidate that has lived a magical life of linear experience and focus.  Candidates that aren’t perfectly whittled out of the wood of relevancy are cast to the wind with a rejection letter, or sadly as we’ve seen more and more, never even given the decency of a reply.

I’m calling bull on this whole framework and schema.  

Do you really need someone that’s a laser focused expert?  Maybe. There are definitely roles where that applies.  If you need someone that can weld titanium for a critical job, then yeah, that’s a must have skill. Or if you want a CFO, that track record for finance should be solid.  It is absolutely a good idea that certain roles in an organization be held by those laser focused experts that know that area inside and out. After that, I’d argue that the net be cast a bit wider, especially if you are a fast growing or new organization. People that are more “competent generalists” might give you better long-term results and make your company more adaptable and nimbler. I’ll tell you why.

Let’s start with the rarely quoted 2nd half of the “Jack of all trades” wisdom. The actual entire quote goes like this: 

“Jack of all trades, master of none, though oftentimes better than master of one.”

Somewhere along the way, the specialists did some creative marketing and got that last part cut off. Don’t worry folks, I’m here to set the record straight!

I do want to make something very clear up front though. “Generalist” does NOT mean “low competence”. A truly effective generalist will have good knowledge of several key areas and can be a competent resource in any of them. They may have a couple that are their truly stronger suits as well, where they would classify as “pretty darn good”, but maybe not to “expert” or “specialist” level. That’s because being a generalist IS an expertise. Not everyone can do it well. It takes a personality that can adapt quickly and build relationships broadly, a thirst for knowledge, and a brain that takes complex problems and identify solutions quickly. They often are better at developing innovative solutions for the interdisciplinary challenges many organizations have and are often natural leaders that rise to the general management roles of the organization. Generalists can be great to have around when you want to adapt, grow, and innovate.

So why do we see so many job descriptions seemingly targeting specialists?  A big reason involves the recency effect when it comes to job descriptions.  When job descriptions are fashioned they are often done so with needs felt right at that moment and directed at an acute problem or goal.  A role is created in the mind of a hiring manager about a specific objective, pitched to leadership, debated, budgeted for, and finally “approved”. HR will then want a detailed job description crafted, and to try and find the “best” candidates will want specific descriptions to help find that person in the market. That’s great, but if your company is anything like most, that job description is likely starting to be outdated as soon as it is posted. Strategies change. Needs change. Decisions get made that alter the teams, focus, and even skills that would make that candidate successful if their only skills were those listed on the original job description. Often as soon as someone is hired, their role has shifted at least some, sometimes drastically, based on new “hot items”. They had better be able to flex into it and have the ability to adapt. Another thing to consider is that there are “levels” of generalist to specialist. Where one might lean more to one extreme but has some attributes of both. For simplicity’s sake, let’s keep the definitions distinct in this discussion. 

Then there’s the evidence that generalists can work better in a fast-paced change environment because their varied experiences create a broader, higher level view of the situation. A generalist that can see the various pieces of the puzzle can be a strong integrator and problem solver. This is covered superbly in the book by David Epstein called “Range – Why generalists triumph in a specialized world”. He uses the example of frogs and birds to illustrate this point. Focused frogs are your specialists, they are at ground level looking at the granular details of a problem. They are very good at what they do and their entire focus is on the mud in front and around them. Generalists are your birds. They can soar high above and see multiple frogs and what they are working on and can integrate their work effectively. Epstein posits that a big problem in business is that we place too much value on the frogs and want everyone to be one when in fact we would be much better off having both. I agree with him completely. 

Generalists may also save you a lot of money! No, I don’t mean you should/can pay a generalist less, I mean that having a team with a good number of generalists can have huge advantages in costs in a number of situations. Why? It’s that they can take on roles in multiple aspects of a project and know what is needed to get a job done. They are often very good at building and working with those teams and can speak the many different “languages” to coordinate across disciplines. What this all boils down to is that a generalist can move from need to need, project to project and get things done in a variety of areas of your organization efficiently. They adapt and learn quickly, and they don’t need to be onboarded or trained because they already work there. Many companies are constantly evolving and developing new products and launching new initiatives and a generalist (or a few) can often be pulled in and fill the voids needed on the team to get things done. You’ll save on hiring consultants or contractors (that need to learn your company and can be expensive) and as the project evolves it will give you time to understand what long term hires you really need to make. Sometimes the generalist would stay on that team and perhaps work on building out one of their skills for a while, or perhaps they would be more valuable taking on the next hairy challenge in your organization. The key point being that having competent generalists make it a choice for you.     

I mentioned this in the paragraph above, but it begs a bit more elaboration. Generalists are often very good at learning many areas of your organization and building relationships on those teams. It’s a required pillar of the generalist’s foundation. Otherwise they would be “incompetent generalists” and would not be able to utilize the breadth of their knowledge. This makes them natural fits when a cross functional team is necessary and allows them to serve to support specialists, fill gaps that exist, and pick up parts of projects if one or more specialist team member gets pulled away. Their broad understanding often means they will see solutions that the specialists might not. The impact can be significant and can keep many projects on track that would have gone sideways otherwise. They often step in as a project manager or coordinator as well, but not all generalists thrive in that space as it requires a lot of detail orientation (sometimes a project management specialist is needed for complex projects).  A key advantage that a competent generalist has over others is when something brand new to an organization needs to be tackled, they often love to build and learn additional transferrable skills. They can dive right in and start getting things done without extensive training and what they need to know and don’t, they learn, and they do it fast.    

How do you go out and pick a competent generalist? Great question. There are some of us that embrace the title, though we may use terms like “flexible” and “versatile” to get the message across. However, that’s not enough. I recommend looking into the experiences, education (this can come in many forms, not just “school”), and most importantly, results that someone has delivered. A good start, but definitely not a requirement, could be an MBA (I’m partial to schools that focus on general management like mine did because of the focus on organizational level leadership), as they are taught the wide range of disciplines that fit a generalist well. If it’s just the education they possess though, I’d be wary – you want to see it complemented with some practical experience and deployment of their generalist education.  

When I think of a generalist’s experience, I want to see someone that has had roles that stretch different skills and situations. Taking on challenges that look ambiguous and working across different disciplines of an organization are good signs you’ve found a generalist, along with dealing with problems that were not well defined and resulted in a solid process and structure. 

A good way to interview or learn about how a generalist would fit is to use situational cases.  A competent generalist gets excited about having a loosely defined situation and then being asked “what would you do to set up a path to success”? This is where you’ll learn a lot about the power of a generalist and their ability to create order from chaos. This is a power that in the world we live in today is almost a superpower because change comes at a lightning pace and the generalist can help your organization navigate the most difficult challenges like a pro. Find those people and use them well, and you’ll be asking why you hadn’t done this in the past.

Finally, my challenge to you is that when you are considering the organization and the team members you’ll need to position it for long term success, that you step back and imagine a different framework. One not where you’ve picked the perfect individual for each siloed role on your team, but one where you think about how you would approach problems with a versatile team of a few key specialists along with flexible generalists that can adapt and tackle any problem, quickly. How could that change your outcomes and speed of change?  What could you tackle that your specialist resources don’t allow you to do now? 

The answer to that question is “almost anything”. Build out that squad of “Jacks of all trades” and you’ll be sure to navigate and adapt like never before!