Specialist vs Generalist, a biblical perspective.

Are you able to delegate or do you do everything yourself?

Accounting and business? Operations and marketing? Product and customer retention? Sales and management?

Mm-hmm. That's what I thought.

As good entrepreneurs, we have become accustomed to plugging all the holes, renewing customers, managing the scope of work, prospecting ourselves, and intervening at all levels of the business. Worse still, we've convinced ourselves that the "bottleneck" we represent is justified by the "inch of improvement" we add at each step.

Daniel is a brilliant entrepreneur I once worked with. As many of us, he persists in intervening in every little aspect of the business. In 2013, for example, he was the one who traveled to Germany to pitch Marlboro and followed up on the meeting. Is it up to the 58 year old founder to spend five hours on a PowerPoint presentation the day before a meeting?

Eventually, the contract was signed, and the production was finally delegated to the teams, but… once again, 48 hours before the delivery, frenzy again overtook Daniel. Concerned about the quality of the product, he interfered with the delivery, tested every feature of the product, and even went so far as to onboard the end users himself.

Does this scenario speak to you? Are you saying to yourself, "I'm Daniel?"

In that case, mitzvah number 389 is for you. This one is about limiting yourself to one central activity and delegating tasks to others based on their particular skill sets. "Levites shall not perform the tasks of the Kohanim, and Kohanim shall not perform the tasks of the Levites" (Book of Education).

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But the holy vessels and to the Altar they shall not approach, so that they do not die - not them or you (Bamidbar 18:3).

Since the building of the temple, the Leviim never engage in the activities of the Kohanim. Why not? Because everyone has a unique skill set; the Leviim are responsible for teaching the ways of the Torah to all the people and accompanying the Kohanim with music during the offering of sacrifices, and the Kohanim (priests) are responsible for tasks like offering sacrifices, lighting the Menorah, and burning incense. But the other way around is okay, right? No, no, no, definitely not. The Torah adds that even the Kohanim, the ultimate generalist leaders, must never engage in the activities of the Leviim because in a healthy organization, everyone should do the work at which they excel.?

The goal is to move from a handful of generalists to a unified team of specialists as Reid Hoffman explains in Blitzscaling. In the early stages of a company, you need "...generalists who can get many different things done in an uncertain and rapidly changing environment. But as the company grows, it needs to shift to hiring specialists who are less fungible but have expertise in an area that is crucial to scaling the organization." Specialists offer expertise that generalists, even really smart ones, can't just "figure out" quickly. Just as the Leviim should not do the Kohnaim's job and vice versa, so too, tasks should be divided in a modern business organization. The COO must not perform the CEO's job and vice versa; the salesperson must not do the accountant’s job, etc.

How can you apply this mitzvah to your own business? It's very simple. First, delegate. Next, in each department separate the roles: Kohanim versus Leviim. For example, in dealing with clients, do you have an account manager who does both customer relations and up-selling? These are not the same job. There is certainly one person who's better at "farming" (retention) and another at "hunting" (up-selling). On the production side, do you have one technical person who does both development and product design? Remember, Kohanim and Leviim; these are not the same role. In sales, do you have a salesperson who does both prospecting and closing? Unfortunately, this is still the norm, but those are also two different roles. There will always be one person who is better at prospecting and another who is better at closing.

Bottom Line: There is always a way to make the Kohanim-Leviim split. And you, what smart splits can you implement in your workplace to be more successful? When you divide tasks by roles, you'll soon feel the benefits in your professional and personal life as you make more time for the things you excel at!