The other day I was scanning my Twitter feed and stumbled upon something that was interesting. The Tweeter (I guess that’s what you call one who Tweets?) was asking if the specialist was dead, or put another way, are we all now generalists? The question was further developed to ask why people preferred being generalists over specialists.
I remember pondering this very question sometime during my early career, maybe even while in the hands of guidance or career counselor. It is an important question. The wisdom of my era was that unless you were absolutely a superstar specialist, you were better off being a generalist.
That was the gist of my response to the tweet the other evening. Specialists are more at risk in terms of obsolesce of their skill set. Things that once were a sure-fire path to success are suddenly no longer in demand.
We live near one of those endless roads containing mile after mile of strip centers that are home to all manners of business from tattoo parlors to auto-parts stores. Now and then you will see one of these storefront businesses that specializes in TV and VCR repair. I can’t imagine how these guys stay in business. Nobody fixes TVs anymore. When it breaks, you chuck the thing and go buy a bigger TV. Video Tape? Does anybody still watch video tape? I mean VHS video tape?
I think the same logic applies to the office or business world. It’s great if you can knock ‘em dead with your HTML skills, but every indication is that the corporate website is going the way of the mimeograph machine (if you don’t know what mimeograph is, ask one of your geezers, they’ll explain). Even if the website stays entrenched, how long will your brand of HTML remain useful?
So I selected generalist. Like a major league utility player, the generalist is great to have around to handle this or that in the event of personnel defections, spikes in workload or many other scenarios. Generalists don’t get a lot of glory, but they also don’t get a lot of blame. Plus, you get variety and exposure to all manner of things. If you enjoy learning, generalist is where it’s at.
I think most folks are and prefer to be generalists. How many people do you encounter at work that only do one or two things? There are doubtless a few, but most people handle multiple roles.
Roles and the definition of a role are very important when it comes to matching people’s skills, capabilities and preferences to a specific job.
It’s important to understand that jobs and roles are two different things. A job is defined as a collection of responsibilities and tasks within an organization. A role is a subset of a job. A job might be Staff Accounting Clerk. That job might include the roles AR Clerk, AP Clerk and Collections Clerk. So on any given day, the Accounting Clerk might be paying bills, posting receipts or leaning on deadbeat customers.
The person holding that job title will require three sets of information and tools to properly execute the job. The systems supporting that department and that job will need to be tailored specifically to that individual and how they will fill that role.
With role-tailored enterprise systems such as the Cincom Business Suite, the mass customization offered is manifested in precisely this manner. Roles are tailored to jobs not just to titles. No two companies are the same, and also no two jobs are a perfect match either. Flexibility is the key to effectively matching capability to role.
In the Cincom Business Suite, predefined roles are provided almost like templates. They can be tweaked individually to more fully match a specific individual need, and they can be combined or the individual can be assigned multiple roles. The individual role definition determines the access level and role type from a license perspective.
On a more tangible level, the attributes associated with a given role impact the design, content and tools made available on the dashboard designed for that role and individual.
As individuals move through their careers, they shed certain responsibilities and gain others. Along the way, security, accessibility, content and tool selection will change to reflect the changing nature of the job being done by the person.
This type of individual customization is much better than systems with fixed roles. With those architectures, those of us with many hats end up having many roles. This means the user is provided with information they do not need, functionality they do not fully understand and a far more complex work environment. None of that is conducive to efficiency, security or making life easier for the user.
Generalist or specialist, either way the Cincom Business Suite will make your ERP journey a more positive and productive one as you take the starring role in your business. To learn more about the Cincom Business Suite visit, dynamics.cincom.com.
