Tuesday, November 9, 2004
Which is preferable: experts or generalists?
A business principle I sometimes find myself wondering about is whether it's better to have some employees who are experts and therefore necessary to smooth work progress - or - to have many employees who know how to do things well (if not necessarily at the expert level). The first cogent issue is what "better" means. If the main goal is efficiency, then it's probably better to have more people who know a lot even if no one is superb. If the predominant goal is high quality, then it's important to have some superduper performers. But suppose you want highly qualitative efficency. And keeping in mind that you always want fairly content employees, another piece of the puzzle is personal satisfaction. In the efficiently qualitative business, don't people who are high performers feel held back and discouraged from shining and excelling, while midlevel performers feel inadequate? What's the way to maximize it all?
Labels: huh?, reflections
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