The specialist thing is tough. I’m struggling with that myself, because I don’t know how to put a label on what it is I do any more. The one company where I got to do everything, I was doing software, and that was the excuse I had to be dabbling in all aspects of the company from engineering to physics to biology to management. But my strength isn’t in software per se; I’m not a good programmer. My strength was my ability to successfully take all of the contradictory requirements from those different stakeholders and reconcile them in a way that made sense. But I have no idea what to call that.

Part of the reason I wanted to get out of programming and into management is that it seemed like a lot of the decisions being made were ignoring several stakeholders, and I didn’t have enough influence as a programmer to be in those meetings. But I still need a name for what it is I want to do. And get into a position where I can try it, for better or for worse.

As for the generalist vs. specialist, again I think that works for a small-scale business in which flexibility is required to stay alive. But again, what about in a large corporate environment? Being a generalist will get you fairly far, but unless you learn *some* specialization, you will learn that your skills may not be good enough for any one thing. What is a generalist to do in that situation? (I’m a generalist myself )

Have you read “Now, Discover your Strengths“? This book makes a good case for different kinds of strengths people have that enable them to become experts or generalists. The kind of person who can become an expert in successive fields exists – these are the people that derive pleasure from mastering something NEW, rather than from the status derived from any kind of mastery.

One of the many struggles in my life is the balance between focus and breadth. I obviously tend towards breadth. But one needs a certain amount of focus to succeed. It’s a tough question.