The managerial ability to specialize doesn’t refer to professional training such as in medicine, the law, or the various engineering disciplines. It has broadly to do with what business function or process you work in, or are concerned with at any given time.
A specialist in a particular business process, such as logistics or marketing, for example, might be described as concerned with the “little arrows.” The bosses upstairs develop the grand plan - the big arrow. They then announce that this is the path the organization is to take.
This is where the little arrows come in. They must all be lined up in just the right way across all functions and processes, intersecting and joining into mid-sized arrows at just the right times and places in order to give the strategic plan effective expression.
This is execution. It is obviously vital. But it is also commonly deficient, if not altogether dysfunctional. A major reason for this is that specialists tend to lose contact with the strategic plan.
Managers work hard to develop real expertise and to succeed in their specialty. But in many cases they - individually, or even whole units and departments - develop a myopic dedication to advancing their narrowly defined charter. Sometimes, this even takes on the unfortunate dynamic of bureaucratic fights for survival beyond a group’s (or a position’s) original purpose for being formed.
This is not execution. The lesson to take from it (and similar common problems with untethered focus) is that in order to specialize effectively, you must do so within an awareness of your specialty’s role in the larger corporate picture. This will help ensure your activities within your prescribed area are more organizationally efficient than they might otherwise have been, while also helping you to maintain a grasp on broader, more enduringly critical managerial skills.
This is worth paying close attention to as you build your career and work your way up. Moreover, it should be noted that this strategic detachment doesn’t occur only with formal functional or procedural specialties, but even simply with specific time-bounded tasks or assignments. And the interesting thing is that it seems to be a natural dynamic that occurs even as we observe its detrimental effects.
So, you must learn to be an effective specialist, because that is what leads to effective organizational execution. And as you do so, you should strive to develop the ability to accomplish your activities in organizationally relevant ways. This may relate to general processes within a business function, or specific assignments within a larger project. Focus, develop the necessary expertise, accomplish your objectives - but do so without losing your perspective.
If you fail to learn this, you become a part of the centrifugal influences that work to disperse and weaken organizational force and progress. An over-specializing or over-focused manager at any level runs the risk of missing the forest for the trees.
As we will see, this is a pervasive problem. Tomorrow, we’ll look a bit more closely at how to help deal with it. But it should be born in mind that it is only a part of a larger one, which we’ll return to on Thursday. Don’t forget to stop back!
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Today’s tip: Speaking of drifting aimlessly, please see this intriguing piece from Management-Issues explaining how and why bosses’ confidence in their own judgment can vary unreasonably.
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2 Comments
Somewhere up the line a leader must switch from practicing his or her speciality to becoming a general manager. At that point, the leader’s interpersonal skills become more important than his or her technical skills.
Since the all the leader’s work is done through relationships, thinking about and translating the corporate culture’s intangible identity elements (i.e. assumptions/beliefs, values, vision and guiding principles) into meaningful conversations is what’s important strategically.
The alternative to remain a technician working ‘in’ the business and giving up the corporate leadership CEO role to one who is willing to lead by working ‘on’ the business. This frequently happens with founders of technical ventures from local entrepreneurs to Microsoft’s Bill Gates.
Hello John,
Thank you for stopping by, and for your comments.
I agree completely that ultimately the manager must develop into a generalist as he or she approaches the top levels of the profession (although many positions there also are subject to the dangers of specialization). I will address that directly in Thursday’s post. The point of these current posts is to remind those who are compelled to build their careers on success in a specialty that they can also wind up side-tracking them in those specialties, and that they will want to maintain a wider view in order to help prevent this.
The point in your second paragraph is very close to a key element of what I will argue in the post on the generalist on Thursday.
The dilemma encountered in a business - particularly seen, or obvious, in tech businesses - that is started by a specialist but then risks foundering unless taken over by a more broadly-skilled manager is an excellent way to highlight the issues, here - thanks for that!
And thanks again for stopping by, and for your work and writing at your excellent site!
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[...] The flip side of that for the top manager is to establish and personally support the strategically-oriented communication systems necessary help everyone else in the organization to do that, rather than leave it to them to figure out on their own. Two days ago we spoke of specialists who work at the “small arrow” level. They sometimes over-focus on these, coming to see them as the main point of their work, rather than as a means to a larger end. [...]
[...] Recall that in today’s organizations, the specialist outlook is essentially centrifugal. It is your very lack of it that enables you to make truly effective use of it, integrating it with the products of other specialties and other managerial inputs, and disciplining it to the needs of the organization. [...]
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