SPECIALISATION - IS IT A GOOD THING?

I’ve been thinking about the issue of specialisation. My father was a GP many, many years ago. In those days, GPs dealt with pretty much everything. Whatever a patient came in with, they handled. Of course, sometimes people needed to go to hospital because of an emergency.  And sometimes they would be referred to a specialist, if their GP didn’t have the required knowledge, or equipment, to deal with their problem. But, on the whole, GPs were the source of their solution.

Nowadays specialising seems to be on the increase. Not just for doctors, but in other fields as well. And in order to stand out, we all have to have a USP (unique selling proposition), so we can differentiate ourselves from the competition and this tends to mean we get more and more niche in order to have a competitive advantage.

It seems to me that there are pros and cons of both generalists and specialists (in any field) and here are just a few of them:

GENERALISTS

Pros

·      They can take an overview, or a holistic approach, to an issue, being able to see things in context, rather than isolation, and put minor issue into perspective.

·      They can adapt to a wide variety of situations.

·      They can be more economical in some fields, as one generalist can be less expensive to employ than several specialists.

Cons

·      They don’t usually have in-depth knowledge and skills across a wide range of issues.

·      They may not come across particular problems often, so their expertise in dealing with them may be low.

·      They may find it harder to get recognition than people with a readily identifiable area of activity.    

SPECIALISTS

Pros

·      They become very familiar with a specific range of issues or problems and are therefore (but not inevitably) more likely to be effective in dealing with them.

·      They can gain information, knowledge, skills and contacts readily as they are only seeking these within a relatively small field.

·      They are usually competing within a small ‘pond’ rather than a large one, narrowing the competition for their services.

Cons

·      They may not be familiar with developments outside their specialist area and could miss out on potentially useful knowledge.

·      They may not communicate with specialists in other areas of their overall sphere and therefore miss out on cross-fertilisation.

·      If circumstances change, their niche may cease to exist.

An interesting TV series some months back took individuals with medical complaints that had not been resolved and brought together a panel of specialists in different areas of medicine to consider their cases. Each had a different opinion on what might be wrong and it was enlightening to hear their discussions on the patients and see how each case was eventually (if sometimes only partially) resolved. If only one of those specialists (or maybe a generalist alone) had been involved then some of the cases might never have been diagnosed effectively.

 There are many other issues, for example:

·      How work specialisation is affected by changing economic, social and technological circumstances.

·      How an individual can be a generalist in one field and a specialist in another at the same time. 

·      Whether there are limits to how far specialisation can go (I can’t remember the source of this quote, but it is: “A specialist is a someone who know more and more about less and less until they know absolutely everything about almost nothing”.     

I’d really like to know your thoughts or opinions on this topic. Are you a specialist – or not – and why? Do you purchase specialist knowledge or skills and, if so, in what field?  How do you see the future in terms of specialising increasing or decreasing – or do you think it will remain much as it is?