At a SXSW panel yesterday titled Jacks of All Trades or Masters of One, the speakers took us through an exercise to find out if we were generalists or specialists. The generalist side of me won by one point, with the final ratio being 5:4 generalist to specialist. This panel was one I wanted to attend as I’m constantly struggling with whether I should focus on one thing, or continue to try to do many things and see what works best.

I like to call it entrepreneurial ADD.

Out of necessity I have become a generalist. If you run a business you need to know finance, sales, marketing, and much more, in addition to producing the actual work. If you want it to scale, you need to decide which part to separate yourself from. I’ve separated myself from the work, and now have an army of contractors here in the U.S. and offshore that I work with.

This works for me.

And I think it’s a requirement of a manager. A manager needs to understand a broad range of topics, though she doesn’t need to be able to dive deep into each. That’s why we have teams with specialists on them. However she needs to have her BS meter finely tuned, which means she need to understand the topic enough to know when it’s going off.

Being a generalist also helps to keep the big picture in mind. It’s very easy to bubble our worlds and get tunnel vision. To be an effective manager, we need to keep that big picture in mind, and help people understand where they fit into that picture.

So for me, I think I’ll stay a generalist.

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