The Need for a Generalist

In most of my articles, I refer to Holmes only once, towards the end. This

piece will be different in the sense that it will refer to Mycroft Holmes right

from the beginning, because the idea here is Mycroft Holmes.

In the Canon of Sherlock Holmes, which comprises 56 short stories and four

long ones, major references are made to Mycroft Holmes, the elder brother of

Sherlock Holmes (seven years elder, just in case you wonder) only twice. Sir

Arthur Conan Doyle, while touching upon The Great Detective, has sadly neglected

Mycroft, who, according to the personal endorsement of Sherlock Holmes himself,

was a far more intelligent person.

Mycroft Holmes was not a detective. Instead, he was a person who worked for

the British government. He was an outstanding person who channeled his

remarkable mental energies towards determining which factor could affect

another.

He could also easily tell how a series of events could have an impact upon

one another.

For example, let's assume that a particular minister needs information

concerning the Navy, India, Canada and the bimetallic question. He could obtain

specific knowledge from various departments, but only Mycroft alone could focus

all of them together and relate offhand how any one factor could affect the

other. The conclusions of all departments were passed to him and Mycroft

primarily acted as a central repository not for the storage of data, but for the

analysis of information.

In short, he was the ideal generalist, in a world, which, even at that time,

was too full of specialists.

In infotech too, this happens. We have a lot of specialists, and I am not

blaming this trend. Infotech is a very intricate field, and one needs to either

specialize or get out. My concern is that people take this issue of specialism

to great and often unnecessary heights. For, today, while we have data

centralized repositories, which store information, should we not have some

people who can analyze that information?

True, people do analyze, but only in bits and pieces. The analysis we are

talking about is something which rises far above pulling out some set of figures

from a huge database and then pronouncing judgment based upon it.

Now, let us consider what the ideal generalist should do. He should, to a

great extent, be an armchair reasoner, who looks at various factors and wonders

about the possible outcome. He should be the observer, who, by refusing to

participate, becomes all the keener an observer.

The generalist takes a philosophical approach, and the implementers take a

more pragmatic approach.

Since ours is an industry which swings with the erratic nature of a pendulum–a

pendulum on the high seas during a terrific gale, if our stock markets are

considered–a word of caution is needed. One should not be having too many

generalists around. The world, whatever people may say, needs specialists to run

it. The generalist should exist primarily to offer some assistance to the

specialists, and to filter out the relevant data and obtain a bird’s eye-view

of the whole scenario.

Also, since we are often given to believing magic mantras, which claim to

cure all ills, we must stress that this is not something like total quality

management or business process re-engineering. A generalist in your company will

not be able to move mountains or work miracles. At best, he can be relied upon

to offer a different view–because he has all the information collated in one

place and understands the overall impact–or offer some strategic advice. One

still needs other people in order to ensure smooth operations.

Parthian shot

In The Adventure of the Bruce-Partington Plans, Sherlock has this to say of

Mycroft: "They began by using him as a short-cut, a convenience; now he has

made himself an essential." Hopefully, such will become the role of a

generalist in a company.

BALAJI N The views expressed

here are those of the author