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