Jack Of All Trades - And The Bit We Don't Hear

Image by Wokandapix from Pixabay 

There’s a perennial debate about the value of generalists versus specialists, that is, are we better off as generalists or should we all work to become specialists. We all tend to have a particular view as to which one is actually better, certainly from a career development perspective. And usually our point of view is encapsulated in a popular figure of speech - or at least the portion(s) of it that we quote, to serve our case.

If we believe in the generalist approach, we like to use the term “Jack of all trades”, as in “She’s so versatile, she’s a Jack of all trades”. The point is that the individual in question brings to bear a wide range of capabilities that she can knit together, depending on the situation, to get the job done.

The fuller - and, for many, more popular - figure of speech is “Jack of all trades, master of none”. This suggests, obviously, that while this individual has a multitude of skills, they lack depth in any one area, and by extension, this is a negative, because depth in a specific field is what defines our value to the enterprise we support. If I’m not good at something, then what am I good at?

I’m not going to pretend to answer this question definitively, except that I will say that we need both. (Sure, call that a cop-out.)

We need the specialists who deliver depth in a singular area, who develop and redefine our thinking in their discipline and push the envelope in new ways based on their intricate understanding of their subject matter.

But we also need the generalists, who are able to step back from the fray and observe the forest for the trees, if you will. They can bring together the multitude of disciplines that are essential to any successful enterprise, in ways that the specialists cannot. They can often factor in the end goal more succinctly, more clearly than the specialists, because they aren’t caught up by the “beauty of the product” for the product’s sake. 

(By the way, this debate has been receiving more airtime of late thanks to a recent book on the topic that argues for the former than the latter.)

So I think there’s room for them both, and judgements about the value and impact of one versus the other needs to be contextual and focused on the problem at hand. For long term success, they go hand in hand. 

But generalists, in particular, have received short shrift in recent years. They’ve been denigrated in favor of the specialist time and time again, and I think that’s short sighted. It will serve us well to be balanced in our view of the skillsets we develop in ourselves and expect in others - which is perfectly encapsulated in the full version of the “Jack of all trades” figure of speech, which actually (and surprisingly) is:

Jack of all trades, master of none,

though oftentimes better than master of one.