Gurus versus Jack of All Trades: Which one to choose?

Aristotle

The above tittle relates to the expression of "The whole is bigger that the sum if its parts". The phrase was first coined by the theorist Aristotle who adopted a systems approach to the management of organisations. The term denotes the fact that the whole is made up of smaller parts that make up a system called an organisation. With the advent of the recent approaches to human resource management on people being experts in more than one functional area of the business, the question of whether this expression of the whole is bigger than the sum of its part is still relevant.

In organisations where people are expected to have knowledge of the varying operational or functional areas of the organisation, efficiency becomes a problem and the output tends to be average. This is based on the fact that people do not become gurus of their trade but people who have a holistic understanding on organisational operations. The benefit would then be that organisation's production would not delay because a particular individual was running late or sick.

In having gurus of trade, employees master their area of operation so good that the work output is unparalelled. Efficiency in such organisation is enhanced and helps the business organisation become a leader in its sector. The downside would then be that should the guru have personal matters to attend to, production comes to a standstill. This approach has also been criticised for not taking cognizance of the human factor as employees are only considered machines that do not have lives of their own apart from their work.

In the era of personalisation and customer experience, it is thus important to balance both approaches to enable efficient organisational operation. A balance should be drawn of tailoring organisational services with the actual experience of the whole organisation by its clients.