Develop knowledge not expertise – HR wisdom from frog and crocodile

Most people in corporate often work hard to acquire different areas of expertise to raise their value, merit, usefulness, relevance and demand in the organization they work. Many R&D scientists often show great greed and aggression to acquire MBA degree these days. So are people in different fields like sales, purchase, logistics etc., will try to invade newer territories in order to develop newer skills and capabilities. Many people in corporate these days also undergoes series to management training programmes to develop leadership qualities so that they can easily increase their chance and merit for promotion to the next level.

The debate is not about such an approach and or about whether such an approach is wrong or right. It is a well known axiom that diverse knowledge and skills are assumed to make the employees the most wanted and very capable for every organization. If we learn the cross functional areas or fields, certainly we can administer/manage things better. No one can ever dispute or refute the above truth. Nature also knows the above and that is how it has created ‘amphibious’ and ‘amphibian’ animals, certainly with some limitations.

The best example of the amphibian animal is frog. The frog is so vulnerable to wide variety of predators. The predatory animals that reside in land, water and in the air target the frogs. The hippos that fall prey to lions are the one that visits the land to graze. If the lions can holds up the hippos in land for longer time, they can easily hunt the hippos because the hippo cannot stay out of water for longer period of time.

The message is different. The cross functional exposure or knowledge always tempts people to experiment with the knowledge that they have acquired. More often, people move away from their domain expertise and try to display their scholarliness in other areas that they have just studied. When they encounter an expert in that particular field, these people easily get exposed like how when a hippo stays long in land or move away from water body would easily fall prey to lion or other predatory animals.

The management message is that, learn more and develop diverse expertise, but do not miss your domain / core expertise. To strengthen your domain expertise, use your diverse skills but never try to become an expert in many fields. Such an effort may fail you than really help you to achieve success.

When the hippo or crocodile use their amphibious ability for a transient period or during the hour of crisis, such an approach would certainly help to save their life. But if they use such ability to prove a difference, that might not work well. That is why crocodiles never try to chase and hunt its prey in land even if it is possible. They always attack the prey and drag them immediately to water. Only in aquatic medium, crocodiles could demonstrate its full strength.

The message to be understood is that never tries to develop expertise in several fields. Develop knowledge about different fields but be strong in your own area of expertise. Learn from the message of nature.

Dr S Ranganathan