Visionary has become a dirty word. And the dirty word is generalist

Marketing can well do without another ism. But this one needs calling out with all the vehemence that would be directed at everyday sexism or ageism. Casual generalist-ism is alive and well in our industry and it is working its black magic to insidious effect.

The twisted but seductive logic goes like this. If you’re not a specialist then you must be a generalist, which means you are a Jack Of All Trades, and therefore you can’t be an expert. The only alternative to being a master of one trade is to be the master of none.

That is bullshit. But it is powerful bullshit. It is the bullshit of least resistance.

It is a seller’s market for specialists. Clients are buying specialist expertise and agency CEOs are naturally prone to selling what clients want to buy, even if it is not what they need. Agencies, particularly specialist agencies, are very good at comfortable collusion.

For the time being at least, life is good for specialists.

You say “specialist”, they hear “expert”. They hear “the answer to my problem”.

For the time being no one hears “siloed thinking”. No one hears “one trick pony”.

We generalists need a repositioning job. We need some positive reappraisal.

What do we want them to hear instead of “Jack of all trades”?

Maybe we should celebrate the fact that we are not the answer to their problem, rather than try to resist the notion. When they say “the answer to my problem” they presuppose that they know what their problem actually is. They presuppose that they are asking the right question. And they presuppose that a certain kind of specialist expertise is the answer.

Let the specialists do their specialist things in response to these “specified solution” briefs.

We generalists come into our own when our clients are stuck. Even better when we act as a “you are stuck but you don’t know it yet” early warning system. We do our thing when clients don’t know what specialist things they need. Our first job is not to jump to a solution but to frame the problem.

As Richard Huntingdon put it in a recent essay on the future of strategy for Admap, “we help resolve the fundamental questions that a brand or business faces, questions that are about direction rather than simply progress. It is disruptive because it embraces the need to step beyond the conditions that have delivered success to date”.

Providing direction rather than making progress towards a specified goal is a profound, upstream idea. It is the proposition for a generalist utopia.

You say generalist, I hear problem definer. I hear opportunity spotter. I hear intuitive, high-concept strategist. I hear context appreciator and interpreter. I hear imaginative leaper. I hear high value, visionary thinker.

One of the attractions of writing opinion pieces is that the format requires you to be unbalanced. It is the opposite of a discursive essay, which looks at an issue from all perspectives. You are given a soap box and 700 words with which to convey a single-issue manifesto.

However, I have nothing against specialists. A lot of the smartest people I know are specialists. My planning department is full of them, and one of my greatest joys is when two specialist tribes go to war on a problem and solve it in an original, elegant way. Indeed, my job is largely about creating a conducive environment for such ingenious collisions and collaborations to happen.

So, whilst it is sad that visionary has become a dirty word, and that the dirty word is generalist, I don’t really believe that generalist-ism is a specialist conspiracy.

We generalists are victims of hapless complicity. We have allowed ourselves to be defined by what we are not, instead of promoting and celebrating our essence and our worth.

Phil Adams is planning director at Blonde Digital. He can be found tweeting here.