I read an interesting post from Bill McCloskey on the
That sounds good, but I don't agree. First, it presupposes that your marketing campaigns are big enough for all of these specialists. It might be good advice for Procter & Gamble but I don't think it's good advice for Procter Plumbing & Heating. Generalists are the only game in town for most businesses and they do a good job.
But I wonder if it is good advice even for large businesses. As someone who's spent a lot of time inside IBM's marketing apparatus, I always found specialization to be a necessary evil. Yes, you absolutely need specialists for that deep information that gives your business an edge, but the more they retreat into their professional disciplines, the more prone they are to a special brand of myopia that I have christened "
Well, it turned out the Webmasters were right. IBM has increased its search traffiic 25 times since that day, all without doing either of those things I suggested. I am happy that people took my advice in many other areas, but the Webmasters were right to ignore those two gems. We didn't need to do either one. I learned a valuable lesson about how specialists think and ever since I have tried to have a more general, balanced outlook so that we make decisions faster with less contention. And I don't think that approach has dimmed my expertise any—I think being practical is the right way to deliver the most value with your expertise. Bill actually seems to favor a contention system between multiple specialists to get the best result: "What you want is someone who is corralling those passionate about search, RSS, email, banners, rich media, mobile marketing, WOMM, social networks, viral into a room and figuring out an integrated strategy that makes sense." I think that can work, but better than cross-functional teams are cross-functional people. Contention systems are SLOOOW. And what we need these days is more quick decisions and less arguing to achieve the dreaded consensus. Specialist Disease puts a real crimp in your pace. I'd rather Comments Tag:
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