Not all experience is created equal. In the real estate brokerage world, some end up specializing in a subset of their local market and other specialize in the general needs of a business. If you need to understand the exact nuances of the medical office building market in Alpharetta Georgia, you are going to have a small list to reach out to. If you want to understand the typical real estate needs of a Fortune 500 company, you would reach out to a different set of people.
Neither experience is better or worse than the other but the localized broker has developed a very specific and specialized experience. If they were to branch out into other areas they would suddenly have less time to devote to the constantly changing world they had just left but would gain an additional degree of generalization. This is specialized versus generalized experience.
Some problems that we need to solve may require a degree of both specialized and generalized experience. If I were plotting a data center strategy for a Fortune 500 company, I would start with company needs but quickly require more specialized knowledge as the strategy got more and more specific. This type of project requires both needs but it’s easy to see where to start.
If, however, you were starting by trying to determine a strategy for a specific site within the portfolio you could start with either specialized or generalized experience. Both are equally valuable for getting the final answer but would approach the problem very differently.
This difference in viewing the world is one of the most fundamental differences between the two groups. People with specialized experience deeply understand the problems and issues that impact their world but can often have difficulty elevating themselves from the weeds to understand the broader implications of a problem. Generalized experience can lead you down the road of understanding broad problems but can cause you to miss the details that will impact the on-going day-to-day. Not everyone fits this pattern, but generally, this is how each group would first approach a problem.
It’s important to understand the perspectives of the people solving your problems. Are they looking at the micro or macro level of the problem? Even if they are looking at both, are they giving each side the same weight? Should they be giving each side the same weight? Are they changing their view as the project goes on?
If you can balance this problem then you’ve started down the road of either leadership or Program Management, but that’s a discussion for another day.