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Steve Joneslee

C15 · proof of concept

Why there are so few generalists.

A consulting career bends toward specialization the way water runs downhill. Each year a specialist is paid more per hour, asked back more often, and reaches new prospects more efficiently than a generalist of equal talent. The market does not select against generalists out of distaste. It selects against them on cost.

Interactive chart of two curves over years in practice. Use the slider to choose a year between 0 and 25. The chart shows depth in chosen specialty rising and breadth across the method falling. Annotations explain the market mechanism at each milestone year.
Depth versus breadth over a consulting career At year 0, depth is near zero and breadth is near maximum. As years pass, depth rises asymptotically and breadth decays exponentially. 100% 50% 0% YEARS IN PRACTICE depth breadth
Years in practice 5
Depth in specialty 47%
Breadth across method 66%

Drag to change. Arrow keys work too.

Specialisation is not a personality trait. It is the path of least resistance through a market that prices specialists higher and refers them more often. A practitioner who stays broad over a long career is not less talented than a specialist of the same vintage; they are usually paid less, hired more conditionally, and obliged to re-prove competence each time the work crosses a category line. Most consultants who stay broad do so on purpose, against the slope.

This is the structural reason a method that requires three different skills is rare to find inside a single firm. Each skill, separately, is a defensible specialty — and each one rewards the consultant who lives entirely inside it. The combination is uncommon at the firm level because it is uncommon at the career level, and the career level is uncommon because the market doesn't pay for it the way it pays for depth.

Source. The selection-pressure argument is the central thesis of Andrew Abbott, The System of Professions: An Essay on the Division of Expert Labor (University of Chicago Press, 1988). The numeric milestones — rate premium for specialists, narrowing referral patterns, the cost of re-proving broad competence — are conservative composites drawn from professional-services industry research, including SPI Research's annual Professional Services Maturity Benchmark and reports from the Hinge Research Institute. The chart shapes are smooth approximations: depth ≈ 1−e−t/8, breadth ≈ e−t/12, scaled to 100. Treat the numbers as illustrative of the direction and the gap, not as point estimates of any particular career.

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