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Specialisation: Difference between revisions
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{{a|design|}} | {{a|design|}}{{quote|''A human being should be able to change a diaper, plan an invasion, butcher a hog, conn a ship, design a building, write a sonnet, balance accounts, build a wall, set a bone, comfort the dying, take orders, give orders, cooperate, act alone, solve equations, analyze a new problem, pitch manure, program a computer, cook a tasty meal, fight efficiently, die gallantly. Specialization is for insects.'' | ||
:{{author|Robert Heinlein}} | |||
''Universities bear some responsibility for its extinction. Classical Greece, Renaissance Italy and Victorian England all revered and rewarded generalists, for whom today universities have little or no space or patience. Enclosed departments in discrete spaces, with their own journals and jargons, are a legacy of lamentable, out-of-date ways of organising knowledge and work.'' | |||
:{{Author|Felipe Fernández-Armesto}}, {{plainlinks|https://www.timeshighereducation.com/comment/columnists/the-passing-of-the-polymaths/2019113.article|Times Higher Educational Supplement}}, March 2015}} | |||
Since the time of [[Adam Smith]] it has been a truism that specialisation enhances productivity. | Since the time of [[Adam Smith]] it has been a truism that specialisation enhances productivity. | ||
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Conversely: if a task cannot be automated, then back it up to the point where it is sufficiently challenging, and the problems concentrated enough, to be demanding and requiring of expertise. | Conversely: if a task cannot be automated, then back it up to the point where it is sufficiently challenging, and the problems concentrated enough, to be demanding and requiring of expertise. | ||
That this may involve greater cost is not the only consideration; there are hidden meta-costs | That this may involve greater cost is not the only consideration; there are hidden meta-costs — [[wastes]], in fact — associated with segmentation too. There is a ''lateral'' cost to segmentation. Every handoff generates waste, requires supervision, involves superstructure which would not otherwise be there. | ||
— [[wastes]], in fact — associated with segmentation too. There is a lateral cost to segmentation. Every handoff generates waste, requires supervision, involves superstructure which would not otherwise be there. | |||
This segmentation not only ''encourages'' jobsworthism, but ''mandates'' it. From [[credit]], you may have a strong sense that the process in [[operations]] is idiotic, and the poor school-leavers in Bratislava expected to carry it out have no hope of succeeding, but there is nothing to be gained, and much to be lost, from articulating that position. Better by far to observe the [[sacred oath]], keep trap shut, and tut sadly when, as surely it will, the operations process spontaneously immolates causing a $30m loss. | |||
{{sa}} | {{sa}} | ||
*[[Silo]] | *[[Silo]] | ||
{{c|negotiation}} | {{c|negotiation}} | ||