SUPER SPECIALIZATION
Speaking of super, I am a super of fan of creating exclusivity in our expertise-based services businesses through intellectual property assets. Remember, intellectual property rights are a legal monopoly! No one can use your IP without your permission. Doesn’t get much more exclusive than that.
But there is another way to achieve exclusivity—super specialization.
Consider this perspective from the medical world as detailed in The Checklist Manifesto by Atul Gawande:
As the intricacies involved in intensive care have grown, responsibility has increasingly shifted to superspecialists.
We live in the era of the superspecialist—of clinicians who have taken the time to practice, practice, practice at one narrow thing until they can do it better than anyone else. They have two advantages over ordinary specialists: greater knowledge of the details that matter and a learned ability to handle the complexities of the particular job.
The result of the recent decades of ever-refined specialization has been a spectacular improvement in surgical capability and success. Where deaths were once a double-digit risk of even small operations, and prolonged recovery and disability was the norm, day surgery has become commonplace.
When applied to our businesses, super specialization renders us uncommodifiable. The benefits are a sales advantage where we win more than we lose and allows us to charge premium prices: “Our goal when endeavoring to position ourselves against our competition is to reduce or outright eliminate them. When we drastically reduce the real alternatives to hiring our firm, we shift the power balance away from the client and toward us.” (From The Win Without Pitching Manifesto by Blair Enns.)
The moral of this story: Practice in a narrow specialization until you become better than anyone else. Or, as my kid would say, keep going until you become king of the mountain. 👑
Stay tuned for next week’s edition, where I’ll talk about the role that journaling plays in achieving super specialization.