General Knowledge vs. Specialized Knowledge

There are a lot of cases when a person may need general or specialized knowledge. However, in many cases, this person can not even identify which one is required. Let us check when each type of knowledge is useful and why a person may need it.

General Knowledge

The primary purpose of general knowledge is to understand the domain or business model to understand what is going on and how to use this model correctly. It may also include information about the internal and external processes that a person must understand to use the model. It often contains lots of general examples that cover a wide variety of tasks and problems.

General knowledge is usually relatively easy to acquire as many people already have it and can share it. There are many documentation sources, and it is easy to understand just by looking at the processes.

Another significant advantage of general knowledge is that it gives a person an overall picture of the model structure. Consequently, it is easy to see which areas may require extra attention during future work.

Specialized Knowledge

Any person will need this type of knowledge to solve complicated problems or perform unusual tasks. It includes in-depth knowledge in one or several areas related to the processes and model in question. It usually contains a limited number of examples, but each has a detailed description of the specific task or problem.

Specialized knowledge may be hard or tricky to acquire because of its nature and narrow usage scope. Sometimes it may be documented appropriately, especially if the is a chance to face it more than a couple of times. However, there are more examples when the task or problem was solved locally without sharing the solution with the community.

The most significant advantage of specialized knowledge is that it helps solve complicated issues that don’t have a standard or a typical solution. However, such knowledge often takes a lot of time to acquire, and it may be costly.

Maintain The Balance

General knowledge is useful on many occasions, so it is almost always worth investing some time and money into getting this knowledge. A person with such knowledge will not have a unique specialization and high salary, but he will be able to solve 90-95% of the problems that may happen every day. Another consequence of this approach is that it is relatively easy to substitute such a person.

On the contrary, specialized knowledge is significantly harder and more expensive to acquire, and it helps in only 5-10% of the cases. However, these are the most complicated cases, and so salary for performing such tasks is significantly higher. It may not be easy to find such a person, so it is always worth evaluating the situation regularly to predict when a complicated task may appear.

To summarize, it is always good to have general knowledge. As for the specialized one — you should consider the situations when it may be required, estimate how expensive it is to acquire, and do it only when it is worth it, or there is no other option. In all other cases, it is easier to use the external help of an expert. It is a flexible and balanced approach that saves time and other resources in almost every situation and solves any problem in time.