The Generalist Trap

A guy I've been talking to described himself as a generalist three times in one call. He meant it as a strength. He'd done product, ops, some sales, a stretch running support. Fifteen years of being the person who could do whatever the company needed.

And he couldn't figure out why nobody was calling him back.

So I asked him to do something uncomfortable. Name the one thing he'd want to be the first call for. Not the things he can do. The one thing.

Long pause. Then: "I don't want to box myself in."

That's the trap. He thought breadth was the asset, so he was selling all of it at once, and the market was hearing none of it. A hiring manager doesn't scan a profile asking "what can this person do." They scan it asking "what is this person." If the answer takes a paragraph, they move on before they finish reading it.

Here's the thing about being a generalist. It's real, and it's valuable, and it is almost never what gets you in the door. It's what makes you good once you're inside. Range is how you perform. A sharp edge is how you get hired.

The fix isn't to throw away the other four things. It's to pick the one lane the market actually pays for, lead with that, and let the breadth show up as depth behind it. He didn't need to stop being a generalist. He needed to stop opening with it.

We landed on operations leadership for product-stage companies. Everything else, the sales stretch, the support run, became evidence for that one claim instead of four competing claims. Same fifteen years. One door instead of a hallway of half-open ones.

If someone asked you to name the one thing you want to be the first call for, could you do it without a "but"?