SELF IMPROVEMENT

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Usually, having people specialize in specific tasks within the chain of a business process, provides economy of scale and learning advantages. Let's see where the specialized approach can harm and where the opposite approach could operate advantageously.
In the early days, SPS assigned account managers to each client.
Deciding to increase productivity, SPS added four more specialists (links) to the sequence. Instead of one person handling the whole chain of events, the company had a telemarketer, a salesperson, a recruiter, a customer service rep and a project manager. At best the company was equally effective. If you measured customer retention, the company ended up being less effective. People at the end of any chain often lack an appropriate interest in details at the start of the chain. Vested interests - people with specialized jobs - did not want to revert to the old model.
The Middleman
The same shoes would cost me $225 in Ottawa.
No middleman. Now to our shoes. For the average consumer the added links of specialists in this shoe purchase all the links of the chain are valuable; for Bill Caswell on this occasion, they were not.
The People Situation
If the basis for company success is people, it would seem to follow that the company's relationship with people would be at the head of its list of 'must pay attention to'. Certainly many companies espouse the people-concern approach.
Most companies do not respond to all people's email job submissions with a simple thank you note.
Many companies pass the initial resume search tasks to junior staff rather than to senior staff.
Many companies tell applicants NOT to phone the company to inquire more about the job or details of the company.
Dangers of Specializing
Business is not alone, our school system, in fact, the entire Western world school system, has added more and more links to the chain to the point where it has lost sight of its objective; it is no longer effectiveness.
The measure of effectiveness is: are we meeting the needs of our customers? Learning is a basic human trait - all people, all animals learn every day and want to learn. Commercial business education centres thrive everywhere. People WANT to learn. People thrill at learning - and so do children, given an effective environment.
Back to people, as the most important issue of any company. Specifically, we suggest that too many links in the human hiring chain keep some of those links out of touch with the overall purpose of soliciting, assessing and hiring new staff.
Specialization creates efficiencies of scale, yet every hand-off creates inefficiencies, i.e. losses - usually of information. If you plan on adding links to your process chain, you should weigh each new link carefully against the alternative of not adding that specialist or that middleman. Create a means to measure the resulting effectiveness of adding a link to the chain and objectives for that new link. If the effectiveness is in order, then you may proceed but create a way to measure the resulting efficiency.