Once upon a time, there was a bakery. The bakery was owned by a rich and powerful man who only visited the shop a few days each month. In his absence the shop was run by an expert baker who had many employees working under him. These employees, sales clerks, delivery drivers, pastry chefs, dish washers, and far away regional sales managers were all specialized in their respective work areas and brought unique skill sets to their jobs. Though not everyone loved it, the bakery had kept its doors open and survived past the two year mark when many start-up businesses fold. It had a small, but loyal following and was working hard to make incremental improvements to how things were done.

One day, the owner called the baker and told him that the next day there would be a truck of meat arriving and that they would be running the butcher shop next door to the bakery from now on too. “But sir,” says the baker, “we don’t have the equipment or the skills to operate a butcher shop. Perhaps,” he adds, “we should hire a butcher to run this new shop.” But the owner, clearly knowing best, told the baker, “don’t worry, just go in there and hack away at things until you figure it out. It’s not that hard to cut meat and besides, we’re not really worried about quality.” Shaking is head, the baker opens the shop the next morning. His staff does their best, but none of them have been trained at meat cutting and what could have become fine steaks were chopped beyond redemption and because the entire staff was consumed with opening the butcher shop, none of the bread, or pies, or doughnuts, were baked that day. As the staff focused on learning the skills of a butcher, their skills as bakers, and clerks, and delivery drivers slowly deteriorated and by the time they were even marginal butchers, their bakery had lost its customers to competing businesses that focused on their “bread and butter.”

The moral of our story is that in a world of specialists, it’s important, even critical, to use people where there skills and training are maximized. Where new or different skills are needed, those skill sets need to be developed through training or brought in from the outside. When you ask bakers to be butchers, don’t be surprised when things don’t work out as well as you’d hoped.