Technique

You may consider my concern yesterday rooted from the prejudice against administrators. I must admit I do - but my worry was actually more extensive.

Let's take aside the existence of administrator and consider purely from the perspective of a front line worker: What should the boss do for an outstanding bank teller ?

Get this staff promoted to a "more important" position, such as loan and mortgage, investment or private banking, of course.

For the same reason, house officers who could insert a drip well would try to learn putting in a central line, cardiology trainee moves from simple echocardiogram to angioplasty, and surgeons from appendectomy to liver transplantation.

The very problem is: a cardiologist proficient in invasive things would inevitably do less echocardiogram - and be less excelled in the latter. The same problem would happen for a professor of transplant surgeon to remove an appendix. (As Sherlock Holmes rightly pointed out, our brain has limited space for a working memory. After all, there is only 24 hours for all of us - you can never practice everything.)

You can always name some who are exceptionally gifted for many things. I agree there are many genius around - but there's just an over-supply of mediocre.

And no genius is perfect in every aspect - and the risk is we could hardly know which particular aspect is he less gifted.