Skip to main content
Contact Sales Support Careers
United States (English)
Americas
  • United States (English)
  • Canada (English)
  • Canada (Français)
  • Mexico (Español)
Europe, Middle East & Africa
  • United Kingdom (English)
  • France (Français)
  • Deutschland (Deutsch)
  • Nederland (Nederlands)
  • Other EMEA Locations
Asia/Pacific
  • India (English)
  • Australia (English)
UKG logo UKG logo
Search
Get started Get started
    • Solutions
      Solutions by Need
      People icon
      Human Resources
      Payroll icon
      Payroll
      Talent icon
      Talent
      People connected icon
      HR Service Delivery
      Clock with Person
      Time & Attendance
      Calendar day icon
      Scheduling
      Document check shield icon
      Compliance
      Chart bar statistics icon
      Reporting and Analytics
      Product Suites
      UKG Pro

      A culture-driven HCM suite designed to support your enterprise organization's needs.

      UKG Dimensions

      Workforce Management solution helping you redefine the work experience for your people.

      UKG Ready

      HR solution to help small and mid-size organizations focus on growth and making a difference for your people, every time.

      View all products
      Find the product that best fits your needs.
      Get started Get started
      get started
    • Customer Experience
      The UKG Promise

      With over 70 years of expertise with BOTH people systems and systems of work, no one knows people and how they work better than UKG.

      Our Promise
      Customer Experience

      We think you’re pretty special when you’re a UKG Customer. That’s why we build products designed to inspire your people — and your organization — to grow and thrive.

      Partner for Life
      Implementation
      Support Experience
      UKG Community
      Working Smarter Café
      Customer Stories
      Belle Tire

      UKG Pro streamlines and automates administrative and HR tasks, so that field teams and managers can spend more time with customers, and coach, train, and listen to their people.

      Eventide Senior Living Communities

      Eventide Senior Living Communities uses UKG to drive employee engagement and streamline workforce management and HCM, including cutting PBJ reporting time by 99%.

      See all customer stories
      Collaborate, learn, and get support for your UKG solution!
      Visit UKG Community Visit UKG Community
    • Resources
      • Research & Insights
        Research & Insights
        • By Business Need
        • By Type
        See all
        Growth icon
        Human Capital Management
        People icon
        Human Resources
        People connected icon
        HR Service Delivery
        Payroll icon
        Payroll
        Talent icon
        Talent
        Chart tree people icon
        Workforce Management
        Clock with Person
        Time & Attendance
        Calendar day icon
        Scheduling
        Document check shield icon
        Compliance
        Chart bar statistics icon
        Reporting and Analytics
        Lightbulb icon
        Product Info
        Video player icon
        Product Tour
        Article featured icon
        Analyst Report
        Document icon
        White Paper
        Book icon
        eBook
        Organization icon
        Industry Brief
        Chart bar icon
        Infographic
        News people icon
        Article
        Video player icon
        Webinar Replay
        Interactive
      Research & Insights
      • By Business Need
      • By Type
      See all
      Growth icon
      Human Capital Management
      People icon
      Human Resources
      People connected icon
      HR Service Delivery
      Payroll icon
      Payroll
      Talent icon
      Talent
      Chart tree people icon
      Workforce Management
      Clock with Person
      Time & Attendance
      Calendar day icon
      Scheduling
      Document check shield icon
      Compliance
      Chart bar statistics icon
      Reporting and Analytics
      Lightbulb icon
      Product Info
      Video player icon
      Product Tour
      Article featured icon
      Analyst Report
      Document icon
      White Paper
      Book icon
      eBook
      Organization icon
      Industry Brief
      Chart bar icon
      Infographic
      News people icon
      Article
      Video player icon
      Webinar Replay
      Interactive
      Events
      Tradeshows
      Conferences
      Webinars
      See all events
      Blogs
      The People Purpose Blog

      Your source for the latest life-work trends and ideas from UKG experts and leaders. Stay informed and put people first in all you do.

      Workforce Institute

      Think tank that helps organizations drive performance by addressing HCM and workforce management issues.

      Workplace Resources
      Great Place To Work
      Pay Equity Resources
      Human Insights
      UKG Developer Hub
      UKG Pro Ranks Highest in 2022 Gartner Critical Capabilities for Cloud HCM Suites for the North American Midmarket Use Case
      Get The Report
      Get The Report
      Reference Image
      UKG Ranks Highest in 2022 Gartner Critical Capabilities for Cloud HCM Suites

      Read the Gartner® Critical Capabilities analysis for UKG Pro®.

    • About Us
      About UKG

      Learn more about UKG and how our HR solutions inspire workforces and businesses around the world to drive people-focused results.

      About Us
      Why UKG
      UKG Leadership
      Newsroom
      Awards & Recognition
      UKG Ambassadors
      Culture
      Our ESG Program
      Partners
      UKG Marketplace
      Analyst Reports
      Careers

      Look to your future. If you're interested in working for a company that truly invests in their people to create a culture of belonging and innovation, we want you on our team.

      Careers at UKG
      Early Career & Internships
      Benefits
      Life at UKG
      Featured Locations
      FAQs
      Experience awesome at work.
      Search jobs at UKG Search jobs at UKG
    Contact Sales Support Careers
    United States (English)
    Americas
    • United States (English)
    • Canada (English)
    • Canada (Français)
    • Mexico (Español)
    Europe, Middle East & Africa
    • United Kingdom (English)
    • France (Français)
    • Deutschland (Deutsch)
    • Nederland (Nederlands)
    • Other EMEA Locations
    Asia/Pacific
    • India (English)
    • Australia (English)
    Find the product that best fits your needs.
    Get started Get started
    get started
    Search Get started Get started
    Life-Work Trends

    Is Specialization Overrated?

    July 27, 2022
    Business Resiliency: The hummingbird vs. the rat strategy
    • Share
    See all blog stories See all blog stories
    Stay up to date with The People Purpose Blog
    Subscribe via email Subscribe via email
    Subscribe via RSS

    Written By

    Ryan Alexander headshot
    Ryan Alexander​
    Director, Research and Innovation​

    As a Director of Research and Innovation at UKG, Ryan Alexander helps create and advocate for UKG's vision for the future of people-centric technology through research, speaking, and writing.

    Life Work Technology - Mobile
    Life-work Technology: Adaptability and a People-Centric Future

    As we continue to navigate our tumultuous and dynamic workplace realities, our organizations and people have had to rapidly adapt, but our technologies haven’t kept up—until now. In this webinar replay, take an early look at UKG’s vision for Life-work Technology™. Learn how it helps organizations today and lays the foundation for a people-centric future.

    Watch the webinar.

    Topics

    Business Continuity Business Continuity Change Management Change Management Innovation Innovation Digital Transformation Digital Transformation

    Are you a hummingbird or a rat? “Neither,” you mumble under your breath, mouse hovering over the close-tab button. But stay with me. There are plenty of analogies comparing savanna to business and hues of oceans to markets—but what if we consider a new take on business resiliency?

    Moats for enterprises. Micro-niches for small biz. Business theory says organizations win through specialization. What does a hummingbird do that business should emulate? It uses the highest value resource it can find (nectar), works hard to get it (the “humming” part of the bird), and creates a competitive advantage through its unique beak shape and acrobatics. A hummingbird’s specialization makes it very efficient, and efficiency makes it successful.

    Efficiency is so deeply ingrained in our business culture it often goes unnoticed. The most innovative fast-growing companies in tech have reached their behemoth scale through efficiency. Salesforce removed the marginal cost from deploying software via the cloud. Netflix pressed a button and launched in 12 countries. And … I could go on. But have we become too efficient? There might be another way: the path of the generalist, i.e., the way of the rat. Because hummingbirds thrive when there are flowers, but what happens when no more flowers grow…

    Hummingbird Strategy

    Evolution through natural selection says those with traits best suited to an environment will be more successful, passing those traits down to offspring. Those offspring do the same and over time, new species emerge. In stable environments, ecosystems become complex as successive generations get better and better at exploiting or protecting the resources available to them. Hummingbirds proliferate.

    Relatively recently, flowering plants started providing nectar. Nectar is a high-energy food that incentives animals to visit flowers and help the plants reproduce. After putting down their tiny copies of Porter’s Five Forces, hummingbirds became hyper efficient at gathering this new resource. As good business strategists, hummingbirds use tremendous amounts of a resource they can gather cheaply (energy) and use it do something no competitor can easily copy—like flying backward and upside down. This way of living is so specialized, hummingbirds eat almost continuously—the first “996” work culture. In business terms, it’s a moat; other birds cannot afford to burn the energy hummingbirds do, so they cannot eat the high-energy food. If hummingbirds were a business, Warren Buffett would buy them.

    Rats: Survival of the Fittest
     

    There is a downside to specialization. When disruption hits, it is the specialists who go first. What happens to hummingbirds when there are no more flowers (i.e., Kodak when there are no more film cameras?). In times of rapid change, what was once an advantage can become a liability, and it is a different animal and strategy that survives.

    In times of rapid change, what was once an advantage can become a liability, and it is a different animal and strategy that survives.

    During the age of exploration, sailors reported an odd phenomenon. Their ships would leave home without vermin but would somehow enter the next port with rats all over the ship. How did they get there? Later observation determined this pattern: a few rats would fall overboard from a ship (maybe in a storm), they would swim or float to tiny uninhabited islands, and then survive on coconut milk, crabs, sea debris, sometimes each other… whatever they could find. Then a ship would pass the island, the rats swam over and boarded the ship!

    A hummingbird would not survive on those wind-blown islands, but rats did and in 2022 you can find them everywhere on earth except the poles. Rats are generalists—good at many things, master of none. Generalist businesses are the frontier farm store, the early 20th-century conglomerate building air conditioners, radio receivers, and power turbines. It is common to find generalists at frontiers.

    Physical frontiers like the American West, and disruptive frontiers such as the industrial revolution, or life after a meteor strike. Generalists do well in these environments because they can shift quickly between different opportunities, surviving through unpredictable and rapid environmental shifts. Adaptability and diversification become key. When the environment settles, specialists multiply and prosper, pushing generalists to the margins. Disruption always returns though, and the cycle continues.

    So, Should I be a Rat? A Hummingbird? What?
     

    For the past 40 years we’ve been building hummingbird companies. Business orthodoxy—delivered in MBA programs, executive weekends, and bestselling books—preaches efficiency. Remember, even the internet-age startups famous for disruption grew massive through using tech to drive new efficiencies (in B2B, Salesforce via the unit-economics of SAAS previously mentioned; in B2C, Netflix by seamlessly flowing across borders through a streaming platform and customization of content). All these organizations are more specialized than their predecessors (Think way back to The Dutch East India Company, where our story of survivalist rats was recorded.). Stability supports specialization and it has been a very stable 50 years.

    Recently though, it’s started to feel like we’re regressing to the mean. In the past 2 years we have seen a global pandemic, a war in Europe, inflation, food and energy insecurity, and supply chain disruption. It might not feel like it to us, but disruption is the rule, not the exception. You must read closely to even notice times like ours in a history book. They’re brief and boring.

    Maybe history really did end in 1992. If not, it could be the generalists—the rat organizations—that thrive in the future. Lower margins but more diverse revenue streams and greater focus on team autonomy making use of ephemeral opportunity versus economies of scale and centralized planning for predictability. Fewer moats. More rivers.

    We’ve already seen the seeds of change. New semiconductor factories to diversify supply chains, changes in energy grids to lessen dependence on foreign oil, nations redefining social contracts. In our domain, HCM and WFM, we’ve seen an increasing focus on reskilling, staff resiliency, and organizational adaptability. All signs that point to a growing interest in versatility and strategies of resilience. That is not to say organizations don’t need specialized people and their skills. A generalist company still has departments with singular focus. The second caveat is that it is not a binary choice between specialist and generalist.

    Hummingbirds, i.e., specialists, have dominated for a generation. It’s worth reevaluating whether diversification and adaptability should be a higher priority in what might be a new (old) era of instability. Rats are not compelling mascots, unless you sell pizza to children, but their power to adapt and endure might be what 21st-century organizations need.

    • The People Purpose Blog
    • Is Specialization Overrated?

    Related Stories

    Purpose at work
    The People Purpose Blog

    How to Connect to Your Purpose at Work

    Purpose isn’t something you find—it’s something you value and nurture. Here are five ways to make your work more purposeful. 

    People Are Key to An Effective AI Strategy
    The People Purpose Blog

    Why Your People Are Key to An Effective AI Strategy

    Human-centered, people-focused AI is the key to building an effective and purposeful AI strategy. 

    Using AI Storytelling in Business
    The People Purpose Blog

    Using AI Storytelling in Business

    Learn the difference between predictive and generative AI, plus 10 advantages for incorporating AI storytelling into your business strategy.

    UKG logo

    Footer menu

    • Human Capital Management
      • Human Resources
      • Payroll
      • Talent
      • Reporting and Analytics
    • Workforce Management
      • Time & Attendance
      • Scheduling
      • Compliance
    • Product Suites
      • UKG Pro
      • UKG Dimensions
      • UKG Ready
    • Customer Experience
      • Implementation
      • Support Experience
      • UKG Community
      • Customer Stories
    • About Us
      • Why UKG
      • Culture
      • Our ESG Program
      • Leadership
      • Newsroom
      • Careers
      • Privacy and Security

    Sub Footer

    • Modern Slavery Statement
    • Accessibility
    • Cookie Choices
    • Cookie Notice
    • Terms of Use
    • Trademarks
    • CCPA Notice
    • Licenses
    • Privacy Notice
    © 2023 UKG Inc. All rights reserved.

    Kronos SaaShr, Inc., a UKG Company (NMLS ID#1698726) provides money transmission services on behalf of UKG Inc. customers and in connection with certain UKG products.