What a waste of time, money and resources. Someone in Upper management had the bright idea to make everyone in the leisure, culture and education sector train to be interchangeable. Needless to say, I cannot work as a lifeguard. Nor should I. I am a library worker.

— Untitled Grump Game (@grumpwitch) January 31, 2020

This happens in IT, too. It’s a very common MBA idea, I think, across industries. I’d wager a guess that it occurs because MBAs have no special skills and that causes them to believe that no one else does, either.

At a previous job it was announced that every systems engineer would be trained in everything so that we’d all be able to do any IT role found there. That encompassed about 30 areas of expertise and maybe 200+ subfields within those specialties. Needless to say, this didn’t work as it’s absolutely impossible. Just absurd. One would need a lifespan of a thousand years to become even adequate — much less achieve expertise — in all of those areas.

This initiative utterly failed and was quickly forgotten.