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And we’re less inclined to think of that world as a land of unlimited opportunity than we are to want to measure what happened in it yesterday and worry about whether the trend will continue tomorrow. So without enough Finders, our rainmakers, a firm didn’t stand a chance of growing. The Finders we had were invaluable to us. But then, in the 1990s, a strange thing started happening. As unit-ofoutput productivity began dramatically increasing with the introduction of decentralized computing power, our CPAs began getting expensive.

On top of price pressure, the velocity of rulemaking and other aspects of our bodies of professional knowledge began accelerating with the global communication capability of the Internet. It was now fast and easy to change tax rates, issue new accounting standards, devise more complex financial instruments, and monitor and operate in international markets. Whatever geo-socio-econo-politico whim our society had could quickly be turned into the law of the land, elaborated upon, and disseminated world- Giants and Dinosaurs ◾ 5 wide.

We’re no different from anyone else in that tendency. So when we hear “specialize,” we hear that as a call to refine our inputs to the exclusion of everything else. It’s what we do, and we’re good at it. The market demands it from us. ” This is our cue to throw up our hands, roll our eyes, and ask, “Well, which is it? Greater specialist expertise or unlimited outcomes? ” The vexing answer, of course, is both. Up until now, our overwhelming response to the call to specialize has been to refine our inputs and limit them to the procedural elements needed to produce lots of outputs at a uniform level of (very high) procedural quality.

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