A GP knows less about cardiology than the cardiologist and less about orthopedics than the orthopedist. But they see the whole person. They know the history, notice when something in the system is off, and send you to the right specialist, at the right moment, with the right question.
In business we act as if we don't need this person. And that's exactly the mistake.
The pattern I keep seeing
A company hires the top expert for every topic: SEO pro, CRM specialist, AI consultant. All excellent in their field, all doing great work. And the result is a project that doesn't run smoothly, because the SEO person breaks the CRM tracking and the CRM workflow doesn't fit the customer journey.
Everyone does the right thing. The whole still doesn't work, because nobody thinks about the interfaces.
Why business needs a GP
It needs someone who asks the right questions before the specialists start. Who doesn't know deeper than the pros, but sees broader than all of them. Thinking in interfaces, spotting connections, getting the right experts to the right table at the right time: that's a distinct skill set.
This role is hard to measure and hard to explain, so it often gets dropped. That's the problem. Because the bottleneck in most projects isn't a lack of depth. It's a lack of overview.
