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The days of siloed experts are gone. Today, more than ever, our complex world requires increased collaboration in cross-disciplinary teams to& ...
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- Go deep with your expertise in chosen areas.
Go deep and develop expertise in your chosen field, c ...
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There have been several models that have built on the T-shaped metaphor. A Pi or ‘M’ shaped person, with two verticals or three verticals, describes the need to have more than one area of expertise. Similarly the V-shaped person with the beginnings of deeper, broader expertise. ‘X’ shaped people have also been suggested as a leadership model.
McKinsey recruitment.
McKinsey coined this term as the ‘T-shaped man’ (sic) as a framework for their recruitment during the 1980s.
IDEO and T-Shaped People
IDEO CEO Tim Brown has long advocated for T-shaped people and described how recruiting such people has driven innovation and complex problem-solving at IDEO.
Atlassian battle against ‘brilliant jerks’.
Atlassian has publicly argued against brilliant jerks who might be great at what they do but pay no attention to collaborating with, developing, or supporting those around them. So much so, they’ve enshrined into their performance management system.
T-shaped people is a useful mental model for development or recruitment and aligns well with Munger’s latticework and the purpose of ModelThinkers.
Use the following examples of connected and complementary models to weave T-shaped people into your broader latticework of mental models. Alternatively, discover your own connections by exploring the category list above.
Connected models:
- Munger’s Latticework: as Charles Munger said, “use the big ideas from the big disciplines’.
- Idea sex: to develop greater innovation.
Complementary models:
- Lean startup: when thinking about the ‘who’ is involved.
- Deliberate practice: in terms of developing soft skills or any expertise.
- Cialdini’s 6 Principles of persuasion: as a cue for potential soft skill development.
- Scrum: T-shaped people are crucial in cross-disciplinary teams.
McKinsey originally used the term ‘T-shaped man’ (sic) as a guide for internal recruitment in the 1980s and the term became further popularised by IDEO in the 90s. It has since become a popular model in agile software development.
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