Some people are great generalists. They aren’t great at any one thing, but they can do it all decently well.

Others are the exact opposite. They aren’t knowledgeable on many topics, but they know a lot about one thing (think of a PhD student).

You could try making a team with a bunch of generalists, but it wouldn’t go well. You need someone in Finance who really knows finance, and you need a developer who knows more about the technology than anyone else.

Similarly, a team can’t just be made up of specialists. You need someone with the ability to see the big picture.

One way around this is mixing generalists with specialists. The specialists get to work on what they do well, and the generalists fill the gap.

But this approach isn’t without problems. Pure generalists have a hard time relating to the detailed tasks performed by the specialists, and specialists don’t tend to respect someone who hasn’t made the effort to develop any technical expertise.

The solution?

The T-shaped Person.

The T-shaped Person is the hybrid between the generalist and the specialist. They know a little about a lot, but they also have deep technical expertise in one field.

Build a team of strategically placed T-shaped people, and you might be on to something.

-Brandon