There’s an ‘I’ in Team
(if you look close enough)
One of the great strengths of having an Agile methodology at the heart of your team is removing that single point of failure. How often have you been in a situation where everything has been going well and the project is 2 weeks from delivery, only to discover your project manager is going on a 3-week cruise around the Bahamas or your tech ‘guru’ has broken their wrist skiing? It’s a familiar story: the project comes to a crashing halt due to one individual with all the knowledge or skillset not able to be replaced at short notice. Move aside ‘I-shaped’ people, it’s time for ‘T-shaped’ individuals to step up.
So what is a ‘T’ shaped individual?
If you are not familiar with the T-shaped person, let me briefly describe the characteristics. Throughout a career, people develop skills that carve out their specialism. They may have studied a broad subject matter at university or college but have then narrowed their focus, maybe from the creative arts to post-production editor or from accountancy to corporate tax specialist. Over time, people refine and generally narrow their focus to the stuff they love doing or are great at (well, most of the time)! These well-educated professionals are I-shaped people — as visualised by having a narrow focus, with deep knowledge and expertise in their area of work.
This is great for their personal career aspirations and their enjoyment of the work they have lovingly crafted and honed over many years. For the business, however, this may prove to be a blocker to moving a project forward. What the business needs, more often, are people who are highly skilled, motivated individuals with a passion for their expertise, who are also willing and able to broaden their skillsets into other areas. So, the ‘T’ shaped person evolves with not only amazing specialist skills that go deep, but also as someone who has a toolbag of more general skills that can help support a project from start to finish.
Get ready for a bumpy ride
T-shaped individuals don’t develop naturally. After years of reinforcement across multiple business settings, individuals are rewarded and recognised (and remunerated!) for getting better and better at the things they know and do well. After all, why would you start digging for gold in a new place when the place you are in is already giving you many nuggets? The key to changing I-shaped people to T-shaped is a transformation in mindset. If the mindset is ‘play it safe’, then it’s more likely to be difficult to move forward. Or, if the mindset is, ‘Why would I start doing this? That’s not my job!’, then the team or the project may suffer.
Fostering a ‘T-shaped’ mindset
So how do you go about fostering T-shaped thinking in your own team? Let me share my own opinion. For a start I think you need to take it slowly. If you push this too quickly without time for your team to reflect on what you are trying to achieve, individuals may start making drastic assumptions about their role. They may start thinking their specialism is not appreciated or they are being prepared for an exit. Job satisfaction may drop and disillusionment may set in. Questions like, ‘What exactly is my role in this team?’ may come to the surface or ‘Why can’t I just do the stuff I really love and am great at?’. These questions are all perfectly natural and this is where the importance of everyone embracing the right mindset makes all the difference. The key to making this shift work is two-fold. On the one hand, there needs to be a re-emphasis on team rather than individual. In an Agile world, it is the team that makes the project a success. That team is made up of individuals, but the individuals recognise that they can only really succeed as a team and that as a team they can help each achieve the goal of the sprint or project.
Another aspect to fostering that T-shaped mindset is to continue to remind the team that when the top the of the T is being broadened, it is not separate from their specialism. It’s not that their specialism is being removed or that their skills are depreciated. In fact, it’s usually the opposite. They will continue to develop and strengthen their core skills, but at the same time pick up new skills in other areas. In doing this, they can also have even better judgment about how to best apply their specialist skills.
One last point, is some people may question the value of broadening themselves for their own career benefit. They, in fact, may see it as detrimental to their career. Indeed, for some, gaining new knowledge and skills may open up new career paths. For others, it is more than likely that the career motivators are more nuanced. As a specialist myself, I am now convinced that broadening my skill set is good for my career. It certainly does not take anything away from me and has definitely added value. Who knows? That one new area I thought I was just dabbling in may be the one thing that gets me my new role.
The benefits of having T-shaped individuals in your team are many. There will be an appreciation for the work that others do. It will require the team to collaborate and learn from each other, and to recognise the challenges each individual faces. There will be significantly fewer (hopefully no!) single point of failure issues. The team will be more joined up in its focus and be able to genuinely work collaboratively. Sounds T-rific!
