Jack of All Trades, Master of One
It’s okay to be a generalist. In fact, as a Product Manager, relish in it.
I’ve always considered myself a jack of all trades — a tech-savvy lover of the arts with an entrepreneurial spirit — but for almost just as long, I’ve also considered it a weakness. After all, the phrase goes: Jack of all trades and master of none.
After conversations with my mentor, Tom Comerford (Everyone is a Product Expert), I came to the realization that the actual flaw was in my way of thinking, not that I was a generalist.
Reframing it this way allowed me to dig into my own experiences as a product manager and bring to light situations where being a generalist was a powerful weapon, rather than an Achilles’ heel.
Like that time…
- When we were short on product designer resources, I was able to step up and create quick and dirty mid-fi mockups using MS Paint and Google Chrome Inspector. This gave engineers visual guidance to pair with documentation and reduced misunderstandings during development.
- As an APM, I took on using Postman to call APIs and grant access to new users, allowing the engineering team to focus on driving results towards our vision instead of context-switching for multiple ad hoc requests.
- Understanding the tradeoffs of one technical solution over another. Ultimately the engineers should be the experts, but it’s important follow the conversation enough to make the best decisions and assess any risks to the roadmap.
Tl; dr — Ultimately the lesson is that when a product manager is a generalist, they are able to competently steer their team through the product development lifecycle, optimizing for efficiency and effectiveness.
But it’s important to have at least one expertise. This brings me to the concept of a T-shaped person...
A T-shaped person is an individual who has breadth of knowledge in a variety of disciplines, but depth in one.
As a product manager, I strive to widen my skillsets in tech, design, e-commerce, and business while deepening my product management craft. I hope to continue to grow as a generalist, but also to hone in on product expertise and leadership.
To take it a step further, being a T-Shaped person isn’t solely for Product Managers. In fact, I argue that the best team is one made up of T-shaped people with different specializations including at least product design, software engineering, and product management.
The shared knowledge creates an unparalleled common ground and synergy, which enables the team to build a balanced product that is equal parts performant, intuitive, aesthetic, business-centric, and user-obsessed.
I feel especially privileged to have experienced such a team.
We delivered user value and business outcomes at lightning speeds. We were scrappy. We were agile. We were proactive. We replaced phrases like, “this solution is not feasible” with “what if we tried xyz?”
And my favorite part of all, we pushed and developed one another to extend all ends of the T.
🙌🦄🎉
