May 4, 2009 by

Extended T-shaped personality

To compete in an innovative market, our profiles as knowledge workers has to change if compared with 10 yrs ago. We talk about T-shaped persons using the T as a metaphor of our competences:

The vertical bar on the T represents the depth of related skills and expertise in a single field, whereas the horizontal bar is the ability to collaborate across disciplines with experts in other areas and to apply knowledge in areas of expertise other than one’s own. Wikipedia.

I think this vision is not enough. Nowadays the horizontal bar need to be extended: there are so many competences that are adjacent to your business, interests that no one has time and memory enough to acquire all those skills.

Where does this extension comes from? Easy: your network! The Extended T-shaped person actively extends his competences with the competences of his network. I say actively because being part of a network is something that need the most precious resources we have today: time and attention.

PierG