T Talents

I like to introduce my idea of T Talents.

They are curious people who have deep expertise in one subject matter ( the vertical leg of the T ) and board interest in one or many other subject matters ( the horizontal part of the T ). For example, a friend of mine - Joo Hock is an expert in hairdressing, he also have interests in training, community management, events management, singing…

The T Talents idea is a shorten version of Ideo's T-shaped people idea. It is like using TinyURL.com to shorten a long web address to a short one. T-shaped people are people who are so inquisitive about the World that they are willing to try to do what you do. They have a principle skill that describes the vertical leg of the T – they might be mechanical engineers or industrial designers. But they are so empathetic that they can branch out into others skills, such as anthropology and do them as well. They are able to explore insights from many different perspectives and recognize patterns of behaviour that point to a universal human need.

I share the same view that we need T Talents in the future with Steve Mills of IBM.

The following paragraphs are taken from his thought leadership paper.

In the past and to a great degree, the present - the workforce is dominated by two kinds of people:

1. Business generalists with broad horizontal understanding of the business issues affecting their area.
   
2. Hands-on implementation specialists or people with narrow but deep expertise in a specific, often technical, area.
   

The future of business demands a new breed of knowledge worker: the T-shaped person who combines broad understanding of business processes ( the top, horizontal part of the T ) with deep practical execution in a specific functional area ( the bottom, vertical part of the T ). People who share the same understanding of the business process ( top of the T ) can team with colleagues with different I-shaped specialties ( bottom of the T ) to cover the waterfront of a business need without losing that common vocabulary and understanding of their shared business objective.