Are You Ready to Form Voltron? On The Value of ‘T-shaped’ People
9th June 10
Posted in process, transformational change
This week is Internet Week in New York.
On Tuesday, Boulder Digital Works (I’m lucky enough to be on the Advisory Board there) hosted an evening at the Art Director’s Club called ‘Evolve!’ at which they launched their neat new website (created by Modernista!) – take a look at: http://bdw.colorado.edu/, it’s very cool. There were a number of short presentations from some BDW board members, including Scott Witt (just recently moved to a new role as Creative Director at Apple), Shane Steele (just recently moved to be be VP Global B2B Marketing at Yahoo!) & Scott Prindle, Technical Director at CPB in Boulder. I tagged along and got my ten minute slot.
I thought I’d use it to highlight why we need places like Boulder Digital Works in the first place. In short, to produce a new breed of hybrid creative; what we call ‘T-shaped people’ – awesome in (at least) one area, plus highly collaborative and at least literate in many other things. So blending both the right skills and the right attitude. Far too often the latter – an appetite for all things open and collaborative, a readiness to leave ego at the door - is sacrificed at the expense (frequently, the *great* expense) of simply importing people with new skills.
In addition to sketching out why these hybrid people are so important in creating new forms of creative product, I briefly touch upon the importance of the agency implementing the right kind of ’operating system’ (the processes, values and culture within a company) if the fancy new ’software’ is going to run smoothly. If the operating system is outdated, even the most impressive software is redundant. I show, in one slide, an overview of how BBH in New York is approaching the re-engineering of it’s OS.
Would love to know what you think, and what your experiences are of finding, working with, managing and retaining T-shaped people. The future surely belongs to them.
For best viewing view on slideshare (this link takes you right there), where you can see embedded film & speaker notes; I have added the latter into the first comment there.
Good stuff Ben, I’m very interested in hearing how companies “upgrade their OS”. Of course it requires a super smart and super collaborative leadership or even top dog.
As for the rest of this, whenever I see folks talk about need for t-shaped resource, agile planning, organic comms, etc I twiddle my fingertips maniacally and think:
“Phase 1: never stop learning and early adopting
–
Phase 3: profit”
Nice Slideshow. I enjoyed this. Nice use of Helvetica, Voltron Analogy, YouTube Clip to share a point about the importance collaboration.
It was much cooler than a cheerleading pyramid or a jigsaw puzzle piece.
I totally agree with the T part.
Great piece. T shapers define a new cast member. This would have been a nice follow up to the specialist/generalist panel at SXSW. (They also had smart type treatment) http://bit.ly/btRT5W
Thanks Alexander. That’s a good deck (& a good-looking deck). Have just circulated as follow-up. B
Yup, that’ll do it. You have my arppeictaion.
Simple and powerful thanks. My favorite thought was your last frame.
“Fluent in one language – literate in many”
It’s too easy to feel like you need to be Voltron on your own.
Tim Brown/IDEO was talking about T-Shaped people in 2005 (http://www.fastcompany.com/magazine/95/design-strategy.html), but change has been slow since then, as you explain so well in the presentation. Why do you think that is? I suspect that the institutional barriers begin with the education system and then run up and through structures of corporate and agency teams. Curious what you think has been a barrier?
Thanks for sharing this Glenn. I know IDEO were ahead on this. I had no idea it was by that much. Impressive. Will check this out. Cheers.
really enjoyed that short presentation. couldn’t agree more.
[...] Are You Ready to Form Voltron? On The Value of ‘T-shaped’ People Published: June 9, 2010 Source: BBH Labs This week is Internet Week in New York. On Tuesday, Boulder Digital Works (I’m lucky enough to be on the Advisory Board there) hosted an evening at the Art Director’s Club called ‘Evolve!’ at which the… [...]
Well done. The early T was around via Idea for a number of years. Though it didn’t initially have all the functions on the vertical. Like the awesome/collaborative model (and Rea’s deck, which is great, too). Also agree with the client as partner model. There are a number of other issues to deal with, for example, how do you get those awesome people to actually work together when they see themselves as specialists? Often they have a hard time seeing anything from other people’s perspectives. Even the mindset of where an idea or experience begins (media, connection, technology or creative concept) has to change. Sometimes easier to do than to talk about. After most presentations like this I ask the presenter if that’s really how they do it. They inevitably answer, “Of course not; it’s how we should do it, but not how we actually do it.”
[...] There’s a lot of talk about the kind of skill sets and team structures that are needed T Shaped and Sun Shaped People, and from BBH NY Voltron: [...]
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Short, sweet, to the point, FREEexactly as infmortaion should be!
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[...] while now (either as a compliment or threat, depending on your position). There is an interesting article over at BBH labs discussing the issue. Apparently the future belongs to T-shaped people, so time to [...]
Ben, I agree and I’m not sure what’s so new. The nature of the business has always called for a specialist who’s naturally knee deep in a lot of other varied experiences. How else can one jump from understanding one type of consumer mindset to another?
All advertising people were originally “T shaped” back in the the day, and still should be. You need diverse skills and experiences in the business, which suits the ADHD nature of many people in it. That helps people ‘know a little about a lot’ because the business needs you to. But it also needs you to know a lot about one specific thing. At the end of the day, someone has to sign off on the words or the visuals.
If someone on a team isn’t already naturally “T shaped”, and they’re in advertising, something’s just off.
Thanks for the comment.
I’m not sure all advertising people were T-shaped back in the day, but then it didn’t matter, because of the way the business was structured. It does now.
I’m not arguing that *all* people need to be T-shaped; there’s definitely still a role the rogue ace planner, or the ridiculously talented analytics guy, etc. It’s just we need more of them, in more positions, than we might have traditionally come to expect.
Have to say (not sparing your blushes), you are a particularly T-shaped creative. You could be a planner, easily. You also get interactive. And design. And so on.
[...] Malbon (Executive Director of Innovation Labs at BBH) speak at a BDW event during internet week, he spoke about the desire to hire “T-shaped people” (which I think translates to mean: creative, curious and flexible). For us, it’s not [...]
This was a fantastic presentation, thanks for posting these slides Ben.
[...] This is a presentation that was a part of a recent “post of the month“. Here’s the link to the post itself. [...]
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[...] Are You Ready to Form Voltron? On The Value of ‘T-shaped’ People « BBH Labs Are You Ready to Form Voltron? On The Value of ‘T-shaped’ People « BBH Labs. [...]
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[...] * BBH LABS: http://bbh-labs.com/are-you-ready-to-form-voltron-on-the-value-of-t-shaped-people [...]