Swimming through the employee shape alphabet soup

There seems to be something in the human psyche which requires everything to be neatly categorised or pigeon-holed in some way. Maybe it is an innate desire for order or a way to simplify a complex world, but it has taken hold in the world of work over the past half century with individuals being defined by their “shape” and identified by letters.

It all started back in 1978 when a hitherto unknown electronics engineer called Denis Johnson published a paper in the Institute of Electrical and Electronics Engineers Journal which demonstrated that managers were having to be both specialists and generalists in what he termed as the T-shaped manager.

The idea behind the T-shaped manager was that they needed to have in-depth knowledge of their particular specialist area while also having broad-ranging knowledge and understanding of other disciplines such as general management, human resources, finance, production, marketing and so on.

The concept has moved on since then and organisations are now looking for T-shaped individuals at all levels, not just for management roles. The theory is that these people are able to work in cross-disciplinary teams more effectively as they have a greater understanding of the other team members’ backgrounds and are able to communicate with them better as a result. It has also been found that these individuals tend to be better problem-solvers and innovators.

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But that’s just the beginning of the alphabet soup. When Johnson chose the letter T as the label for the 1970s management renaissance individual, he did so because he defined the narrow specialist as I-shaped. The T-shape was made by the transverse bar representing the wide-ranging skills and knowledge.

In essence, it’s a combination of expertise with one area and the capabilities of the jack of all trades but master of none.

The next stop on the journey was Pi – the Greek letter P familiar to anyone who has ever tried to calculate the area or circumference of a circle. In this case, the two vertical lines in the letter represent two areas of specialist skills while the horizontal line represents the same broad-ranging skills and experience exhibited by the T-shaped individual.

And it doesn’t stop there. Next up is the M-shaped individual. In this case the individual has no fewer than three specialisms. That begs the question of where and how these people are meant to have acquired these specialist skills and qualifications. Spending the amount of time in college required to earn three undergraduate degrees and overlaying post-graduate qualifications would leave them precious little time to gain the experience required to gain the necessary transversal skills.

The simple answer is that they don’t do this. In most cases, M-shaped individuals are people who continue to learn during their careers and acquire the additional qualifications while working. Indeed, in many cases they are people who have had multiple careers and have acquired the qualifications to facilitate changes in direction.

Moving back along the alphabet we come to the E-shaped individual. These are similar to T-shaped in that they have specialist qualifications and skills in one field but combine this with expertise across several other areas, experience in others still, and proven execution skills. Expertise, experience, exploration and execution are the three horizontal and one vertical bar in the E.

Most emphasis is placed on execution skills. E-shaped employees are seen as people capable of translating ideas into solid commercial realities. They are people willing to take risks to explore and implement new ideas and to innovate.

Then there are X-shaped employees. These are people who have left their original specialism behind them as their careers progress into management and leadership positions. These people tend to be more focused on strategy and team leadership rather than the nitty gritty execution of projects. In many ways, their emotional intelligence and leadership capabilities are far more important than their original subject matter expertise.

And that brings us to the last letter in this series – the V-shaped individual. The term was coined in 2019 by human capital expert Gail Sturgess. According to her, the V-shaped employee starts out as T-shaped but continues to grow both axes in a spiral fashion constantly adding to their in-depth expertise and their transversal knowledge and experience. According to Sturgess, these are the individuals who will be required for the workplaces of the future.

In the meantime, no more letters please.