Inspiring Innovation By Becoming 'T-Shaped'

Talent Management magazine's recently featured an article on "Transdisciplinarity - the ability to adapt concepts and lessons from outside one's field of experience and challenge one's core proficiency", because it's being seen as a capability that will be prized in the workplace of the future.

Transdisciplinarity was identified in a report ("Future Work Skills 2020") written by the Institute For The Future as a workplace skill that will help organisations handle disruptive technological and societal change.

People who can correlate material from diverse knowledge bases and extract tangible results - whether for a new business initiative or massive global issues such as resource scarcity or pandemics - will be prized in the future workplace. 

Key to the transdisciplinarity mindset is the 'T-shaped person', a concept popularised by Tim Brown, CEO of design firm IDEO. T-shaped individuals possess deep knowledge in a primary field (the upright part of the "T"), but cultivate a broad curiosity about areas of expertise outside that field (the crossbar of the "T"). 

As these people become more valuable, a key issue will be identifying those with the potential and developing this potential in them. While Tim Brown's experience is that T-shaped qualities "don't always stand out on a resume", and so may not always be easy to spot, his insight that "empathy, enthusiasm and a readiness to collaborate are the hallmarks of a T-shaped person", provides specific guidance on how to develop this potential. 

What's interesting is that, while these are clearly skills of the future, they also show up as characteristics of effective people from the past and present. Indeed, one of FranklinCovey's most well known and popular frameworks - The 7 Habits of Highly Effective People - provides insight into paradigms and behaviours such as Win-Win Mindsets, Abundance Mentality, Empathic Listening, Getting to Synergy and Countertype Thinking that can provide a strong development path for the T-Shaped person.