The Brush-Shaped Being

01 Tabula Rasa Extending A Metaphor -- Going From The 'T-Shaped Person' To 'The Brush-Shaped Being' Bright people know stuff. And they generally interact with other people who know stuff. Our knowledge fields are 'T-Shaped'. And our interactions are generally pretty narrow, taking place along the narrow shaft of our specialisation, or the low penetration of our general interests. What if we were to embrace a more extended metaphor that allows us to be at home with powerful innovation? What if we could use our bristly personalities to become drivers of innovation? Are you ready to declare yourself a 'The Brush-Shaped Being'? --- What is the ‘shape’ of our knowledge? We start out knowing nothing. And then we learn stuff. We fill up our tabula rasa, our blank tablet. The shape of our knowledge pretty much defines our lives.

02 The Shape of Knowledge – Hyphen The vertical axis represents the depth of knowledge. The horizontal axis represents the number of interest fields. The ‘Hyphen’ shape is long and thin and ‘horizontal’. It represents someone who knows a slim amount of stuff about a whole lot of things.

03 The 'Hyphen-Shaped Person' We can call this person a ‘Hyphen-Shaped Person’.

04 The Jack-of-All-Trades The ‘Hyphen-Shaped Person’ is often thought of as a ‘Jack-of-All-Trades’ and a ‘Master-of-None’. The ‘Hyphen’ label is a heck of a lot more neutral, and contains a much richer metaphorical range. Hyphens connect things. They lead to other things. People who have ‘Hyphen-Shaped’ knowledge might not know things deeply. But they know plenty of connective stuff, and often have wide fields of interest.

05 The 'I' ‘ I-Shaped’ knowledge covers a very small area of interest. But goes very deep.

06 The 'I-Shaped Person' The ‘I-Shaped Person’ knows tons of stuff about one subject.

07 The Specialist The ‘I-Shaped Person’ is often thought of a ‘The Specialist’. The one person you go to when you need information or help in a specific area. In today’s world, specialists are frowned on more and more. They’re seen as ‘Silo’ thinkers, people who can’t get on well with others. When managers say, ‘There is no ‘I’ in ‘Team’,‘ they’re talking about specialists. But specialists in the field of punning are able to get a laugh out of their own twist on that horrible phrase by declaring: ‘There is no ‘Meat’ in ‘Team’.’ (Okay... I’m the only one laughing. Meathead.) There’s a reverse angle on ‘The Specialist’. Often, people are awed by them. They place undue deference on the amount of specific knowledge the specialist has. Which makes it possible for them to miss the fact that specialists don’t necessarily know how things link to other things. ‘ If all I have is a hammer, everything looks like a nail.’ This describes the specialist. But we can’t discount the value of depth of knowledge. It’s obvious that it’s valuable. So a neutral label like ‘I-Shaped Person’ works better to remove scorn and awe from how we view this kind of person.

08 The 'T' Here’s a much more promising metaphorical representation of knowledge... A combination of the ‘Hyphen’ and the ‘I’. Lots of interest fields. And one speciality.

09 The 'T-Shaped Person' The ‘T-Shaped Person’ connects well with others. Plays nicely in teams. Knows enough about what others know in order for them to understand things in the right context. And is able to apply strong skills in a specific area. Current management thinking values the ‘T-Shaped Person’ very strongly. This person is categorisable, predictable, performs well, interacts decently. This person is a known quantity. And you can make a very nice team out of ‘T-Shaped People’ by daisy chaining them together...

10 The 'Comb' Several ‘T-Shaped People’ joined end-to-end form a ‘Comb’. It’s the ideal shape for a team within an organisation. Human Resource managers would do well to consider ‘collecting’ the right kinds of ‘T-Shaped People’ to form awesome ‘Combs’. Shows like SURVIVOR and THE AMAZING RACE use this principle to create a successful mix of compulsively viewable castmembers. We watch these shows because of the resultant Comb. (At least, I do.) But what if individuals saw fit to progress from being ‘T-Shaped People’? What if we started recognising that just one specialisation isn’t actually optimal? Could we become self-contained teams?

11 The 'Comb-Shaped Person' The person who assembles a variety of specialisations is a ‘Comb-Shaped Person’. Patent attorneys are examples of ‘Comb-Shaped People’. They generally have at LEAST two specialisation fields... Law, and the specific field of science, technology or design that they deal in. Internists are another example. These medical specialists know vast amounts about all sorts of diseases and problems with the human body. The trouble with individuals being ‘Comb-Shaped People’ is that others don’t really seem to understand them very well. They don’t know where to fit them in. This is because the ‘Comb-Shaped Person’ knows too much. ‘You’re overqualified for this particular position.’ ‘ Comb-Shaped People’ are almost always polymaths or autodidacts. They very often know much more about a subject than their ‘T-Shaped’ colleagues. More than that, they know how the subject connects to other subjects in obscure, non-obvious ways. As a ‘Comb-Shaped Person’ myself, I find that I’m easily capable of annoying entire rooms full of people with one utterance. Having more knowledge about something than the so-called specialists really irks them. More often than not, a ‘Comb-Shaped Person’ is written off as a ‘Hyphen-Shaped Person’. Specialists almost always believe that they know the most about something. So when someone appears to know more, they write them off as dilettantes.

12 The 'Brush' But there is a way for ‘Comb-Shaped People’ to coexist with others. They line up with others and share their knowledge freely in the form of a ‘Brush’.

13 The 'Brush-Shaped Being' It’s unlikely that the ‘Brush-Shaped Being’ is one person. It’s more likely to be a group of people. But before we look at how the ‘Brush’ metaphor plays out, lets look at other ways of visualising a bunch of ‘Comb-Shaped People’ joined together.

14 Turn It Around and Extend the Metaphor Some More Let’s just turn the brush around. And other thoughts crop up.

15 The 'Grass-Shaped Growth' The ‘Grass-Shaped Growth’ has us looking at the individual bits of knowledge as blades of grass...

16 Now With Added Greenery A neat lawn. Interconnected root system. Cooperation in maintianing similar heights. Uses the sun’s energy efficiently.

17 The 'City-Shaped Citizen' Or we can visualise the combs forming The ‘City-Shaped Citizen’.

18 With a Bit of Sunlight A bit of sunlight backlighting the smog...

19 And a Whole Bunch of Concrete and Smog And a coupla million tons of concrete, metal, tarmac, and hacking coughs round out the picture.

20 The 'Hair-Shaped Habitat' We could also style our knowledge strands as individual hair follicles in The ‘Hair-Shaped Habitat’...

21 A Breeding Ground For Lice and Other Parasites This wonderland looks good, is silky smooth and conditioned with OptimaNobulon 12, the secret molecule that only hair-physicists know about. Trouble is, it’s also a breeding ground for lice and other parasites. Parasites such as advertising teams selling you OptimaNobulon 12.

22 The 'Brush-Shaped Being' Catches All Sorts of Goodies I prefer the ‘Brush-Shaped Being’ as my extended metaphor. I like the idea of this bristly coalition knowing lots of stuff and being deployed to catch all sorts of things that other devices miss.For instance, a comb might knock a piece of knowledge out of the way. A brush would ‘catch’ that same piece, cos there’s a whole phalanx of bristles sweeping through behind the frontrunners. A team made up of these kinds of people would be pretty interesting to observe. And in fact... an innovation company in the US makes a fair amount of income from allowing people to observe such ‘Brush-Shaped Beings’ in action. IDEO is a company that created the Palm Pilot, Apple’s first mouse, and Microsoft’s second mouse. While they don’t talk about themselves as ‘Brush-Shaped Beings’, their teams ARE such organisms. And they run ‘IDEO University’. Here, people pay to become members of their multi-disciplinary design teams for a limited period. Being ‘Brush-Shaped’ has its challenges. Knowledge depths will vary. Fields of interest will overlap in odd ways. The personalities within such teams will be quirky deluxe. And ‘outsiders’ might not know how to decode the short-cut communication that will inevitably develop in such a group. Managers will certainly be outgunned, and might have self-esteem issues. The benefits would seem to outweigh the challenges. Clever clever people. Also, my guess is that kids of tomorrow are automatically being primed to be ‘Comb-Shaped’. Which means they need to learn how to embrace being ‘Brush-Shaped Beings’.

23 What Shape Are You? So let’s end off by acknowledging that knowledge is flexible. It’s malleable. We can bend our brains to suit almost anything. So... let’s take the hyphen-shapes, the I-shapes, the T-shapes, the Combs, the Brushes, and let’s bend them to our wills. What shape are you?