How I became a V-Shaped Marketer and what’s next
You may have heard of T-Shaped skills. It has been a popular concept in recent decades. It describes an individual who possesses broad skill sets and specializes in one.
It’s somewhat a “middle ground” in the midst of the generalist (Dash-shaped) vs. specialist (I-Shaped) debate. It posits that rather than becoming an expert at one thing or becoming a “jack of all trades, master of none”, a person should hone their skills in a T-shaped manner, often dubbed “jack of all trades, master of one”. A person could then master another vertical line, turning them into a Pi-shaped person, basically “jack of all trades, master of two”.
However, in recent years, some argued that one should aim to develop a V-shaped skill set. V-shaped people would possess the same breadth as a generalist, but instead of honing their skill in one specific aspect to become a T-shaped person, they would hone several (not one, not two) skills at once to become a V-shaped skill set, essentially “jack of all trades, master of some”.
In my opinion, none is superior to the other. It depends on the industry, its stages, and its dynamics.
- An I-shaped person would fit to work in a highly specific setting such as academia, or perhaps an established corporation in need of single expertise and have enough resources to cover other things.
- A dash-shaped person is perfect to work in a small company or running their own small business, where this person is expected to cover all tasks that need to be done albeit mediocre.
- A T-shaped person (or even better a Pi-shaped person) is perfect for the first hire in an early-stage startup, who needs a generalist so everything is at least taken care of but also needs a flawless execution on the things that matter the most for high growth.
Where does a V-shaped person fit? I think a V-shaped person is ideal for a leadership role in a scaling company. Why?
- While an early stage startup could focus on one thing or two, and execute flawlessly in those areas, a scaling company might need more than that. There’s limited growth potential in a couple of channels, hence a scaling startup may need to do a 360.
- A scaling company would have enough resources to hire multiple specialists to execute several things at once, but not everything at once. Hence, oftentimes a team leader would have to execute several tasks themselves in addition to managing the team itself.
- Moreover, a company that’s just about to scale often finds it difficult to hire an experienced team member, be it due to the lack of resources or generally the lack of pull power. This means that even if the company was able to hire a dedicated person for a few roles, these hires might be juniors who still require some degree of oversight.
Reflecting upon my journey
There are some variations in how people define the right and left of the horizontal axis. But for the sake of simplicity, and to make this even more relevant to my role in marketing, I would label the left as creative skill sets and the right, analytical skill sets.
Pre-full time role
Fresh off college, I would consider myself to be a short I-shaped person. I have done some freelance gigs to develop a somewhat effective skill in content writing. It wasn’t too deep, but good enough for a start.
Funny story. One of my first few gigs was crafting a brochure for a portable outdoor toilet, typically used in construction sites, bazaars, and concerts.
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Hash Entertainment
My first full-time role was at an influencer marketing agency. In this role, I developed my left side of the horizontal line.
I was involved in various projects doing different things, from event planning. to recording case studies videos. While my focus is still content, I have started to develop an eye for branding and some other creative skills.
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Xendit (Part 1)
Then I joined a promising startup as part of a 2 person marketing team.
However, during the first few months, understanding the shortage of manpower available in the team, I was tasked to handle various other things such as implementing paid ads and making dashboards, on top of my regular content marketing tasks.
Moreover, since there’s no one to help on the data side of things, I learned to make database queries, implementing conversion trackers to help me work on the content side of things.
In these few months, I developed my right side of the horizontal lines, learning some analytical skills in the process.
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Xendit (Part 2)
After the startup eventually grew and we hired some more people to join the team, some responsibilities were taken off my shoulder. This allowed me to focus on my main task and get better at it.
My experience with data and analytics didn’t turn out to be a sunk cost. I was able to improve my content marketing effort using the freshly acquired data and analytical skills, creating exclusive lines of content that otherwise would be impossible to produce.
What is this exactly? My experience with database queries allows me to make use of the company’s first-party data, which we have a lot of due to the large number of transactions we’re processing. Armed with exclusive anonymized first-party data, I was able to craft some interesting articles that presented real insights and actionable for our customers.
See them here:
- https://www.xendit.co/en/blog/e-wallet-payments-usage-and-trends-in-indonesia/
- https://www.xendit.co/en/blog/indonesia-edutech-opportunities/
- https://www.xendit.co/en/blog/exploring-ramadan-in-the-new-normal-trends-in-the-ecommerce-sectors/
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Brick — Financial API
Then I joined another smaller startup as the marketing team lead. At this point, I was already a V-shaped person, albeit with a significantly deeper anchor in my core competency.
When tasked with managing a small team of 3, I was able to delegate the majority of the task but still keep an eye to oversee each of its execution. In addition to that, understanding we’re quite short-staffed, I handled some of the tasks that I wasn’t able to delegate to the limited headcount myself.
This experience allows me to balance it out a little bit on the secondary skills, catching up to the primary competency.
In addition to that, I was able to discover a new set of skills to work on, something that I haven’t really considered in the traditional axis: leadership skills.
I didn’t have much experience honing my leadership and people management skills in the previous role. It was just recently that I found this skill set interesting and I desire to develop my skills in this aspect.
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What’s next?
Upon discovering this new angle, I found out that there’s actually a newer shape that incorporates leadership and people management skills in it. It is called the star shape.
To be honest, I haven’t dived deep into this new framework but I’m curious to explore more. Perhaps, I’ll write about it in a couple of years!
