{"id":579,"date":"2015-06-14T13:34:40","date_gmt":"2015-06-14T21:34:40","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.timrosenblatt.com\/blog\/?p=579"},"modified":"2015-06-17T09:13:57","modified_gmt":"2015-06-17T17:13:57","slug":"when-a-jack-of-all-trades-wins","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"http:\/\/www.timrosenblatt.com\/blog\/2015\/06\/14\/when-a-jack-of-all-trades-wins\/","title":{"rendered":"When a jack of all trades wins"},"content":{"rendered":"<p>Everyone knows the expression &#8220;jack of all trades, master of none&#8221;. I remember a talk by Adam Savage of Mythbusters, where he brings that phrase up, and says that the real phrase is <a href=\"https:\/\/www.youtube.com\/watch?v=Z3Viv88ZOFA&amp;feature=youtu.be&amp;t=50\" target=\"_blank\">&#8220;jack of all trades, master of none, though often better than a master of one&#8221;<\/a>.<\/p>\n<p><iframe loading=\"lazy\" width=\"840\" height=\"630\" src=\"https:\/\/www.youtube.com\/embed\/Z3Viv88ZOFA?start=50&#038;feature=oembed\" frameborder=\"0\" allowfullscreen><\/iframe><\/p>\n<p>During the 90s, the\u00a0term &#8220;T-shaped individual&#8221; became popular, and the tech industry fell in love with the concept.\u00a0The idea there is that while a person might have a wide breadth of skills in many areas (the horizontal part of the T), there is one area that they have deep knowledge of (the vertical part of the T).<\/p>\n<p>Technology and business are areas where I think being aware of (and respecting) other areas of expertise is important, because it&#8217;s possible to go very, very deep. It&#8217;s impossible for one person to be really deeply aware of all areas. To me, the solution is to cultivate a respect for other domains. A sign of someone who deeply respects other domains is that they try to build relationships with experts in those other areas.<\/p>\n<p>This came to mind the other day, when two different articles popped up on my radar. One was about <a href=\"http:\/\/techcrunch.com\/2015\/05\/29\/to-clean-up-your-startups-b-s-bring-sales-into-the-leadership-team\/#.ssdhxf:DYNO\" target=\"_blank\">integrating salespeople into the rest of the business<\/a>, and the other was about how <a href=\"https:\/\/medium.com\/@intercom\/the-dribbblisation-of-design-406422ccb026\" target=\"_blank\">designers need to understand the full depth of a business, and not just make nice looking pictures<\/a>.<\/p>\n<p>It&#8217;s all too easy to shoehorn a business function into &#8220;just do your task and don&#8217;t worry about the rest&#8221;. Unless you&#8217;re exceptionally world-class at one skill (and even then!),\u00a0it&#8217;s worth being mindful of the others.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>Everyone knows the expression &#8220;jack of all trades, master of none&#8221;. I remember a talk by Adam Savage of Mythbusters, where he brings that phrase up, and says that the real phrase is &#8220;jack of all trades, master of none, though often better than a master of one&#8221;. During the 90s, the\u00a0term &#8220;T-shaped individual&#8221; became &hellip; <a href=\"http:\/\/www.timrosenblatt.com\/blog\/2015\/06\/14\/when-a-jack-of-all-trades-wins\/\" class=\"more-link\">Continue reading<span class=\"screen-reader-text\"> &#8220;When a jack of all trades wins&#8221;<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.timrosenblatt.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/579"}],"collection":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.timrosenblatt.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.timrosenblatt.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.timrosenblatt.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.timrosenblatt.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=579"}],"version-history":[{"count":4,"href":"http:\/\/www.timrosenblatt.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/579\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":586,"href":"http:\/\/www.timrosenblatt.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/579\/revisions\/586"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.timrosenblatt.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=579"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.timrosenblatt.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=579"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.timrosenblatt.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=579"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}