Be well known for ONE thing

Depth vs. Breadth

Author

Bruno Nogueira
June 05, 2023

There's an eternal debate between the pros and cons of being a specialist vs. a generalist…

For most people, being a generalist is sexier. You get to participate in all sorts of problems and get more work diversity.

Yet, being a specialist in a highly coveted field also bears fruit: you do highly skilled (and paid) work with the confidence of being an expert on it.

Then, someone settled the debate by creating the clever concept of "T-Shaped skills". Even McKinsey uses this internally as a way to guide consultants through their careers.

Specialist or Generalist? Why not BOTH??

The problem with T-Shaped skills is that it takes way longer to develop… You need to be both a generalist and a specialist.

It's a great end goal, but not a reasonable early career strategy.

This is why I love this tip shared by a fellow reader, Eu Gen:

Be well-known for being an expert or fast executor on a particular tool/workflow whilst, of course, delivering satisfactory results for everything else.

Longer explanation: Instead of trying to be great at everything, focus your effort on one crucial element that takes up a significant portion of your team's time and effort. In a consulting environment, it could mean being super awesome in generating executive striking-looking slides in a day. Or the person who is able to build up automated Excel dashboards for the wider team. This brings attention to you from all levels and lets you shine in areas where not much investment is needed from the get-go to become good at

What this means is this: develop depth first.

You won't out-generalize a senior generalist until you become senior yourself. But you can out-specialize them, which makes you useful to your firm/company.

What's a valuable skill that you're already good at and that you could in a short amount of time become great at?

Maybe it's…

  • Creating dashboards and data visualizations

  • Working with AI tools

  • Creating awesome Excel models fast

  • Knowing everything about a specific facet of your industry (UX, Infrastructure, Financial Planning, etc.)

  • Being a networker within the industry

The point is, pick one and go ALL IN.

If you choose to master a tool, do it all: learn all the shortcuts, practice a lot for quality AND speed, find best practices, and apply them…

If you choose to be a networker: do coffee meetings with everyone relevant from within your company and other companies, go to events, build a "CRM" to keep in touch with everyone regularly, and add value to all of them.

If you choose to be on the cutting edge of something (AI tools, a specific facet of your industry): subscribe to newsletters, regularly test new tools and products, benchmark competitors AND players in related industries on these things often.

What you pick matters, though…

Ideally, you find something to specialize in that: (1) you're naturally good at, (2) your personality helps you find it interesting, and (3) is highly valued at your role/company.

And although it'd be cool to have all three pieces, NEVER neglect #3.

If you choose to be great at Excel modeling, but no one around you gives a damn, you won't reap the benefits.

Everyone might think it's cool, but it's not gonna progress your career.

If you, however, pick something valued, not only is your team gonna value it, the higher-ups will notice. You might even be noticed across the industry, among competitors, and so on.

Specializing early is one of the best ways to stand out early.

Yes, some people do pigeonhole themselves into that specialization, but it's also not that hard to leverage all the notoriety from your unique skills to find new, adjacent opportunities and grow your career as a generalist afterward, if you choose to do so.

Keep working smarter.