The T-Shaped PM and Knowing Your Shape
The most freeing idea in my career was learning that I did not have to be good at everything. The job description implies a superhuman: strategist, designer, data scientist, diplomat, engineer. Nobody is all of those. The great PMs I know are not well-rounded. They are spiky, exceptional at two or three things and merely adequate at the rest, and they are ruthlessly honest about which is which. Knowing your shape, and building a team that covers your flats, beats pretending to be uniformly excellent every time.
#T-shaped: the original idea
The T-shaped metaphor comes from IDEO and Tim Brown, with roots in a 1991 Independent article. The vertical bar is depth in one discipline, and the horizontal bar is breadth across many. A T-shaped PM has deep expertise in something, say growth analytics or UX, and enough literacy across engineering, design, strategy, and research to collaborate credibly with specialists. Depth earns you respect. Breadth lets you span the Venn. You need both bars. Pure breadth with no depth is the dreaded jack of all trades and master of none, where you can talk to everyone and impress no one.
#Spiky: the more honest version
Ravi Mehta sharpened this into what I think is the truer picture. Most PMs are not T-shaped. They are spiky, with multiple peaks and real valleys rather than one tidy vertical bar. His key insight is that great products are built by spiky people on well-rounded teams. You do not fix a valley by grinding it up to average. You fix it by pairing with someone whose spike is your valley.
The goal is not to become uniformly strong across the competency model. The goal is to be exceptional where it counts and to compose a team that is well-rounded, even though no individual on it is.
Mehta also names two shapes worth knowing. Product Builders are spiky toward execution and customer insight, and they make things. Product Architects are spiky toward strategy, and they shape direction. Most people lean one way. Neither is better. They are suited to different problems and different types of PM role.
#How to find your shape
Self-perception is unreliable here, because we overrate our spikes and rationalize our valleys. So triangulate.
- Score yourself, then get scored. Run The Competency Self-Assessment across the twelve competencies, then have a manager or peer score you blind. The gaps between the two are where your self-image is wrong, usually in both directions.
- Look at where work feels effortless versus grinding. Your spikes are the things you do well without it feeling like effort. Genuine grind, even after practice, is a flat. Effort spent is a better signal than outcome achieved.
- Ask what people come to you for. Your reputation is the market's read on your shape, and it is often more accurate than your own.
#Build the team around the shape
Once you know your shape, the implication is direct, and it changes how you hire (Hiring and Building a Product Team). Hire and partner for your valleys, not clones of your spikes. A strategy-spiky PM who hires another strategist has built a team that cannot ship. The strongest pods I have run paired a builder-shaped PM with an architect-shaped manager, or a data-spiky PM with a design-spiky lead. Complementarity beats redundancy.
"Develop into a well-rounded PM" is common career advice, and I think it is mostly wrong. Rounding off your spikes to raise your valleys makes you less valuable, not more, because you trade a rare strength for common adequacy. Invest in your spikes until they are undeniable. Invest in your valleys only to the threshold of "won't embarrass me in the room." The exception is a valley that is blocking your level. See Identifying Growth Areas for when a flat actually has to be raised.
#Continue Reading
- The Competency Self-Assessment for the instrument that maps your spikes and flats.
- Hiring and Building a Product Team for composing a well-rounded team from spiky people.
- Types of Product Managers for matching your shape to the role that rewards it.
- Identifying Growth Areas for deciding which valley is worth raising and which to staff around.
- Character, Competency, and Craft for the layer beneath shape: what is even trainable.