Catalyst | Dexterity
D
Partner comment
It’s all gone
T-shaped
Suavek Zajac, chief
technology officer, digital,
William Hill, Krakow
“When you look at a traditional organisation, the first
thing you notice is that there are multiple silos. But
when a company undergoes a digital transformation, the
whole idea is to increase flow in the organisation. You
go from having specialists and people who are experts
in particular things into an environment where you’re
relying on a set of generalists, plus people with a mix of
generalist and expert skills.
The latter group is what I call people with ‘T-shaped
skills’: generalists who are also really good at one thing.
T-shaped people can adapt to different initiatives, so you
can assemble teams that comprise a couple of generalists
and a couple of T-shaped people. The experts are there
to clear the bottlenecks and then you have generalists to
help provide the communication and other tasks across
the different parts of the organisation. Not only will that
deliver more efficiency, faster, it will reduce friction.
With recruitment, it’s important to understand that
roles will change according to business priorities. For
example, someone might be an expert developer with an
in-depth knowledge of Java, but do they have a growth
mindset? If circumstances change, will they be prepared
to go beyond that role to be a full stack developer, or pick
up some system engineering work? Are they willing to
be on-call?
During an interview you need to probe their ability
to extend their skills and ascertain whether they want
to do so. Some people have skills but come from siloed
organisations where they only focus on a single thing.
However, most will want to know there are opportunities
to progress. Offering employees the chance to move into
different areas will help businesses bring in individuals
who add value. It’s not necessarily about recruiting better
talent, but recruiting talent that suits your operating
model. It’s not about putting experts in every area, but
creating teams that can deliver value faster to customers.
There’s a mindset challenge. It’s difficult to work
with people who are unwilling to embrace new skills or
challenges. At William Hill, we have had some difficult
conversations with individuals who had to decide whether
they wanted to stay with the organisation when asked to
change functions due to changing business priorities.
Some chose to stay with us, some to leave the company.”
leadership appears to be more common in Western
countries, where traditional hierarchical models of
work are being broken down or evolving into flatter
structures. “However, we can see a trend in a global,
millennial-led desire to work in flexible, nimble
and effective culture-driven environments in many
industries,” he adds.
iPsychTec’s Shah also identifies traits that
organisations are looking for in potential employees.
“One is thought leadership: are you a person who is
evaluating or investigating or someone using their
imagination?” he says. “Another is influence: what are
your influencing skills like, and are you sociable, tactful,
assertive? Then resilience: are you resilient, adaptable,
flexible, supporting? The other one is delivery; can you
deliver, are you structured, conscientious, driven, or
do you give up at the first hurdle?”
Flexible job descriptions
There are implications here for how organisations
approach hiring, says Russell Miller, director of
learning solutions and innovation at Imperial College
Business School (Executive Education).
“It means that job descriptions, roles and
employment contracts need to be more flexible to
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