T-Shaped Communication

I recently found myself in a workshop about mariculture and the use of kelp in emerging economies as one is wont to do.¹ For some reason I find myself in places like this all the time. I love being someone who is a T-shaped person - deep specialty in one area, and a broad set of knowledge, albeit somewhat thin, across many domains.

There's something magical about sitting in a room full of people who are absolutely obsessed with things you know nothing about. The scientist studying kelp genetics? I can't help there. The oceanographer mapping currents? Nope. The ecologist tracking marine mammal migrations? Not my wheelhouse. But I can ask questions. And sometimes that's exactly what they need - someone who makes them explain their work without the comfortable shield of jargon.

You can always spot the true experts in a room. They're the ones who don't hide behind jargon. They don't feel compelled to impress you with technical terms. Instead, they go to ridiculous lengths to make complex ideas simple. I love these people. They've been at it so long that they've circled back around to speaking like humans again.² It's beautiful to watch, really, and it's exactly how innovation happens - when ideas jump across domains, or disciplines collide in unexpected ways.

Look at any field and you'll see this weird phenomenon: the true masters make everything sound simple. Not because they're dumbing it down, but because they actually understand it at a molecular level. Feynman was the poster child for this.³ The man had "If I cannot build it, I do not understand it" scrawled on his blackboard when he died. Think about that. Here was arguably one of the greatest minds of the 20th century, and his mantra wasn't about equations or abstraction—it was about hands-on creation. About taking something complex and making it tangible.

In this kelp workshop, I watched as scientists, government officials, and students discussed how climate shifts might impact site selection for kelp farms, whether metal absorption in kelp could shield shellfish from toxins, and how kelp's natural spread is creating new habitats.⁴ What struck me was the collaborative spirit - everyone trying to make their specialized knowledge accessible to the group.

When one oceanographer explained how physical currents impact kelp growth, she did it with hand gestures and everyday metaphors rather than equations. When a geneticist described kelp's population diversity, he used analogies to human family trees instead of technical jargon. This is exactly how knowledge propagates effectively - when experts translate complexity into clarity.

Being a T-shaped person is important. The more lengthy your arms are in being a T-shape as an individual - the more things you learn from varying domains - the more you realize that to explain and fully communicate your deep expertise, you need to do it in a very simple and straightforward way. You need to use examples from the natural world. You need to use examples that are accessible to anyone of any academic background or no academic background at all. That's one of the best and most exciting lessons that you can learn.

At one point, a marine scientist mentioned they needed better ways to monitor water quality to predict kelp growth rates. I found myself sharing how similar monitoring challenges exist in machine learning systems - how we track drift in data distributions over time and build alerting mechanisms. The spark of recognition in the scientist's eyes told me the connection landed. This wasn't because I knew anything about kelp (I don't), but because good monitoring system design transcends domains.

When I was there, I found myself asking many questions and trying to get to the root of certain causes of things that people were discussing. That was tremendously fun. But another thing that was tremendously fun was being able to then speak on technology or machine learning or entrepreneurship - things about which I might know a thing or two, no matter how much I vehemently deny it.

It was absolutely thrilling to participate in this session. I learned so much and was hopefully able to say something that triggered somebody to think differently about something. And who knows, maybe I'll see them at next year's symposium or at another conference somewhere else like in the Faroe Islands or other far-flung reaches of the world. Maybe one day they'll actually hold their conference in South Korea.

The T-shaped approach to knowledge and communication serves us all well. Depth gives us credibility in our specialties, but breadth helps us translate that knowledge to others - and more importantly, helps us see connections that specialists might miss. In a world of increasing specialization, we need more people who can build bridges between islands of expertise.

So here's to the T-shaped communicators - the ones who can go deep but speak clearly. The ones who can translate complexity without losing meaning. The ones who ask naive questions in one domain because they've seen similar patterns in another. We need more of them.

And if you find yourself in a conference room discussing kelp science in January somewhere in the frigid north? Embrace it. Ask questions. Make connections. You never know what surprising insights might emerge.