Horizontal vs Vertical Growth: What's your take?

2024, day 1! What better than to reflect and share my own learnings from experiencing horizontal versus vertical growth. This is also a preface that ultimately, an individual’s growth path will always be unique and what I’ve experienced and accepted, may not always be the ideal or optimal for another, but hey, here’s to each and everyone’s unique journey, right?

From the beginning of time and growing up, I’ve had the privilege to be exposed to several aspects of life, be it in academics, physical activities, playing music, dance…etc. I’ve acquired a whole lot of different skills from a young age, but what I’ve now observed is that I’ve never really gone deep into most of them, except for a very select few that I chose to hone further and went 200% into it as I got older. What this made me realise, is that principally, horizontal and vertical learning are 2 very different skillsets, and how you approach it is very much dependent on not just your own objectives but also the environment in which you grew up in.

I’ll explain further in the following points.

Generalist versus Specialist - is it a personality thing, or a construct made through the environment

Does one choose to be a generalist or specialist at a young age? I highly doubt so, unless they are prodigies in a very specific area like a sport or a specific talent (not for the 95% of us at least!). If so, how would you know which path you’re likely to prefer or pursue, be it in your professional or personal lives?

I often wonder about this because from my own experience, it became clear that I wasn’t meant to be a specialist pretty early on in my career. I was way too ‘nosy’ and curious about every other thing aside from my subject matter domain, and that just gave me the ammo to keep pursuing and learning new skills, in my own way. But that has also given me a much broader perspective about what’s going on, as I am able to understand the jargons, the challenges of different subject areas, and the ability to contribute to the bigger picture

Yet, this does not mean that I have no depth (I’m not shallow!). This simply means that I can grasp an understanding across domains faster, but at the crux of it, I still hold my subject matter close to my heart, almost like a comfort zone should anything arise

Both types of growth need to happen as you pursue the career ladder

I always firmly believe that to grow as an individual both personally and professionally, you have to evolve and upscale yourself in key areas that will benefit you the most. And how you go about it, is completely up to you. Your path, your rules ;)

For myself, I chose to grow horizontally in mainly marketing and business professionally because I felt that it would aid me greatly to understand the end-to-end process of how a business can potentially be operated, and how to grow a business. It’s super challenging, but I’ve been able to pick things up as I went along my own learning journey.

Does this mean I’ve forgotten how to design? Of course not! Design is at the heart of what I do and it’ll always remain as the vertical pillar in my growth chart, but the expansion of the other skillsets have pushed my growth to another level. But here’s also the tradeoff that I’ve chosen by pursuing this path: I can no longer say that I know EVERYTHING in design all the time, simply because my time and priorities have shifted to accumulate new skills. Hence, I’m trying to find a balance between both horizontal and vertical growth without compensating too much on either side, which is super challenging as well to maintain, but well, such is life, right?

And this brings about the diverge and converge mentality that I was taught very early on in my career from my senior managers - you need to be able to think broad (aka the bigger picture), and also go deep when you need to. The spectrum that you can play with by having that mentality goes beyond what you can imagine, but it’s definitely not an easy concept to practice, so it takes alot of effort and experimentation to find your own sweet spot.

Whether you choose to pursue your own version of horizontal growth, or focus on building that vertical muscle further, as long as you are clear with your outcomes and what you hope to achieve, put your mind into it and continue that hustle!