Last month, I shaped a new concept to market. And through it, I:
Prototyped the website in Figma Make
Wrote the email campaign copy
Managed product tickets in Linear
Prototyped enterprise features in Lovable
Wrote code in Claude Code
Ran user tests
Mapped out acquisition strategy
Discussed metrics and analytics instrumentation
When I told a friend about it, they said: "That's like five different jobs."
And I thought: No, it's one job. It's just that the job is solving the problem, not doing one specific function.
I've been thinking about this whole "T-shaped" worker thing—you know, where you're broad across disciplines but go deep in one area. Then I started talking about "W-shaped" workers who have multiple depths.
But lately, I keep coming back to X.
Not just because it sounds cooler (*pre-elon*). But because X means three things that actually matter:
X as in "solving for X" - Always starting with the problem, not the solution
X as placeholder - Can represent anything, anyone, any situation
X as connector - Four quadrants meeting at the center: Product, Design, Tech, Go-to-Market
The X-shaped person doesn't just wear multiple hats. They see problems in 3D.
And apparently, this is going mainstream. Harvard Business Review's authors Linda A. Hill, Emily Tedards, and Jason Wild just wrote about "Bridgers" making their way into corporate innovation teams. Once something hits HBR, you know it's no longer just a startup thing.
So what is an X-shaped person, and why should you care?
What X-Shaped Actually Means (And What It Doesn't)
Let's be clear: X-shaped ≠ doing everything yourself.
If you're looking for someone to design, code, manage stakeholders, and run GTM all on their own, you don't want an X-shaped person. You want a founder of a very small startup. Trust me, I was one. Or very cheap labor, in which case you really shouldn't.
The X-shaped person's superpower isn't doing everything—it's seeing problems from multiple angles, not just within their discipline. Let me show you.
Scenario: Team wants to build a new feature. Everyone's excited.
The Designer sees: "This needs a great UX." The PM sees: "This aligns with our roadmap." The Engineer sees: "This is technically feasible." The GTM lead sees: "We can market this."
The X-shaped person sees: "Wait—is this actually solving the customer's problem, or are we building it because we can / part of our roadmap / make money?"
They're the one asking uncomfortable questions:
"Is this a product problem or a go-to-market problem?"
"Should we even build this, or should we just change how we message what we already have?"
"We can ship this fast, but should we?"
The X-shaped person connects the dots that specialized roles can't see because they're busy in their functional lanes.
The Skills Nobody Talks About
Harvard Business Review says Bridgers need "strong emotional and contextual intelligence to build trust, influence, and commitment across partners."
Sure. But let me tell you what that actually looks like when you're in the mud:
1. Letting Go of Old Ways (Even When They Used to Work)
A fellow entrepreneur told me this week: "I used to have 20 people. Now I have 12 because I use AI in everything. Why not?"
Why not?
Because most people are attached to "how we've always done it." The X-shaped person embraces new ways of working in real-time. It's not about being a tech evangelist—it's about ego management. Can you let go of the process that made you successful three years ago when it's slowing you down today?
It's like manually tracking your expenses in a spreadsheet when your bank offers automated categorization. The old way still works, and it's comforting, but you're spending energy on the wrong problem.
2. Speed + Strategic Restraint (The Uncomfortable "No")
An advisor told me, "I believe the future will lack product owners who can be curious enough about the problem to know what to build and why."
With AI, prototyping tools, and no-code platforms, you can build almost anything in days. Which means the real skill is knowing what not to build.
I've seen teams spin up a full-fledged Figma prototype in 3 days and deploy it to a live environment in 1 day. We can build CustomGPTs with fake data to test concepts before dev lifts a finger. You can move ridiculously fast now.
The X-shaped person's job is to say: "We can build this, but should we?" That's the uncomfortable decision. Not "can we do this?" but "should we do this?" And then—you have to persuade everyone else that saying no is the right strategic move. You have to make "let's not build this thing you're all excited about" sound smart, not lazy.
Good luck with that.
3. Moving at 70% Confidence (Not 95%)
Traditional corporate playbook: Gather all the data, run all the analyses, get consensus, then move.
X-shaped playbook: Move forward with 70% confidence because waiting for 95% means someone else shipped three versions already.
This is what HBR means by "sitting in uncertainty." But it's not just tolerating uncertainty—it's using it as a workspace. You prototype with fake data. You deploy rough versions to test assumptions. You organize the "f*cking minecraft blocks" of transcripts, artifacts, and documentation just enough to keep the team moving.
It's not chaos. It's structured, intentional, and iterative experimentation.
But it makes people who need 95% certainty very uncomfortable. I was (and sometimes still am) one of those.
4. Trust Building When Nobody Has the Answers
Here's the thing about moving fast in uncertainty: nobody actually knows if it's going to work.
The X-shaped person builds trust not by having all the answers, but by being honest that we're all figuring this out together, and we will trust each other in the meantime as we try to figure this out.
"We're all just trying to make something" isn't a weakness. It's vulnerability as a strategy.
5. Pattern Recognition Across Contexts (The 3D Vision)
This is the big one.
The X-shaped person sees problems in 3D, not just within their discipline.
Example: Marketing says "we need better messaging."
The Marketer hears: "I need to rewrite our landing page."
The Designer hears: "I need to redesign our brand."
The PM hears: "I need to add features that are easier to explain."
The X-shaped person hears: "Somewhere in Acquisition, we need to describe our services better, and then when they come to Product, we have to reaffirm and deliver on these promises to actually meet the users where they are."
They see the connection between the messaging problem and the product validation problem that everyone else missed because they were looking at it through their functional lens and trying not to step on toes.
It's like those magic eye pictures from the '90s. Everyone's staring at the dots. The X-shaped person sees the 3D disco ball.
Where X Thrives (And Where X Breaks)
X thrives when:
There's accountability (real stakes, not performative work)
There's agency (permission to make decisions and try things)
There's a champion (founder or C-suite who protects them from territorial wars)
Their work has visibility (they're not seen as "the person who does a bit of everything but nothing deeply")
X breaks when:
Spreading too thin - Trying to connect everything, becoming a bottleneck
Failing to translate insights - Seeing connections but can't turn them into actionable work for specialized teams
Becoming indispensable - The org can't function without you (this is actually a failure state because you haven't built systems or developed others)
The Uncomfortable Truth About Organizational Readiness
X-shaped people are emerging naturally in startups and making their way into corporate innovation teams. HBR is writing about "Bridgers." The role is going mainstream.
But there's a gap between wanting the output and being structurally ready for how X-shaped people work.
When X becomes a threat to existing structures:
Let's be honest about this. X-shaped people can make organizations uncomfortable because they:
Expose inefficiencies that make traditional roles look redundant
Move faster than siloed teams and make them look slow
Solve problems that were generating work (and headcount) for other teams
Make decisions at 70% confidence that beat someone else's 95% certainty (ego threat)
Or, make decisions at 70% confidence and get it 'wrong' without a safety net
The readiness test for companies:
If you can't give this person:
Authority to make decisions across Product/Design/Tech/GTM
A champion (founder/C-suite) who protects them from territorial wars
Visibility so their work is valued, not seen as "doing a bit of everything"
Then you're not ready for an X-shaped person, even if you think you need one.
And, if you're X-shaped and consistently feel like a threat in your organization, you're probably not doing something wrong. You're in the wrong structure.
Nature vs. Nurture: Can You Become X-Shaped?
Here's my theory: You can't teach someone to be X-shaped in a classroom.
But you can create the conditions for X-shaped people to emerge.
The formula: Put someone who hustled through hardship (resourcefulness forged by constraint) into an environment with accountability (real stakes) and agency (permission to decide and act), and watch them thrive.
HARDSHIP ACCOUNTABILITY AGENCY
(constraint) + (real stakes) + (permission)
─────────────────────────────────────────────────────
X-SHAPED THRIVING
X-shaped isn't about credentials or training programs. It's about:
Having been forced to figure sh*t out with limited resources
Being in an environment where your decisions actually matter
Having permission to try things and fail
CLOSING
The X-shaped individual isn't a new job title. It's what happens when someone sees problems and bridges silos.
It's the designer who asks product questions. The PM who understands technical constraints. The engineer who thinks about go-to-market. The strategist who can prototype their own ideas.
They're not doing everyone's job. They're solving for X—the problem—and orchestrating the right people to build the right solution with AI as their coordination layer. It's what makes a Designer an interesting Product Owner.
AI doesn't replace X-shaped people. It amplifies them. While specialists use AI to get faster at their function, X-shaped people use AI to operate across all functions simultaneously. They see problems from multiple angles and orchestrate AI agents to execute across Product, Design, Tech, and GTM before others finish debating in their silo.
This used to be a startup thing. Now it's going mainstream. HBR wrote about it. Corporate innovation teams are hiring for it.
If you're reading this and thinking, "This is me, but I feel like a threat everywhere I go"—you're not broken. You're in structures built for specialists, and you see in 3D.
Find a place that gives you authority, a champion, and visibility. Or build your own.
Because the world needs more people who ask "should we?" not just "can we?"
The world needs more people and companies solving for X.
Thu Do is a hands-on product owner with 10+ years bringing products from 0-to-1 across startups, Fortune 500 consultancies (BCG, PwC), and innovation studios. She helps early-stage to early-growth companies ($1-10M ARR) and innovation teams turn big visions into competitive market-ready products and services through human-centered design, product alignment, and AI innovation. Find her on LinkedIn.