Stop Hunting Unicorns 🦄
The posting has been open for four months for a program manager that's going to support a new tech-enabled clinical program. It lists deep expertise in project management, IT infrastructure, and clinical operations as requirements . You have 120 applicants. You call 20 of them. You interview 4. You hire none.
A program like this likely needs redesigned clinical workflow , new technology built and integrated with an existing EHR, a privacy and security review, a vendor contract, staff training, and a budget that crosses 3+ cost centres. So the thing you are hiring for is the ability to work at those boundaries. That instinct is correct. So why did your recruitment fail?
What a Unicorn Costs
Each of the three disciplines (Project Management, IT Infrastructure, Clinical Operations) have real depth. Each one takes about 10 years to build. Asking for all three is equivalent to 30 years of accumulated experience. If you are doing a CEO search, perhaps you can afford it, but you certainly can't afford it on a program manager salary band.
The 40 Year Old Solution
"T-shaped" leaders, was a term used by McKinsey & Company in the 1980s to describe the ideal profile for recruiting and internally developing consultants and leaders. The vertical bar represents deep expertise and technical mastery in a single domain. The horizontal bar (top of the T) represented general working knowledge of other relevant domains, empathy and the soft skills required to cross and connect with different teams and bridge silos between them.
The argument is that T-shaped management is a behaviour rather than a skill inventory. Depth in one thing, plus the daily habit of working across boundaries.
The vertical bar you are hiring for should be the linchpin for success. Since building credibility with the people who have to change how they work is paramount, what you are looking for is likely a clinical operations leader who demonstrates the top of the T attributes.
Three ways to screen for "T-shaped" leaders
- Ask them to explain their hardest piece of work to you. Then ask a naive follow-up question. Watch whether they get curious and try to simplify their answer or get irritated. Choosing which details matter requires real depth, and translating them across disciplines requires empathy. This tests both bars of the T at once.
- Ask for a time someone outside their field changed their mind. People who cannot answer this have never worked at an interface!
- Ask what project, initiative or service they have been able to ship or deliver outside their lane, and who else got credit. Interface work is shared work...
Happy Hunting!