Having the right people is critical. Having them in the right positions is equally critical. Management guru Jim Collins described it as ‘getting the right people in the right seats on the bus’.
If I were to extend Mr Collins’ metaphor to accommodate my model I would say that the ‘Big Thinker’ would be the planner/navigator; deciding where to go, why it is important to be there and finding the best way to get there. The ‘Doer’ would be the bus driver; hands firmly on the wheel and eyes intently on the road. The ‘Stickler for Details’ would be the maintenance person; making sure the tank is full, oil and water topped up and ensuring services are conducted routinely.
Recognition of these differences is a dimension that is missing in many recruitment and training initiatives and it can have a substantial impact on your productivity, revenue growth and staff and member retention.
The ‘Big Thinker’:
The Upside – Big Thinkers are always looking for opportunities whether at work, at home, on the bus, in the supermarket, it doesn’t matter. They can’t not think about the next big thing (apologies for the double negative but you know what I mean).
When I say big I mean developing potential new markets, innovative business models, new technologies and not just following the latest trends, copying a competitors marketing offer or tinkering with an existing product or service.
They are entrepreneurs. They thrive on the challenge of creating the next big thing. They are integrative thinkers and they can combine disparate (even seemingly incompatible) propositions to develop novel solutions to seemingly intractable problems.
They can operate, and even excel, in the absence of all the information. In short they can connect the dots to reveal a masterpiece where Doers and Sticklers only see dots. They take in a lot of information in a lot of different forms i.e. observation, books, formal qualifications, blogs, magazines, pod casts, you name it.
The Downside – Genuine Big Thinkers are rare, very rare. Everyone likes to consider themselves capable of thinking big so they are often also very difficult to identify. They are sometimes unfocused often having several big ideas in development at any given time.
They are calculated risk takers willing to back themselves in order to win big – recognizing that it may result in losing big. They require a lot of downtime to consolidate all the information they consume. While the quality of their thinking is often very high the quality of their communication can suffer because what seems obvious to them requires detailed often laborious explanation to others.
The Big Thinker can be stalled or derailed by relatively small execution or administration details that ‘Doers’ and ‘Sticklers’ take in stride.
The ‘Doer’:
The Upside – The Doer gets things done. They can’t sit still. They are high energy individuals with a passion for making things happen (please resist the urge to break into ‘What a feeling’ the theme from flash dance here).
They seek out information but the scope is generally limited to the task at hand. They are very task oriented and not generally interested in learning for the sake of learning. They are very pragmatic and outcome oriented.
The Downside – The Doer will get things done even if they are the wrong things. Their mercurial nature, outcome oriented approach and narrow focus means that while they are likely to deliver on their own responsibilities they lack the necessary ‘big picture’ view to see how things ‘fit’ together.
They often view success in terms of their own responsibilities even if it is at the expense of broader organizational success.
While they have the capacity for learning they tend to compartmentalize their knowledge rather then integrating it to produce novel or innovative solutions.
They can contribute to broader strategic discussions but are reluctant to take the lead unless it is in their relatively narrow field of expertise. When they do contribute they will, consciously or not, tend to exaggerate the importance of their own project/field of expertise to the success of the broader initiative.
The ‘Stickler for Details’:
The Upside – The Stickler is the check all the boxes, cross all the T’s and dot all the I’s type. Their attention to detail is legendary. They are compliance freaks. They are all about protocols, policies and procedures.
They can recite, verbatim, every relevant section, subsection and clause. They are extremely data driven.
The Downside – The Stickler needs a stable framework to operate within. They need to have all the information to be most productive. They will get stuck when there are loose ends. They have a limited ability to extrapolate or ‘fill in the blanks’.
When you next hire be certain to consider thoroughly whether you need a Big Thinker, a Doer or a Stickler for Details. They are not interchangeable; they each bring something unique to the table.
A great staff member in the wrong position will always, at best, under-perform and at worst destabilize the entire organization.
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