In the perennial tussle between the thinkers and the doers, I must confess that I have always been impatient with those who want to ‘get out and do’ before they have ‘sat back and thought’. They have been just as impatient with me!
I now realise that we are both motivated by the same goal – we want to avoid wasting our time.
Since I have confidence in my ability to design a suitable operational system to meet any objective, once I clearly know what that objective is, I avoid wasting time tackling the wrong objectives by sitting back and thinking about it.
The practical doers of this world do not want to waste their time thinking about objectives that may be “all very fine but not operational”. So they first insist that I show them that it can be done; then, and only then, will they be prepared to consider whether it should be done.
Recognising our common pressures, I will try to get less frustrated next time I encounter this reaction – and patiently explain ‘how’, even though I really want to get straight onto the ‘why’.
Today we seemingly all accept that we are short of time and thus feel constrained to give short shift to thought and planning. But how much of this lack of time is self-induced? How often do we need to re-do what we did in haste? Or spend time working around the problems that the haste engendered?.
Whichever camp you fall into – the thinkers or the do-ers – how do you cope with the frustration of dealing with ‘the other’ ?
Dear Penny, I know one way forward is to cultivate appreciation for how other people are different, and benefiting from complementary approaches. But on a bad day I sometimes feel the whole struggle to make better asset decisions is about exactly this difference: too many doers in asset world, not enough thinking beforehand. Not just, for example, getting at root causes before we leap to a solution. I was thinking about this as I was teaching yesterday, how hard it is to get AM classes to think principles and strategy before they leap to technical details. Is there a relationships between doers and short-termism?? PS not an answer to your question!
PPS there’s a technique known as the Disney Strategy I like (supposedly how Walt Disney organised animation teams). Make a different physical space, even just a spot on the floor, for each of ‘Dreaming’, ‘Planning’, and ‘Critiquing’, to stop any short-circuit of cutting off vision by criticising it too quickly. Let the visions develop, then move and think about how you can make it work, before you move again into the critiquing of how it could got wrong (and how we can overcome this).
In meetings, for example, we can use this separation with those who immediately would fret about how difficult it is – they have to let the dreaming/ dreamers speak first, then positive planning, before they get the opportunity to go on about how.
Not quite the same thing as thinkers versus doers, but very useful to avoid frustration! x