Startups Need More than a “Git ‘er Done” Attitude

Photo by Carl Heyerdahl on Unsplash

Don’t just hire “doers.” Your business also needs thinkers, planners and creators.

Most change-the-world entrepreneurs I know have very high and very specific expectations for the people around them. The problem is that people don’t often meet these expectations. This can be very frustrating for the founder and put a serious crimp in a company’s morale, not to mention prospects for success.

I recently had a consultation with an entrepreneur who was feeling frustrated in this way and I ended up exploring the different types of people in the world — in terms of their general strengths in the workplace. I came up with like four types of people: doers, thinkers, planners, and creatives.

The doer

The entrepreneur I was speaking with immediately saw a pattern in her thinking: her company was full of doers but lacked the other types to her company’s detriment. Entrepreneurs tend to attract doers who are personally connected to the powerful and specific vision entrepreneurs have for what they want. And they attract doers who align with that vision and pour their energies into helping the entrepreneur realize the vision.

These doers might even be friends or cause-oriented people who will jump in the foxhole and just get stuff done. They’re critical to growing a company and very valuable to have around. The problem comes when the entrepreneur gets overwhelmed with being the sole or chief decision maker for everything, or when the company gets big enough that the entrepreneur needs people to think and plan more for themselves.

The thinker

To be successful and scale the business, an entrepreneur needs to have a thinker on the team, somebody who really likes to think things through as far as where the company can or ought to go. A thinker will have well-reasoned and innovative ideas about new product development or new channels to explore or new buyer personas that were overlooked in the early days of the startup.

The vice president of research and development at my former company was a thinker whom I depended on for his instincts and experience with regard to a period when the company was rapidly growing and introducing new products.

The planner

At first blush, you might think that thinking and planning are the same thing. They can be, but being one or the other does not guarantee that you’ll be the other. The planner is more concerned with the “how” and “when” than the “what” and “why,” which is the thinker’s focus. Planners are comfortable planning six months or even a year or more in the future. They take in the vision and then lay out a strategy and budget for seeing it through to completion.

They are likely to feel more comfortable thinking in the presence of a Gantt chart. These folks often take the lead in various facets of operations and marketing logistics.

The creative

Last but not least is the creative who leaps to the fore whenever talk turns to telling the story of your brand either in words or visually or both. Your creative people are good at taking abstract ideas and turning them into compelling and consistent stories that span every area of the company. At MegaFood, for example, our creative people turned all of our core values and “farm to tablet” narrative into a unified message that resonated in our marketing, design, website development, packaging, and so on.

The important thing to remember here is that few individuals combine all four of these personality types in their toolkits. Sure, some doers can also plan, and some thinkers may have a creative streak. But the entrepreneur shouldn’t count on running his or her company by relying on a few jack-of-all trades. Entrepreneurs need to do their assessment work in light of these special talents and gifts before trying to assign tasks to people who aren’t wired to achieve them to the entrepreneur’s standards.

Try to figure out what “buckets” of responsibilities your team best fit, which includes giving them the appropriate amount of work to do in the appropriate amount of time. Doing this will also help you know when you need to hire a skill set outside of your team by using a consultant or an advertising agency or hiring for a new position.

Remember, it’s not enough to have people who can “cover” marketing, sales, operations, finance etc. You also want to achieve a diversity of approaches to problem solving and decision making that cut across the disciplines.

Let me know what you’re doing to diversify your team’s skill sets.

Sincerely,

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All credit to my ghostwriting partner, Dave Moore, who is instrumental in getting my thoughts out in a coherent manner & into these blogs. Thanks Dave!