Be an Executioner

The fourth grade class was given an assignment to go home and ask their fathers what they did for a living and give an oral report the next day for a grade in social studies. The next day one of the boys reported to the class that his father was an executioner. The teacher questioned the boy, "Your father is an executioner, are you sure?" The boy confidently answered, "Yes, my dad said that he makes plans and executes them!'

The old saying goes: " There are three kinds of people, those who make things happen, those who watch things happen, and those that wonder what happened.”

Organizations have realized that there are two kinds of people--thinkers and doers and they prefer to hire doers. Jim Collins famously uses the illustration of the bus. If you have the right people on the bus the problem of how to motivate and manage people goes away. Organizations usually prefer "doers" over "thinkers." Leaders like to have people around them that can get the job done. A great vision without the right people is irrelevant. Some organizations hire the smartest and most gifted people but if they are not doers, they usually have difficulty starting and finishing tasks.

IT IS EASIER TO EDUCATE DOERS THAN TO ACTIVATE THINKERS.

But is there an alternative to doers and thinkers?

While I was going to graduate school, I worked as a supervisor for a janitorial firm. As a supervisor, one of my jobs was to make sure jobs were done to the satisfaction of the customer. One job was without a regular custodian, so myself and another supervisor was called upon to clean a building until a regular employee was hired. The other supervisor and I showed up to do the job. The other supervisor was the ultimate doer and immediately began to work before we had even looked at the layout of the building. I followed his lead and immediately began to work. It was a large building and upon inspecting our work after completion we found things that were missed and had to re-do some of our work. My preferred method of work was to walk the job and get familiar with the setting and develop a plan of action in my head then get to work. After I discovered that the other supervisor was a doer, I made sure that we had a plan first whenever we worked together.

By nature I am a planner and organizations need planners, but I don't like to wait long before executing my plan. What is the distinction between doers, thinkers, and planners? Planners are doers with direction and thinkers are planners that are slower to action (the problem with thinkers is that they are usually slow to action). What planners need to be weary of is prolonging the wait before "doing." Some might argue that planners and thinkers are the same, but in my estimation a planner is a doer that follows a specific course of action.

The bottom line for leaders and managers is getting the job done. "Doing" without a clear course of action and "planning" without doing is ineffective and wastes time and resources.

BUILD ACTION INTO YOUR PLAN

Plans without action are useless. Every plan should  be broken down into action steps. The entire plan and each action step should be put on a time-table. The completion date of each of the action steps are "milestones."

10 STEPS TO DEVELOPING ACTION PLANS

1. Determine the ultimate goal

2. Examine options

3. Consider potential obstacles and results

4. Decide upon a plan of action

5. Establish a desired date for completing the goal

6. Break the plan into action steps

7. Assign a completion date for each action step (milestone)

8. Allocate resources

9. Start working toward first milestone

10. Celebrate completion of each milestone as a victory

KEYS TO SUCCESS

1. Be proactive - don't wait for perfect circumstances

2. Be flexible--plans usually change along the way

3. Be determined

4. Don't fear failure

5. Never give up