Chapter 9 - Doer vs Thinker Strengths

Doing is tough, Thinking is harder

We have explored the progression of building your foundational development, incremental milestones in the progression and the various strengths that contradict each other in that development. In the next few paragraphs, we will explore these strengths in more detail as they offer different challenges and rewards as you transition through them. The first step of this process is to look a the system and were you are in the progression and then measure how balanced your Doer vs Thinker strengths are. Here is the figure again.

First up is being a Doer. This is probably one of the easiest strengths to implement as you alone hold the key to being a success at it which is Discipline. Now while intelligence will play a part in your implementation the real success lies in consistency and organization from being disciplined. If you have not read, “Unlock Organized Efficiency and be a Supportive Leader: The Power of Smart Guy Cards, To-Do Book and Working Book”, I highly suggest you do so before trying to master the Doer strength.

Throughout my early career, I realized that efficiently completing tasks with competence was a key differentiator when I was measured against my peers. I simply outworked them and I also realized that I controlled the output. If you have not figured this out yet then I suggest you consider it. When I was younger, my father believed that education and intelligence would get you farther in life than hard work. This is a fallacy typical of the “Work Life Balance” trap. As I meandered through my college years, I simply did not apply myself to my work. I coasted along and this did not bring success. It was only after years of failure that I began to realize that education and intelligence when coupled with effort brought about true rewards. It was a harsh lesson to learn but at least I figure it out. So there is hope for you as well as you can turn this on with a little persistence.

The other thing I learned from trial and error was developing the discipline to stay on my game. Being a Doer is a distinct strength that not only relies on your ability to get stuff done but also learning the various elements to get there. These are explored in the article “You need “33” to be a Success in Construction!” As the ultimate Doer you need to master both sides of 33. Lets refresh them if you have not read the article. The Skills attributes are Technical Builder, People, and Business. The Characteristic attributes are Head, Heart, and Gut. Hence “33”.

You need to be relentless in finding balance in these and also expanding your development with them. This will fortify your foundations as you advance in the Supportive Leadership Structure but most importantly as you perform these tasks implementing the 33 you are developing your critical thinking strength. You may not realize it but you are. By trying different tasks and working through them, you do exercise the brain and learn to think. The other key aspect of being a Doer is learning to understand failure.

Every single entry level employee is expected to fail. If fact it occurs throughout your development. Failure is something we all shun as being a bad thing, but in reality Failure is good for learning. We used to have a saying in the business, “We will let you screw up once and learn, but repeat the same mistake and you will be fired”. I always thought this was funny but it is actually a very true statement. We are paying you as an employee to advance and that will come with some failures but there is learning through failures. Do not be afraid of failure but be afraid if you fail to learn from it. One final point on failure, try not to make it a habit, because it gets expensive

The other aspect of being a Doer that is difficult to understand is repetition. By doing tasks repeatedly, you learn to refine and hone the skills. If you are applying the “Master” part of Vocational Mastery for Purpose then you will identify little enhancements that make the task more efficient, etc. More importantly you will learn to identify which part of the task is most important. An example of this is doing a shop drawing review. We all started looking at shop drawings, comparing basic dimensions and requirements to the contract documents but was this really where our focus needed to be. Over time and after some failures you learn that certain hold to dimensions are important, certain technical aspects of the submittal need to be coordinated with other trades, etc. Through this repetition you develop a sense of what really matters and when you do it again you will refine your focus to those elements versus reviewing all the information in the submittal. You need the repetition and also failure to develop these critical thinking skills and its through repetition and failure that these come about.

Now Repetition as a Doer does also bring about a very important skill and that is muscle memory. There is no easy way to review a large door submittal for large hotel or doing layout for hundreds of caissons on a project. After you have done the first 50 or 100 then you start to get bored and this is were the personal skills in You need “33” to be a Success in Construction!” come into play. By exercising discipline or Gut with repetition, you start to develop muscle memory. Muscle memory is very important to develop as it will stay with you throughout your life. You may not see that product type for years, but at some point years later you may be leading the team installing the same or similar product and believe me the muscle memory of the curtain wall assemblies you reviewed in your younger years and all that repetition will pay off as you will know exactly what you are looking at, what the most important elements are and then lead your team through the execution of that assembly being built. Muscle memory lasts a life time.

As you start to develop this muscle memory you will be rewarded by beginning to master certain assemblies in the building. At first you will be more specialized in the tasks but as you advance down the Parts, Assemblies, Builder milestones the muscle memory will have a stacking affect. So do not short change the time as a Doer as you will need these later in the Thinking stage. Look at the development progression in the figure above and notice how the Doer and Thinker Strengths flip or tip at the Builder Level. This is the trap and what you need to be aware of. Your success as a Doer will not be your success when you need to apply more Thinking skills. So what are the thinker strengths pitfalls.

The mid point of the figure is where you are now typically supporting a large staff of people. You also probably got promoted to this position because you were proficient at being a Doer. This creates the first trap. You cannot rely on your Doer ability anymore but must transition to rely on your Thinker ability. This Thinker strength is also something no one has taught your to do. You need to realizing that as a Builder you need to spend 50% or more time thinking about the things the Doers need to focused on. Thinking of how Leverage and Support the team is an important transition. You can be a very competent Doer but making the mental shift to Thinking about how leverage your team above you in their execution of the Doer task is where we fail. This was me at the Pentagon and this was were I was micromanaging verses leading the team. When applied to the Doer/Thinker strengths, I was taking over the tasks that they could not Do and I did them versus Thinking of how to get them to Do their tasks and competently. Or I just demanded that they DO the tasks without any guidance on why it was important or what was most critical.

This transition is so hard. You were a competent Doer but how do you as Leader now get your team to be competent Doers. Well you need to think about what they need to be working on, training they need, resources, etc. so they can be high level doers. It is a different mind set and if you fail to adjust to it you will simply remain a high level Doer and not transition into a high level Thinker. These leaders are simply micro-managers or super-Doers. The leader actually makes time to Think, analyzes which tasks that are the most critical at that point on the project, clearly defines the desired outcome for the Doers and then monitors them to make sure they are staying on point. This is leveraging your team. Thinking of how to Leverage the team is the number one hardest thing to do.