"The doer alone learneth..."

The philosopher Friedrich Nietzsche once said, "The doer alone learneth."  However, the World War II General and President of the United States, Dwight D. Eisenhower, once said, "Plans are useless, but planning is indispensable."  It's an age old argument - which type of individual gets more accomplished, the planner or the doer?  Who is right here - Nietzsche or Eisenhower?  Or maybe both?

Chances are that by this time in your life, you can probably guess whether you are a planner or doer, right?  If you don't know, my recommendation is to go to the closest Ikea store and purchase something - it could almost be anything that is sold in the store or online, just make sure that the box reads "Some assembly required."  Now, if you rip open the box, pull out the pieces, and start putting things together without looking too hard at the instructions, it's almost certain that you are a "doer."  Conversely, if you slowly open the box, pull out the pieces and separate them, count each piece to make sure that you have everything, and then proceed through the instruction manual, step by step, you are definitely a planner. 

Today is Sunday, which means that tomorrow is the start of another work week.  If you have a checklist of all the things that you need to do this week while you are at work, or if you have checked your calendar and started thinking about the meetings that you have to attend, then it's almost certain that you are a planner.  Conversely, if you rarely send out an agenda for meetings or if you "make up things on the fly", then you are definitely a "doer."

I am definitely a "doer."  Two examples are illustrative.  About three weeks ago, my wife and I dropped off one of our daughters at college.  She and her friends were renting a house near campus, so we had purchased some furniture at Ikea the week before leaving.  My wife - the planner - left all the parts for the furniture piece in the box while she slowly reviewed the instructions.  She could tell that I was getting frustrated, so she smiled and looked at me and said, "Remember putting together our son's dresser (also from Ikea) the last time that we did this?"  Oh yeah, I thought to myself, my son and I got about half way through putting together a dresser before realizing that we missed a couple of key steps.  We had to take apart the dresser and back-up and repeat several steps.  How many four-letter words did I say that day, you ask?  Let's not discuss that. 

The second example involves a project kick-off meeting at work.  There were three of us scheduled to lead the kick-off session - myself, one of my close colleagues at work (who also happens to be a doer), and one of our newest leaders in the organization.  We had a couple of prep meetings before the event, but for the most part, we ended up leading a very successful kick-off meeting without really knowing what we were going to say beforehand.  Yes, two of were definitely doers and the third leader was definitely a planner. 

Both of these examples illustrate one of the main problems when you have a team composed of a mixture of both planners and doers.  Half of the individuals on the team are going to be frustrated and impatient while the other half are sitting around and planning everything step-by-step (as in the first example above).  Alternatively, half of the individuals on the team are going to be scared that the project will fail because the other half is rushing into everything without thinking too much about the what, when, and how (as in the second example above).

The truth is that a successful team needs both planners and doers.  It falls to the leader to push the planners a little, while he or she holds the doers back a little bit.  Leaders also need to be self-aware of their own tendencies, and just like no single leadership style is appropriate for every situation, there is a time for planning and a time for doing.  Good leaders should be flexible enough to accommodate both planning and doing.  Clearly, I have a lot of room for improvement here.  I fully recognize that there are a lot of cases when I need to do more planning and less doing.  As Eisenhower suggest, however, you can't make a plan to cover every possible contingency - avoid "paralysis by analysis" on the one hand, but be careful not to rush into every situation without developing a strategy and tactics for how to reach the team's goal (i.e. avoid "extinction by instinct").

As for the piece of Ikea furniture at my daughter's college house?  While my wife might disagree, we probably finished it in just the amount of time it probably would have taken had we done it my way.  But, I 100% guarantee you that there were far fewer four-letter words coming out of my mouth.