The "Doers"

Enterprise by Design (Part 9)

Yesterday we talked about the dreamers who can put ideas together, tell others about them with a lot of detail but in many cases never execute the dream.  The next group is the “doers.”  Thinking about doers, the person who instantly comes to mind is my uncle Roland.

Roland loved to tell stories that began with walking a mile in the snow to go to school through the calluses earned through hard physical work ending with his success as the Vice President for a major regional bank.   He was a proud man who worked his way up the ladder and earned his status.  Status, wealth and tangible possessions were important to him.  He sacrificed just about anything legal to meet his objectives including relationships. 

Roland was an extreme example of a doer.  He never built anything.  He did his job very well and was very focused on exceling.  He had trouble engaging others in processes, tasks and especially when it came to sharing the spotlight.  He was a great guy to have in an company as he could be counted on getting the job done and done right.

There were moments where we thought that Roland might step out of his comfort zone and take initiative that had not been in a task that he had been given.  Some of these times came after he had conversations with my Dad who was a dreamer.  Dad would paint his dream showing the opportunity and the path.  Roland would listen intently with ears that really picked up with my Dad’s statements such as “If I had your money I would…”  or “Can you imagine how much money you could make if you did …”

Each time when it looked like he was going to reach, he drew back into a task orientation that was highly risk adverse.  The mold and path were set, to him deviation was first calculated in cost which caused a blindness to the opportunity.

Most doers will take some chances and some actually can take a well outlined idea or dream and make it a reality.  Few if any of these have any size and rarely are usually vertical businesses not enterprises.  The challenge to growth for the doers is in most cases, ability to trust someone else to do the job as well as they do.  They have difficulty considering initiatives that they are not tangible where they can get their “hands dirty”. 

Just like the dreamer, the doer is a contributor to the organization and important in achieving objectives.  To build an enterprise, it takes an entrepreneur.