Planners vs. Doers

In the workplace, one of the things that stands out most to me about someone is whether they are a planner or a doer. It’s one of the first (and most telling) things I notice after working with someone for a while. I view it as a spectrum: planner on one side and doer on the other - and everybody falls somewhere in between. 

Planners are thoughtful, detail-oriented, and usually more risk-averse. They love structure. They want to anticipate every obstacle and solve problems before they happen. Doers, on the other hand, love to take action above all else (sometimes before they feel ready). They figure things out by trying and adjusting. Doers typically are more comfortable with failure and are more willing to get back up when things don’t go their way the first time around. Planners can feel deeply uncomfortable when shifting into action without certainty. Or they feel unable to execute or get started when there are still questions outstanding. 

I spent a lot of time with planners during the first 20 or so years of my life. The schools and programs I had attended for high school and university typically bred many type-A, high-achieving kinds of people. The traditional academic system is designed for planners and the people who can successfully check off rubrics are usually the ones rewarded. The person with the most well-researched and meticulously edited solution to a case study is usually the one who comes out with the highest grade. However, in the real world, things are a bit different. It’s not the person who presents the best case study who wins, but the person who executes on said plan. 

We’ve worked with many interns over the years at Threads and I’ve noticed a direct correlation between planners and doers, and students from academic and applied programs, respectively. The students from programs like Queen’s Commerce (my alma mater) or Western Ivey tend to produce students who love to create a project plan or complete a business analysis, but sometimes feel paralyzed when it comes to doing the actual work. We’ve had the greatest success from students from non-traditional applied programs, such as Toronto Metropolitan University Fashion or Humber Design. Of course, there have been exceptions, but the trend is there.

Of course, being a pure doer with no planning isn’t good either. As Benjamin Franklin (and also Taylor Swift) said: “if you fail to plan, you plan to fail”.

I’ve had to actively work on shifting my mindset more towards being a doer, especially in the first few years of starting Threads. It took a lot of work to undo the mindset of more planning = more success. I’m happy to say I’ve made progress, but there are still times where I catch myself needing a kick. I think the target mix for myself is to be 30% planner and 70% doer in the long run.