The Doer, The Delegator and the Dealmaker

That saying, “What got you here, won’t get you there,” is completely true. As you grow your business or mature as a business person, you might have started with one skill set, but that is not the same skill required as you grow or go after bigger opportunities.

You will always hit a ceiling growing if you don’t adapt to the demands of your new realities in business. So, a quick post to share about the stages of being the doer, the delegator and the dealmaker on your growth journey.

The Doer

Getting things done is your primary ability. You manage your own productivity. So, being able to define what has to get done, keeping those straightened out in lists, and executing is your primary value. You are the worker in your business. You have a job. You have to make customers happy. Your ability to get work out the door and keep the revenue flowing by delivering is your primary value.

This is fantastic for coaches, consultants and lifestyle businesses. You are your own accountability. There’s no management structure to worry about. You simply keep your ass in your seat and knock out tasks. Type away and keep pushing on the next thing.

The Delegator

If you add doers to your team, then it’s a waste of time to be doing the work. You are not building the business if you do the work. You are simply reacting to urgency.

If you get others to do the work, regardless if it’s to your perfectionistic standards, then you are growing capacity.

However, delegating is not an automatic skill. Most people suck at it. Here are a few reasons they suck:

• They don’t concretely define what is required in action and steps
• The recipient has to come back to get clarity, thus, wasting more time
• They hold on too long to a decision of delegating
• They overvalue doing and pride themselves on being the best doer. They have a doer identity lingering
• They don’t have a system for scaling doing the work in SOP’s, tools, and culture
• They micromanage and jump in disenfranchising team members from becoming better

Delegating is a skill. You have to do it well by being a clear thinker who lets go quickly. You are no longer the doer getting gratification from a job well done. You have to be the one creating clarity and ensuring the right person is doing the right work with accountability. You must manage communications and management.

The Dealmaker

If you have enough delegation happening effectively, then you can get your head out of the trees and see the forest. The dealmaker puts together creative work for money that makes customers delighted.

Furthermore, you can even retool, re-form and manipulate the components of fulfillment to make different types of deals – time for money, project based work, joint ventures, partnerships, equity earnouts, etc.

Imagine your team is the factory that can output product lines you feed it. What if you could even create enough agility to reformat a modularized approach to using your doers and delegators towards custom deals.

You understand value and match value for value. And you are thinking of optimizing value.

The dealmaker is not in the details. You are not the doer. You are not the delegator. You are a matchmaker who is creative. Creativity is far different than productivity. You have to think about making the right deal.

If you are only used to selling project work for $100 per hour, it may be hard to imagine using the same resources, talent and processes to make a deal for an investment partnership that could reward you with far more money (value) for the same value. That’s the roadblock of thinking like a doer vs. a dealmaker.

Pick One Identity

I find that entrepreneurs and leaders have too much pride in the identity of being a doer. They may spend years talking like they want to be a dealmaker, but they act, think and do life like a doer. Their ego just can’t let go. After all, they were the best doer and noone can do what they do. (Sarcasm implied)

If you want more time, then be a delegator. But you have to think different.

If you want to build something at scale, then be the dealmaker. But don’t talk about how you are a great doer or delegator.

Pay attention to how you think or what you say. It may be an outdated identity or at least one that does not match up to your goals.

When you have picked your identity, be ruthless not to be the others. Let those die. It’s hard enough to be good at one identity. You have to live, breathe and stay in your lane for good work and results to happen.

And, by the way, everyone is not wired to be a dealmaker or a delegator or a doer. You should know yourself and don’t do what you suck at or even mediocre at. There is too much competition out there to be mediocre.

Have you struggled to embrace and live out one identity well?