Closers and Doers

In Glengarry Glen Ross, Alec Baldwin gives a wonderful performance as a brass-balled ubersalesman sent in to motivate some underperforming salesmen who work for the same boss. His line, "Coffee is for closers," is a sales guy mantra worth of même status. In case you're unfamiliar:

This assumes, of course, that your job is to close deals, to get people to "sign on the line that is dotted," or similar. For me, though, this is the real start of work. Everything that leads up to that is what I do for fun -- talking to people, thinking about problems, doling out some advice. But then, once the line that is dotted is blotted with ink, is when the work begins. In project-based, "lilly pad" consulting, that's where the risk begins.

It's at that point that one must start executing on the project vision. Everybody struggles with this, especially when the project vision is changed and one must "just do the work" that negates all of the Fun Stuff that went into the sales decision.

So there are Closers and Doers. I'm stuck being both right now. Man, the Closer thing is way easier. After that, getting stuff done is a comedy of errors, particularly because the stuff that I hire myself (and my firm) out to do requires a number of diverse resources. And sometimes we're figuring out how to implement it as we go. That's what product invention is. Sometimes, this results in late nights in series, pounding through rework and trying to make lemonade from the situation. Rarely does it result in failure, but often it's suboptimal.

This puts me in the awkward position of playing the Alec Baldwin character not to Closers, but to Doers. It's unsavory at times, and I have to pull props out of my briefcase to great effect, but it's "what I do." That is, when I'm not Doing, which I enjoy a great deal more. It's rather unfortunate that such motivation needs to happen under any circumstance. But when it does, you really gotta whip out the brass balls.