I recently got into a war of words with a coworker regarding the proper solution to a problem with one of our products. As an aside, let me say that e-mail is never ever ever never ever the right way to resolve controversy. Too much subtlety is lost when you’re YELLING IN ALL CAPS at your program manager. Don’t waste your time solving problems in e-mail. Stand up. Walk down the hall. And look the person in the eye. You’ll live longer.
Anyhow.
What was intriguing about my e-mail exchange with the coworker was that we weren’t disagreeing about whether or not we should do something about the problem. We were arguing about how much we should do. The disagreement reminded me that there are two distinct personalities when it comes to devising solutions to problems: incrementalists and completionists.
Incrementalists are realists . They have a pretty good idea of what is achievable given a problem to solve, a product to ship. They’re intimately aware of how many resources are available and the shape of the political landscape with regard to the problem, and they know who knows what. They tend to know all the secrets and they like to be recognized for that fact.
Completionists are dreamers . They have a very good idea how to solve a given problem, and that answer is to solve it right. Their mantra is, “If you’re going to spend the time to solve a problem, solve it in a manner so that you aren’t going to be solving it again in three months.” I used to think that architects were the only real completionists in an organization, but I was wrong. Architects are the only recognized completionists, but the personality is hiding all over the place.
Rewind to my situation. The actual problem is irrelevant, but here’s the background. The coworker discovered a problem in our product and reported it. I responded and suggested a minor improvement that didn’t solve the core problem but was achievable given our schedule. The coworker responded with, “Why do this if we don’t solve the problem?” I responded, “We don’t have time to solve it and something is better than nothing.” Coworker: “This is less than nothing!” Insert stunned silence.
Remember, the coworker identified (correctly) the original problem. So, why in the world don’t they see the value of my solution? The reason is that this is an incrementalist doing battle with a completionist. This isn’t a battle of wrong versus right; it’s the battle of right versus right. Bizarre.
How does anything get done with incrementalists and completionists arguing about degrees of rightness ? Here’s the trick. You want them to argue, you just don’t want them to kill each other. This is where you, the manager, come in.
Somewhere in the Middle
First, we’re going to ignore the problem that has your incrementalist and completionist at each other’s throats. It’s important, but it’s not what we’re working on here, which is getting some value out of these unique perspectives.
What’s important is, who needs to move where? Does the incrementalist need to move closer to the completionist’s view or vice versa? In either case, you’ve got to use the simplest trick in the conflict resolution book : finding common ground. A better way to think about this is, “What do these disparate philosophies need from each other?”
Incrementalists Need Vision
What defines an incrementalist’s day is the raw amount of stuff they do. How many meetings? How many bugs do they close? They love the fact that they ran into that engineering manager in the cafeteria who dropped that critical piece of gossip. Motion, motion, motion.
From the outside, it might look like your incrementalist lacks purpose, but look at the name. This person is driven by the goal of constantly— incrementally—making progress, moving forward.
The question is: What is the purpose behind all this movement? What is their goal? What I’ve noticed with the incrementalists in my life is that for all the motion, it’s not always clear in what direction they are headed. It’s hard to figure this out because they look so busy, but the question is, what is the nature of the busyness?
Your goal with incrementalists is to get them to define or see the plan from soup to nuts. This is a big deal for them because they normally can’t see past the next meeting. Getting them on board with the big picture gives them a sense of foundation they don’t usually have.
This is where your completionist comes in.
Completionists Need Action
Completionists spend much of their lives shaking their heads, staring at the floor, muttering, “Boy, could they fuck this up more?” Fact is, for any given technical or product problem, there’s a completionist who knows exactly what to do. Problem is, not only can they see the immediate solution; they see the two-year solution and the five-year solution. By the way, the five-year solution drastically changes the immediate solution, which is why everyone else has a problem with it. Everyone else has no insight into the five-year solution.
Feel dumb? I do.
Now put yourself in the completionist’s shoes. Sitting there watching these incrementalists with their rapid-fire buzz-speak, pushing a short-sighted corporate agenda that is clearly going to fail. No wonder folks are yelling in the hallways.
With all of their strategic vision, completionists often lack common corporate and people sense . Yes, they have a five-year technical roadmap in their heads, but they have nary a clue how to start pushing that agenda with the 12 different people who need to get on board to make anything happen. This is why completionists often get incorrectly labeled as curmudgeons. Sure, they’re cranky, but it’s not cranky for crankiness’s sake, it’s because they don’t have the communication and people skills to convince the company of the truth.
Two Different Coffee Addictions
I’m painting a picture of absolutes regarding incrementalists and completionists, but there are dangerous variants that you need to be aware of, and all of these are caffeinated mutations of the core personality.
Incrementalists drink a lot of coffee because of their addiction to motion. Getting lost in this addiction means that incrementalists never finish a thing. They have no concept of “done,” because done would mean no more motion and who wants to stop? The warning signs you’re looking for here are that when an incrementalist is facing a hard problem, they’re constantly coming up with new ways to tackle the problem rather than actually tackling the problem.
Completionists drink a lot of coffee because of their addiction to thought. Unlike incrementalists, these completionists aren’t actually saying anything because they’re deeply considering the problem. Now, you’ve got to give completionists time to figure out the plan, but after a significant amount of time, you need to figure out whether they’re good at gripping the bat or swinging it.
A quiet completionist doesn’t mean they don’t have anything to say—they’re just unlikely to speak until their plan is fully formed. Your issue is when your completionist has slipped into creative strategic nirvana, where actually finishing something is less important than considering it.
See It Yet?
It’s a really simple puzzle. One personality has all the skills necessary to get stuff done but isn’t exactly sure what to do. The other personality knows exactly what to do, but doesn’t know how to do it. Your job as a manager is to find and marry these personality types in your organization, because when they understand each other’s strengths, you’ve got a complete strategically tactical product team.
Being incremental and being a manager means I’m looking for one thing out of the completionists on my team. I want to be sitting across the table from them seeing the look of understanding in their eyes, and the look says this: “Hey, I know what you’re about. I don’t trust it, but I understand that I need what you do, so I’m going to sit here, arms folded, and we’re going to figure out how to work together.”
Both incrementalists and completionists are defined by a common goal. They both thrive on getting stuff done. This makes them essential to any corporate agenda and you want a diverse population of both. Yeah, they’re going to argue, but it’s the argument you want your teams to have. It’s not a fear-based “Should we or shouldn’t we?” it’s “Let’s do this thing, let’s make sure it gets done, and let’s make sure it gets done right.”