Human resource business psychologists seem to be making a good living coming up with this matrix and that, each of which define the differences between certain groupings of employees. Supposedly, you can use these tools to determine whom the employees will work well with, what they might do best and what their future advancement might be like.
Always willing to climb aboard a trend well underway, I’ve worked out my own list of four different types of employees. The good deal for you is that there are no license fees, no surveys for co-workers or good friends to fill in, no waiting weeks for the results to be collated. This list comes gratis from TV Technology and its new owner, NewBay Media. The advice within is worth every cent you’re investing in it.
GETTING IT DONE
Alright, let’s begin with two types of employees who are polar opposites: those who can plan, and those who can execute. If you’ve got all planners, you’re going to wind up with a bunch of plans waiting to be done. If you’ve got all executers, you’ve either got a bunch of people sitting around waiting to do something, or a bunch of unplanned tasks that are getting completed. Things work best if you have a mix of planners and executers.
I’ll talk about the executers first, and start by telling you about one of the best executers I’ve ever worked with.
This man was a television director who I worked side-by-side with for a 40-episode season of a local program that I produced. I would spend most of the week researching, field producing and writing, all along planning what that week’s half hour was going to be like. On Thursday evenings, between early and late newscasts and after the crew dinner, we had two hours in the studio for intros and a studio segment. If we went over two hours, we just didn’t get the show done. (We always got it done. See below.)
The director had minimal contact with the program until Thursday rolled around, and then he gradually took over more and more of it. As we rolled through the studio session, he would tell me when I had time to be picky, and when we were going to have to live with the good instead of the perfect. And when we were really running short on time, he would turn a deaf ear and get us finished by 10 p.m.
I think executers really like the “doing” part of the process. When you’re interviewing an executer, they’ll talk about how much they like the hands-on part of the production process.
By contrast, I think a planner can have a lot of trepidation about the actual execution phase. A planner sometimes thinks that with a little more planning, just a little time for planning, the execution will improve. (I used to hate Thursday evening.)
One of the best planners I’ve ever known became an institution in New York City. During the birth of digital video effects devices, he was known by the network sports departments as someone who was on top of what the latest and greatest new box would and could do.
An edit house that had just bought a new DVE knew the networks looked to my friend, so he was one of the first people to get a demonstration of the new device. And he’d go to the network sports people to sell a new show open. “If I put what this box can do with what this other box can do,” his thinking would go, “we could come up with something nobody ever thought of.” And they did.
I don’t think he could ever have operated any of the devices he was bringing into play, but his plan would lead the operators through the job at hand, and they would end up with a stroke of creative genius. Don’t confuse a planner with a dreamer. Dreams are good, but if they don’t lead to plans, they don’t lead to a finished product.
When interviewing a planner, you’re likely to hear very little about actually doing the production itself. You’re more likely to be hearing about the big picture kind of thing.
You should know that both of the individuals I held up as examples were able to cross over. The director was a heck of a planner, and my friend in New York could shoot and edit too. Which leads me to the third type of employee, one who can both plan and execute.
PLAYING BOTH ROLES
Small market television has always needed the planner/executer, because there is often just one person doing the whole production. And since, as every year goes by, the larger market stations operate more like small market stations, these crossover planners/executers will become more valuable. They may lean slightly to one side or the other, but they can play both roles.
Which leads me to the final square in my four-square matrix: the potential employee who can neither plan nor execute. These are the people you want to leave for the competition to hire. Thank you very much. The book should be out in the fall, if I can just get past the planning stage.
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