[wkrause]

I've always felt a connection to this story in my professional life. I've been in enough rooms full of "ideas people" who will spend an entire meeting talking about tools that should exist or processes that need to be changed, if only "someone" would implement it. It's about work that everyone agrees someone else should do. Everyone wants the cat belled, no one wants to do the belling.

[blip54321]

... I've sort of had a different experience. I've been in roomfuls of "ideas people" and I've been in roomfuls of "execution people" and in roomfuls of "tell me what to do people."

None are effective in isolation. If your CEO / tech lead is an idea people, your COO / project manager an "execution people," and the team "tell me what to do people" things work pretty amazingly.

I think the problem is that people like to hire people like themselves, so a balance is hard to find. Each group is self-perpetuating.

I'll mention: I stated my career in roomfuls of idea people, and was deeply surprised the first time I ran into a "tell me what to do" person. That person worked hard, and was possibly the best software engineer I've worked with, but:

(1) Deeply didn't care about much beyond coding.

(2) Valued having people around him who can structure his work so it has meaningful impact.

Personally, I really benefit from having a watchful project manager to keep me on track. Once I gave up on doing that myself, my productivity skyrocketed. I tend to empower project managers (and admins and similar roles) to boss me around much more than the job description entails.

[goodpoint]

> I've been in roomfuls of "ideas people" and I've been in roomfuls of "execution people" and in roomfuls of "tell me what to do people."

Spot on. Also, the same person or group can overdiscuss one thing and underdiscuss another.

Talking and easy. Analyzing something carefully and saying meaningful things take effort.

You rarely hear of software being designed too carefully.

[advisedwang]

This comment actually suggests a useful question to ask when you find yourself in a situation where a group has decided on something but nobody is acting. Is the task to do:

a) Impossible, like for a mouse to put a bell around a cats neck, or

b) Possible but just not something people want to do.

In scenario (a) you need to move on from the idea, or fundamentally change it. In scenario (b) you can deploy organizational tools to get someone to do it (provide an incentive, force someone, draw straws, share the work etc).

[tosh]

reminds me of High Output Management by Andy Grove: (paraphrasing from memory) if someone isn't doing their job they are either not capable or not motivated

[shantnutiwari]

And the problem is most of these "ideas" people have no skin in the game. Their own bonus or career doesnt depend on the idea, which is why they are so excited about pushing it onto others