Saturday, May 16, 2009
On focus
Last week I met Abhimanyu Chirimar and in the course of a long winding conversation, said that if there was anything I had learnt, it is that it is not possible to multi-task. One can do only one thing at a time well. He didn’t buy it but let it pass. Tonight, this quote:
The Technician is the doer.
“If you want it done right, do it yourself” is The Technician’s credo.
The Technician loves to tinker. Things are to be taken apart and put back together again. Things aren’t supposed to be dreamed about, they’re supposed to be done.
If The Entrepreneur lives in the future and The Manager lives in the past, The Technician lives in the present. He loves the feel of things and the fact that things can get done.
As long as The Technician is working, he is happy, but only on one thing at a time. He knows that two things can’t get done simultaneously; only a fool would try. So he works steadily and is happiest when he is in control of the work flow.
As a result, The Technician mistrusts those he works for, because they are always trying to get more work done than is either possible or necessary.
— Michael E. Gerber in The E-Myth Revisited, describing the small business owner’s three main personalities of Entrepreneur, Manager and Technician, and how they conflict with each other.
Abhi’s an entrepreneur and I’m a technician. Gerber’s book is for technicians who decide they want to be entrepreneurs, only to find it conflicts with their technician personality.