Talkers and Doers

Recently, I’ve been talking to some colleagues and so on about personality types, and the like. (And yes, this is – to some degree or other- also linked in to the stuff a while back about Belbin, personality profiles, and so on) In some ways it’s related to current work situations, which I may or may not blether on about at some other point.
Anyway, I’ve always figured that there were really only two types of people around, when it comes to work. Actually, it’s probably a Venn diagram, where there’s some people who fall into a nice intersection of the two – although I’ve only met a couple of those, and I’m certainly not one of them. But so far as I see it, most people fall into one of two groups- Talkers and Doers. (Or, in Geek, Doer and !Doer)
Me, I’m a Doer. I’ve never been in doubt about it – while it might take me some time (for reasons previously discussed at length) to get interested, or to build up the impetus, when I get going on something, I get it done. That’s something that’s obvious to anyone who works with me- set me a task, and it’ll get done.
Talkers, on the other hand, plan things out, talk about project plans, put in policies and procedures everywhere, constantly complain about how busy they are, yet they never seem to really get anywhere, or produce anything – well, except for whole rainforests of paperwork.
In fairness, I don’t think there are actually many Pure Talkers or Doers. In my own work, yes, I put in a rough plan of what I intend to do in a certain timescale, and will talk to people about how their idea will come into reality. But that’s all I need.

Currently, I’m working in a team where the split is probably 2:1 between Talkers and Doers. Not ideal. And the Talkers are currently wanting to replace even more Doers with Talkers. No-one seems to have yet thought ‘well, if we get two project managers at the cost of two developers, who’s actually going to make the site?’ In some ways it’s actually quite amusing to see this process happen, where the Talkers always assume someone else will be doing the actual site, but without taking into account who that will be.