As the owner of a business, much of the future success you will achieve or the future pain you will feel will be predicated by how well you can manage the time of all those who work within your organization.
We can conclude that too many business owners feel they are being pulled down into administrative tasks, which take them away from the ability to grow the company and to stay ahead of the competition.
Finders are the leaders of the company. They are not necessarily the people who lead all company employees on a daily basis. Finders demonstrate the type of leadership that pulls people into the future, e.g., employees, current customers, and future customers.
A good Finder spends most of his or her time building relationships and pulling others into the Finder’s future. The success of any company is due to the relationships that the Finder can make with others. Building relationships takes time and is typically the best task that the Finder can do to help the company succeed. Show me a Finder who will spend 30 to 40 hours a week in finding activities, and I will show you a company that will have significant increases in sales in the future.
Conversely, show me a Finder who stops spending time in finding activities, and I will show you a company that is starting the inevitable cycle of getting into financial trouble.
Minders are the key administrative people of the company. A Minder may be the company’s Controller, Bookkeeper, IT Manager, and other administrative personnel.
Finders typically do not have the accounting, IT, or other backgrounds to work extensively in minding activities. By nature, Finders don’t like this work. They resent the fact that they have to spend their time in countless meetings, working on cash flow, hiring and firing people, meeting with accountants, attorneys, bankers, etc. On the other hand, every organization needs to have a good set of Minder’s, “minding the store.” You can’t run a company without them, and sure eventually, some Minders become Finders.
Grinders are people who do the physical work of the company. In a manufacturing company, the Grinder is the person who makes the widgets. The people making the phone calls are the Grinders in a telemarketing company. The Grinders put the cars together in an automobile manufacturing plant. Again, these are the essential people that get the products/services completed and ready for the customer.
The essence of the book is that there is a danger zone when the organization loses its footing on the future and the various roles. Often times, Finders start getting more into the Minders role and responsibilities, and the vision becomes stale, execution challenges begin to appear, new and fresh ideas don’t make it to the table, and all of a sudden, the company becomes a victim to competitive attacks and sales suffer.
Obviously, avoiding the danger zone all together is the best medicine for Finders; however, more often than none, Finders need to work their way out of the Minder’s sandbox in order to save the company.
CFOs tend to be the financial “Finders” of the organization, as such they provide strategic leadership for the company and every company should either have one on staff or at a minimum have access to one via part-time.
