22 Jul Finder, Minders and Grinders
Finders, Minders, and Grinders
Your Zone of Genius: the actions and tasks you choose that are in the Zone of Genius (vs. Zone of Excellence) provide the highest ratio of abundance and satisfaction to your amount of time spent. Work doesn’t feel like work. This is different for every individual. At Hivest Financial, we relate the importance of living in your Zone of Genius not only to your finances, but to your contribution to society.
We found another way to describe the Zone of Genius and how it relates to entrepreneurs building their organization. Below is a summary of the topic, Finders, Minders, and Grinders that Jerry Mills describes in his books, The Danger Zone, Lost in the Growth Transition, and Avoiding the Danger Zone, Business Illusions. See below.
WHAT OWNERS WANT ….
Many business owners are frustrated to find that the people and professionals who surround them do not understand what they want. It has been our observation that almost all business owners want four things from their business
- Increased sales
- More cash and personal wealth as a result of the increased sales
- Personal time away from the business
- A successful exit strategy from the business
To achieve any and all of those goals the owner must make optimal use of time. The mastery of your own time will determine whether you will be able increase sales and cash, take personal time away from the business and experience a successful exit strategy.
This graph illustrates how your company is organized today. This organization is present, whether you are consciously or subconsciously aware of it. This organization exists whether or not you want it to exist. It exists regardless of the industry in which you work. Your future success is dependent upon whether or not you are able to properly function within this organization. Key definitions:
| Finder | The entrepreneur, the visionary, the leader, the idea generator and the catalyst for future change. Finders work in the future. |
| Minder | The administrative, accounting and operational staff of the company. Minders are historians. They work in the past. |
| Grinder | The people who do the physical work of the company. Grinders may be construction workers out in the field or telemarketers at a desk. Grinders work for today and are not concerned about the future or the past. |
THE CANCER NAMED MINDING ….
Finders open the business relationships and ideas that allow sales to flow into a company. We can tell the value of a Finder by viewing the increase in sales of a company. Increased sales are the result of a Finder’s leadership, vision, ideas and future direction.
As sales increase, we see a quiet type of business cancer grow within the business – the cancer of incrementalism. We call this Minding Cancer.
Step-by-step, we see a business owner being dragged from Finding activities into administrative activities, which we call Minding activities. The Finder then changes roles, as is illustrated by the next graph.
MINDING CANCER EFFECTS ….
A Finder with Minding Cancer can forget about spending personal time away from the business. Things are too complex to get away from the office. In fact, time at the office begins to increase instead of decrease. We have had owners tell us “I have not had a vacation in three years,” or “I missed my daughter’s high school graduation because of my business.” These Finders often feel trapped and boxed into a corner.
Minding Cancer follows them 24/7/365. Any “vacation” or other time spent away is mixed with minding the business. The owner goes online and looks at cash each day, calls/emails the staff regarding checks to cut, spends significant time answering emails, and so forth. Time at a child’s ball game or other event is spent on the cell phone running the business. The Finder’s voice is raised, blood pressure goes up and everyone around feels uncomfortable. The children of the Finder, hungry for attention, notice what the Finder is doing and often feel disappointment, anger or rejection as a result.
The damaging effects of Minding Cancer extend beyond the business. Divorce, damaged relationships with children, diminished time with friends, damage to personal health, decreased mental health and diminished spiritual health are some of the results of Minding Cancer.
A CURE TO MINDING CANCER ….
There are at least three steps to curing Minding Cancer. The Finder must:
- Recognize the cancer signs.
- Have a desire to get out of Minding and back to Finding.
- Hire people that will help the Finder be cured of this cancer.
As a parallel, cancer often takes outside intervention, such as chemotherapy or other such treatments to kill the cancer. Avoidance of these interventions can lead to death.
Likewise, Minding Cancer often takes outside intervention to help a business owner with the tools necessary to get back into Finding activities. Avoidance of this intervention can cause a company to run out of cash, which eventually can cause the death of the company.
The result of getting rid of this Minding Cancer looks like the following graph.
BACK TO FINDING ….
Now the Finder can get back to the role of being the visionary, the leader, the idea generator and the catalyst for future change. Sales should then increase, and the company’s organization should begin to be better balanced. This time, the competition narrowly missed an opportunity to move in for the kill. They will continue to hunt the Finder’s company. But a wise Finder will create a vision to keep ahead of the competition. A really good Finder will be able to turn the tables and purchase or quash key competitors. Survival goes to the fittest Finder.
Finders should not allow themselves to become distracted. Rather than simply keeping busy, Finders should be engaged in activities that are truly productive. Ideally, Finders should spend the majority of their time in Finding activities and delegate the Minding and Grinding to others.