Hi Shruti!
Thanks for this question, and I hope I can do it justice!
Everyone on our team is, in my opinion, both a “doer” and a “thinker” – but I guess the pie chart of balance between those depends on the role and the context of any given task / day.
As the company and team have grown, I have found myself perhaps moving more into the category of “thinker”, but the thinking doesn’t help much unless it’s acted on – so I still do a fair bit of “doing”!
I firmly believe that ideas and inspiration can come from anywhere – often where you least expect it. So everyone is encouraged to contribute ideas and suggestions for how we can make the platform, and the company better.
I just try to spend as much of my time listening. Listening to customers, to the team, to other founders, and then I spend my “thinking” time digesting those thoughts and seeing how they fit against my existing concepts and thoughts, and establishing the action to take from that.
I also believe that everyone is different. Some people love to do – to create, to build, to write. Often career progression is perceived as “becoming a manager” (which perhaps could also be related to your definition of a “thinker” – sorry if I am misunderstanding), but I firmly reject the idea that climbing a career ladder should involve going from maker to manager.
I believe some people love to create, and given the opportunity can grow to become world class at whatever they create – and we strive at GoSquared to make that feasible, rather than to force people to change their focus away from creating to develop their career.
Hope that helps, and definitely can elaborate more if you like.