Finders, Minders & Grinders: What’s Your Role?

Finders, Minders & Grinders: What’s Your Role?

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A LEVERAGEDWISDOM Member, founder and managing partner of a prominent accounting firm, once described his workforce as divided among Finders, Minders and Grinders. In the context of a professional services firm one can quickly imagine what these roles entail:

  • The Finder brings in new clients.
  • The Minder maintains the client relationship and interacts at the most senior level with the client’s CFO.
  • The Grinder is responsible for data collection, analysis, and preparation of financial documents.

Whether you’re running a trucking company, a staffing company, a manufacturing complex or even a brand and marketing company you can easily imagine what roles you would assign to the various members of your team. Finders, Minders and Grinders become clever shorthand descriptions for characterizing exactly what a job definition is at its core.

Looking through this lens you can see skill sets and behaviors that drive each team member’s success. The Grinder will need to be a detail person, analytical, have perseverance and be willing to be held accountable on a micro level. The Minder will need to have professional competency, good communication skills, an understanding of the lifetime value of a customer and an ability to assume advisory role. The Finder must be outgoing, comfortable in new settings, an excellent communicator and able to represent the firm and its services at the highest level of CXO circles.

Turning to your own company, can you assign similar roles to the various job descriptions of your team members? Are you hiring the skill sets and behaviors consistent with this simple model? Are you defining, supporting and holding your team members accountable for the skills and behaviors consistent with their roles? Are you expecting team members to step out of their comfort zones? Are you training the appropriate candidates to grow into new roles?

Most important, how do you personally divide your time among these roles? Are you consistent? Would your employees and partners agree with your assessment?