Sep 10 2007
The Salesmen vs. the Geeks Round 2 (Marketers vs. Technologists)
You may want to read The Salesman vs. the Geeks Round 1 before reading this post.
I recently drove up to Lake Belle Taine in northern Minnesota on a vacation and had the good fortune to listen to a lecture from the Chatauqua Institute by Dr. Mel Levine. He founded an institute named All Kinds of Minds that’s dedicated to demystifying learning differences through a neurodevelopmental viewpoint. Their unique philosophy and methods emphasize team collaboration to better understand and nurture individual learning profiles of strengths and weaknesses. He stated interesting concept that I immediately glommed onto for the second round of this boxing match. The theme he identified is that the ability to understand the “big picture” and “skillfully recall and manage vast amounts of detail with accuracy” are for the most part, mutually exclusive skill sets. If you pursue a career outside of your profile, you will most likely not succeed.
This means that a marketing analyst, like myself, has a better chance to succeed if they have a penchant for understanding the big picture. This also means that I have a bit of a problem recalling details such as names, dates, phone numbers, etc. I understand this problem and have to consciously turn on a switch to make an effort to recall these details. But it also means that my bliss is the process of developing the “big picture”.
This also means that the ideal skill set for a technologist (developers, programmers, technicians, etc.) is the opposite. Their bliss is obtained by skillfully managing details. This also means that they need to consciously turn on a switch to get a big picture view of marketing analysis. It does not come naturally.
In a comment, Alan Rimm-Kaufmann suggested that there is a new breed of young technologists who are so adept at online marketing that the distinction I am making may not exist anymore. I don’t think so. You can’t fool mother nature…
Round 2 is over. We need scoring from the judges.
