Introverts versus extroverts as strategists

Why it matters who is holding the pen

Introverts are quiet. They prefer to keep to themselves. Less social. Don't rile up.

Extroverts are loud. They prefer crowds. They're social as social gets. Sometimes, their blood boils and they get agitated.

All the above are stereotypes. They're too black-and-white for the world, because we know all too well that the world is really painted in shades of gray. The best example even comes from those colors. We call people "white," but if you held a sheet of white paper against a "white" person's pale pink pigmentation, you'd see in a flash—we describe in extremes, but the real world is much more nuanced than our extreme descriptions.

Stereotypes are shorthand. Nobody's probably a pure introvert, just as nobody's a pure extrovert. We're combinations of both, a yin and a yang entwined in ways we may or may not be able to see.

Yet, I suspect for most of us one side dominates as it pertains to strategy-making. When it comes to the act of creating an orientation towards success in some given endeavor, we all likely lean one way or the other.

When it comes time to concoct your strategy, which do you prefer: researching and thinking and writing out your path to success?

Or gathering the council of critics, seeking the counsel of others, pushing it through the process for endorsement, and then selling it to the organization to empower your team and allies to wield it as their weapon in the world?

You can't answer both.

You must prefer one over the other. It may be 51-49, and it may depend on the team you find yourself on. But just as some people swear by sushi, and others like to mix mayo and ketchup, as humans, we have things we like better than others. And strategists prefer one part of strategy-making over the other.

That doesn't mean a strategist is more gifted at one task instead of another. Lots of people like baseball yet aren't all that great at the game.

But it may follow that an introvert has an advantage at strategy-conception while an extrovert has a better chance at selling the strategy.

This may be true by virtue of their preferences. If you like a particular part of a process, and as such, focus more on your own performance and improvement. It's not hard to imagine introverts being more comfortable with locking themselves away from the world, starting with a blank sheet of paper, and grinding through a strategy from the ground up.

When I step back from myself, I see someone who is more introverted when it comes to strategy-making. I prefer to think through the challenge alone, without social stratification to mediate or interfere with the problem as I understand it. That part of the process is more natural to me. The harder part for me is what comes after—getting buy-in and generating support across the wider organization.

I suspect many will identify with that breakdown. Some will prefer this, some will prefer that. But the key thing to remember is that we need both “this” and “that” to devise clever, committed strategies for organizations to execute. We need both introverts and extroverts in the strategy-making business, and to bind them together in ways that make both parts more powerful than one alone.