Do & Say or Say & Do

Do & Say and Say & Do are two thought processes used by us in our life for trying out something new. Today I am deliberating both of them and see which one of them will be more useful for improvement of our level of excellence.

Do & Say is a pretty solid thought process told to us by our seniors from ages. It tells us first to do the things, show the same to others before you ask others to do. It is perceived as necessary to demonstrate that what one is saying is doable, and is done by the person who is telling others to do. By doing the things one can establish the credibility to the results which it can achieve. It also provides confidence of the results to the person who is going to ask others to do the same. If one experiments and finds a success then he can tell others to do the same and achieve the similar results. If the experiment fails, then he can modify the experiment till he gets the success and he does not have to ask others to do the same till he finds a success. This approach is comprehensive and has a great convincing power.

In Say & Do approach, the person advocates what should be done to anticipate specific results and then does it along with others. This approach does not guarantee the results as in Do & Say approach but provides an opportunity to experiment together. It requires team to decide one thing together, build the roadmap as they move along and achieve the results together. Lot depends on the vision and thoughts of the person who is articulating what to do and the belief people have in him. This is pretty difficult and thus not seen as often as Do & Say approach.

So which approach will help us in improving our level of Excellence more effectively? 

Couple of things that are different in these two approaches are, Do & Say approach advocates that only successful experimentation should be shared with others, whereas Say& Do approach advocates every experiment should be shared before actually experimenting.

Do & Say approach asks for individual to do experiment in isolated manner, modify the experiments till the desired results are seen and then ask others to do the same experiments. On other hand, Say & Do approach depends on sharing of ideas / experiments that one needs to perform to expect certain results and once the team is convinced about the experiment, then perform the experiment together.

Individual perseverance is key in Do & Say approach, as one needs to continuously work on new ideas / experiments till success is achieved and this process is marred with many obstacles before even idea reaches others. Whereas Say & Do approach totally depends on idea and logic which will make every one believe that it will be a success. Once agreed, it is a team game and success and failure is together. This approach requires more courage than Do & Say as there are more uncertainties to tackle.

Typically Do & Say approach provides a guaranteed success albeit slow but Say & Do approach provides a possibility of faster but un guaranteed success.

So which approach will be more effective if we have an objective to improve the level of excellence at which we are operating individually as well as at organization level? I feel that the Say & Do approach will be more effective as it enables one to experiment more often, it requires leader to conceive new ideas along with methods to implement, build logic to convince team about possibility of success; This really takes Leader to higher level of excellence that what he is operating currently. It enables the leader to take the team together in the experiment and elevate the whole team to a new level. It will encourage the team members to think differently as the team might encounter problems while implementing a new idea as well as they can think their own new ideas for experimentation. It also enables leader to teach the team how to handle the failures. So the ideal approach could be mix of both with Do & Say approach for product areas and Say & Do approach for Process/People related areas.