When it comes to a sense of urgency, or the way people respond, there seems to be two varieties.  We’ll call one type a Clark and the other a Carol. I’m going to describe the style of each and I’m going to bet that you are familiar with both.

The Carol just gets the job done. If you give a chore to Carol, you don’t have to worry about it for a second. More times than not, if you ask Carol the status of an important issue she is handling, her response will be “it’s taken care of”. Regardless of how ‘busy’ she it Carol had that special sense of urgency and she is just going to get the job done. Every time. The old adage—‘if you want something done and done right, give it to somebody busy’ applies to the likes of Carol. Everybody in every business wants Carols. We fight to get them and we love them when we have them.

Clark is another story, and you probably already know it. Clark is going to find a way to never get anything done on time and have every excuse for it. In fact, Clark will spend more time and effort on telling you why something hasn’t been done yet than the chore would have required to be completed in the first place. He is an expert. His mission is to see to it that the job does not get done and that there are plenty of reasons for it. He didn’t call Mr. Phillips yet because he’s left Mr. Phillips six voice mails and five emails and has not heard back. He’s got every reason imaginable. But you can bet on one thing, if he needed to get ahold of someone for a free lunch or collecting a personal debt, or anything beneficial to him, he would have them on the other end of the phone in seconds.

Today, in corporate in America, the Clarks are badly outnumbering the Carols. The acceptance of thin-skinned behavior by the customer-hatred rep and misusing technology have given Clark a great arena.

I’m Paul Karem and I’m a Carol. Bug around on this website for a while and I’ll show you how to identify the Clark’s in your business. One thing I cannot do is turn Clark into a Carol. Can’t be done.