People-people are great, aren't they? They hold your hand, give you a shoulder to cry on, a listening ear, and they generally make you feel that everything will be all right eventually. I don't mind sharing the planet with them at all, as they are often willing - God bless them - to deal with people I don't even want to be near - criminals and the like.
However.
People-people are often not gifted when it comes to providing numbers. You know, statistics that answer the inevitable management question of "what have you done for me lately"? That question? A number-person will give me chapter and verse, usually in a nice spreadsheet. It's clear, accurate, with well-defined parameters.
A people-person does not do that - they pluck some numbers out of thin air, shove them into an email quickly, and go on to much more important tasks, leaving the recipient (let's say, me) to use my ESP to figure out what their figures mean. If the figures show up at all.
Each week, I request figures from about two dozen people-people, and the range of responses (despite my helpful examples and grids) is about two dozen. This week, one guy got it right. One. This does not bode well for my day.
Me? Oh, yeah. I'm a number-person. Does it show?
