What are more horrific than the overthinker and the dreaded paralysis by analysis? Ok, there’s life-sapping negativity and all its horrors. But in agency life, an overthinking client is horrible all the same.

No agency team enjoys the tangled mess of an overthinker. There’s the grinding rigor. The endless rehashing and revisiting. The redirection and revision.  A kind of tired apathy can settle in and – watch out – everything erodes. The interest. The work. And god forbid, the relationship. Ouch.

Now that I think about it, overthinkers can wear it out just about anywhere. The lost time, money, attention and energy are just as bad within their own organizations. These clients aren’t the “fail fast” innovators and risk takers today’s businesses need. That eventually catches up to many of them and ultimately makes them their own worst enemy.

As an account manager, however, the job is to make the best of things and win over this client. Adaptation is your key skill and here’s a challenge: Make it work for everyone – the overthinker, the client organization and the agency.

It can be done. Here’s how.

First step, let’s throw out the term “overthinker.” It’s too negative and just labels someone for blame without accomplishes anything. A negative label has no place in this picture.

Also, so-called “overthinkers” aren’t failures. They often get significant responsibilities – for good reasons. They are thorough and smart. Their bosses trust their processes and judgments. They don’t do anything rash or dumb. They earn respect and are rewarded with increasing authority. They often end up as a strategic insider, a central role within the client’s entire business.

Hence, I prefer the term “Thinker.” The image may be that of Rodin’s sculpture, “The Thinker,” with its pained pose that’s (oddly) paralyzed in bronze. But the Thinker is revered. The Thinker gets credit for discoveries, philosophies and theories that make us great. A place of honor is a better starting point for a client talk, as always.

All considered, the Thinker isn’t like everyone else. The other client types commonly fall into three major classes:

• The Executive, who likes to control and direct things with single-minded efficiency.
• The Socializer, who brings energy to groups for collaborative outcomes, and enjoys sharing thoughts, ideas and results.
• The Relator, who works best in small, intimate groups and succeeds internally by applying structure, processes and proven methods.

Thinkers are different. Thinkers are those independent introverts who relish in clarity and certainty. Thinkers doggedly research subjects, examine their options and polish things along the way to a final approval. Thinkers are driven to be “right,” because, in their soul, if they are not right, they are wrong and that’s not right.

In general, Thinkers have these characteristic work behaviors:

• They thoroughly analyze things: They develop perspectives and insights deep into a subject’s nuances.
• They work independently, methodically: They collect information constantly and prefer undisturbed times to think.
• They think logically: They look for reasonable causes and effects and embrace rationale arguments.
• They esteem accuracy: They value statistics and reports from leading research firms and can quote specifics from them.
• They avoid risk: They won’t commit to the unproven, will find flaws or oversights, and won’t move without a high degree of surety.
• They are perfectionists: They check, recheck and fine-tune in the spirit of getting it “right.”
• They seek assurances: They’d rather not argue, because they don’t like conflict, but prefer substantiation that comforts them in their direction.

How do you work with the Thinker? A simple answer is to be a thinking partner. The Thinker finds it very helpful to have agency minds and resources at hand, and you can partner in several ways.

• Anticipate information needs: Search out, organize and share information on relevant business challenges and opportunities
• Dig alongside them: Ask what information is needed and go find it – the harder to find the better
• Engage agency resources: Introduce the Thinker to your research team and resources and share access, as appropriate
• Be an understanding sounding board: Bounce around their thinking with a bias toward improving their thinking, not challenging it
• Assist with organizing and communicating: Thinkers appreciate ways to express or show their thinking – particularly engaging new visual ways

If you want get a bit deeper, understand the thought models Thinkers use. Rather than whimsical flashes of brilliance and inspiration, Thinkers tend to structure thoughts under one of the analytical forms or plan formats they learned in business school. Others adopt those of their own company or the consultancies they have worked with over the years. Others still apply strategies and approaches they’ve found in the business press or books.

An expert’s understanding of business models can help the account manager in a number of ways, including:

• To ask questions that stimulate the client’s strategic thinking
• To anticipate the client’s information needs
• To develop sources or practices for getting the information
• To understand the client’s logic and thinking
• To build visual tools for best presenting the information
• To become a trusted strategic partner

Among the most common of these and certainly worth further understanding are:

• (Duh) Strategic plans: Outlining near-term or long-term direction with a situation analysis, objective, target customers, strategies, tasks, tools, responsibilities, budgets, timing and key performance indicators
• Brand analysis: Understanding the positioning, strength and value of a brand relative to competitors and market opportunities
• Customer journey mapping: Step-by-step look at the customer’s experiences with a brand from first learning of it to possible displays of loyalty and advocacy of it
• Stakeholder analysis: Determining how a strategy will affect key individuals or groups
• SWOT analysis: A look at the Strengths, Weaknesses, Opportunities and Threats for a product, service or company in a marketplace

The Thinker isn’t just gathering facts and filling in blanks, though. Thinkers add value through their imaginative skills and through asking questions.   Here’s where the account person and agency can add value, too.

For this, just remember a single word: What. It’s central to the Thinker’s thought process. It defines. It stimulates. It challenges. It energizes. The Thinker uses it in these ways to build an idea, a rationale and a plan:

• What? What is the product? What is the problem or opportunity? What are we trying to accomplish?
• What if? What different course could be taken with the product or to meet the need? What would fulfill our wildest dreams?
• So what? What’s the purpose? What will we accomplish that matters? What will people care about?
• Now what? What’s needed to get this done? What are the steps and priorities to success?

But at this point, doesn’t it still feel like a lot of overthinking? These thoughts sound reasonable for working with the Thinker, but do they really solve the Thinker’s main problem? Do they address “paralysis by analysis?”

They will help because they build trust, which is essential to the Thinker’s decision-making process.  Yes, the Thinker is a rationale being, seeking facts and logic to support an idea. But emotions play a big role for them, as well. They keep niggling to avoid the discord that accompanies ambiguity, uncertainty and risk. They seek comfort. Assurance. Surety.

So how do you get decisions made and keep them made? How do give them that comfort and assurance? How do you cure the paralysis by analysis?

The best in the business always have a well-established trust and partnership relationship with the Thinker – as with every client type. But for the Thinker, they keep things moving with skill and attention to the following:

• Process: Establish a comfort with the way you’ll tackle the assignment and then stick to it. Respectfully call out deviations from the process and the consequences.
• Timing: Establish firm deadlines for key steps in the assignment and honor them. Make them reasonable and meaningful so that there is no reason they shouldn’t be kept and that there are consequences to breaking them.
• The Big Idea: Articulate the main idea or strategy in simple, meaningful terms and gain its approval and establish it as a guideline.   Connect smaller decisions to that Big Idea and deflect time-consuming efforts that are off it.
• Substantiation: Challenges and criticism will confound matters, but new information, insights or observations that substantiate a decision will enhance the client’s comfort level. Look for substantiation and avoid the negative.
• Support: Build support for the idea through your network at the client and at the agency and share with the client. Help them feel idea has general acceptance and momentum.

Thinkers can change the world, but they can get stuck in the paralysis of analysis just as well. They struggle because they find comfort in researching, understanding and thinking, and they find risk in committing, deciding and doing. The account person’s job is to build their trust, help them think and allay their fears. That makes everyone successful and happy – the client, the client’s organization and the agency.