Holsitic Deal Thinking: Create, Do, Manage

We’re in the business of ideas every single day, whether we realize it or not. From the moment we wake up, life is throwing little challenges at us that require some spark of creativity. Sometimes it’s as trivial (but maddening) as figuring out how to get your kid dressed without a battle. Other times, it’s convincing your neighbor that maybe—just maybe—it’s time to trim the tree dumping sap all over your car. And then there are the bigger ones, like rallying the parent group at school to make an idea actually happen.

In each of these moments, you’re not just generating ideas—you’re selling them. You’re persuading, negotiating, and then, often, you’re left holding the bag to actually bring the thing to life. It’s an endless cycle of think, pitch, and deliver.

So why is it that when we step into business settings, where the stakes are higher and the tools more formal, so many people suddenly do a lousy job of it? Why do we drop the ball?

The truth is, in our professional lives, many of us are disconnected from the messy, human side of how transactions actually get done. And when we are connected, the formality and the pressure of “big business” can leave us intimidated, happy to just play our little part instead of leaning into the real work of making things happen. The irony is, the same people who can brilliantly negotiate with a five-year-old about wearing shoes suddenly freeze when it comes to closing a deal between two companies. We end up numb to the reality of what’s actually unfolding at the table—people taking risks, building trust, and ensuring the transaction succeeds.

Like most things, it helps to put a little structure around the chaos. And in this case, when you’re talking about bringing ideas to life between two organizations, I’d argue it comes down to three deceptively simple steps:

CREATE the deal.

DO the deal.

MANAGE the deal.

That’s it. Three steps. But of course, like anything that sounds simple, the devil is in the details.

Now, why call it a “deal”? Because any time two entities decide to work together—whether it’s for a product, a service, or some bigger opportunity—there has to be an agreement. That agreement will have terms, prices, responsibilities, and all the usual fine print that makes it a deal.

Take the most basic example: you’re at a mini-mart and grab a pack of gum. The moment you pick it up and walk to the register, you’re essentially creating the deal. When you hand over your cash or card, you’re doing the deal. And later, when you pop the gum in your mouth, you’re managing the deal—because if it’s stale or rock-hard, you’re back at the counter asking for a refund.

It’s the same with intercompany relationships. At some point, no matter how complex the transaction, people are creating, doing, and managing deals.

And here’s the kicker: the folks involved in each stage aren’t always the same. One group might be responsible for shaping the terms, another for executing the agreement, and yet another for making sure what was promised actually gets delivered. Which is why it’s worth breaking each step down a little more carefully.

Of course, in reality, dozens of people can touch each step of this process. But for the sake of this exercise, let’s simplify. Imagine there’s one “owner” responsible for each step—maybe they own just the first, maybe the last, maybe all three. The point is: each step needs someone accountable for making it happen. With that in mind, let’s walk through them.

CREATE the DEAL: This is the widest playing field. Lots of people can create a deal, and it usually starts with alignment: is this even worth doing together? Sometimes it’s a new idea you sketch out with another party. Sometimes it’s as simple as showing that your ready-made product solves a specific pain point. Either way, creating a deal boils down to a few core questions:

• Can you actually solve someone’s problem?

• Can you explain why it’s in everyone’s best interest to move forward?

• Can you demonstrate—clearly—that what you have will produce real value?

  
  

That’s the world of creating the deal.

DO the DEAL: This one’s more straightforward. The person who does the deal is the negotiator—the “deal maker.” They’re the bridge between an idea and an agreement, hammering out terms, pricing, and responsibilities until both sides are aligned. This is the moment the deal stops being a concept and becomes a contract.

MANAGE the DEAL: And then comes the messy part: delivery. Managing the deal means owning the terms and making sure they’re fulfilled to the other party’s satisfaction. Easy to say, hard to do. Why? Because often the people who created or negotiated the deal didn’t clearly communicate what was promised—or worse, promised something that isn’t quite real yet.

This is where reality crashes into expectation. Sales says “yes” to a feature that engineering hasn’t even built. Or engineering, convinced they know what’s best, pushes out something disconnected from the customer and completely misses the mark—leaving the deal makers stuck in a pickle. Then, implementation steps in and discovers a promise no one bothered to mention. And just like that, the poor soul managing the deal is left holding the bag.

In a perfect world, what was created and negotiated would align seamlessly with what gets delivered. But we don’t live in a perfect world. We live in a world where people silo, skip details, fail to set expectations, or simply have different interests. Which means that at any point in this process, a storm is always brewing. And when it breaks, it’s rarely pretty.

Bringing the process into a more defined business reality

Now that we’ve got some operational definitions in place—and a clear picture that someone has to create, do, and manage deals—let’s move this from theory into practice.

Here’s the first reality check: while it’s nice to imagine one neat “owner” for each step, the truth is it takes a village. Getting a concept across the transom between two companies is rarely a solo act. Multiple people touch it, shape it, and influence it. Which is exactly why things get messy.

So what are the truths about Creating, Doing, and Managing Deals?

Below is a chart that lays them out

Let's be honest, usually someone in Sales will own the Create, Do and Manage Process. Why? Because in most companies (like a startup) for example, sales is the tip of the spear. They are convincing people that there is an idea. They usually negotiate the terms. And ultimately, they help manage because they have to look for chances to sell more.

Does this mean that others are owners in the process? No, after I break this down, I will spend some time showing all the people who are part of "owning" this process, along with the key facilitator. You will see the point of how the others who own parts of each step are very easy to create chaos in their own way.

Truth 1: Not many people are responsible for all three steps

Being “responsible” in this context means you’re accountable when things go sideways, not just when they go well. And that’s rare. Most people only have to care about their slice of the process. If your metrics stop the moment you pass the baton, then naturally you’ll focus on optimizing your piece, not whether the whole effort works out. That’s why so many deals feel fragmented—the incentives don’t stretch across the finish line.

But when someone is truly responsible end-to-end, their perspective shifts. Suddenly, you’re thinking differently about what you create, how you negotiate, and how you set others up for success. You anticipate landmines instead of stepping on them. You measure success not just by your numbers, but by whether the whole thing works. That kind of responsibility is heavier, but it also produces better outcomes—because the person carrying it can’t afford to ignore what happens after their part is “done.”

Truth 2: Not many people own all three steps.

Responsibility and ownership aren’t the same thing. Responsibility is what the boss assigns. Ownership is what the facilitator carries—the pressure of timelines, the headaches of handoffs, and the reality of whether the whole thing actually works. Ownership is about being judged not just on what you did, but on how smoothly the process went, how connected the outcomes were, and how well it all tied back to what was promised.

Most people never experience that kind of ownership, which is why so many leave others holding the bag. But once you’ve owned all three steps, you see things differently. You start to recognize the hidden cracks others miss, and you build an empathy muscle that makes you better at every deal you touch. Ownership creates a broad perspective—it forces you to consider how each step feels to the people on the other side, and it pushes you to design the process so no one gets left stranded. If you’ve never owned Create, Do, and Manage end-to-end, it’s worth doing at least once, just so you learn how it really feels.

Truth 3: Innovative Solutions require cultural adoption

This might seem like a tangent, but it’s actually central to why so many deals implode. Creating, doing, and managing a deal isn’t just about terms on paper—it’s about people, incentives, and culture. Two organizations bring with them two sets of norms, two playbooks, and two sets of metrics. Layer on functions within those companies—sales, finance, operations, product—and you’ve now got half a dozen subcultures clashing. No wonder hijinks ensue.

If you treat a deal like a purely operational exercise, you’ll miss the cultural undercurrents that determine whether it sticks. Every successful deal requires breaking, bending, or reshaping norms on one or both sides. If you’re aware of that, you can start sniffing out where the resistance will come from, which sacred cows are untouchable, and how to prepare people for what’s ahead. Culture may be the squishy side of business, but ignoring it is like ignoring gravity—you only get away with it for so long before something crashes.

Truth 4: Connecting on both operational and cultural pain creates trust

Bringing an idea to life always comes down to solving a pain point. That’s sales 101. But here’s the trap: people often assume “pain” means purely operational pain—reducing costs, saving time, hitting targets. The cultural pain is just as important, and sometimes even harder to solve. Cultural pain shows up in how people work, how they resist change, or how tightly they cling to “the way we’ve always done it.”

When you ignore that, you risk building friction into every step of Create, Do, and Manage. But when you can connect on both sides—showing you understand the business problem and the cultural reality—it changes the game. Suddenly, you’re not just someone with a solution, you’re someone who “gets it.” And that kind of understanding builds trust that smooths the path for everything else. Deals move faster, people lean in more, and the odds of long-term success rise dramatically.

Truth 5: If you "own" (are responsible and own) the whole opportunity and CREATE and DO the deal with an eye towards MANAGING, success will follow.

The biggest trap in business is thinking your job ends when the deal is signed. It doesn’t. If you only think about creating and doing without considering what happens after, you’re setting up your teammates—and your customer—for failure. Managing the deal should be part of your mindset from the very beginning.

That means negotiating terms that reflect reality, not wishful thinking. It means making sure resources are lined up and promises are grounded in what can actually be delivered. It means seeing the whole board instead of just your piece of it. When you carry that mindset, you not only set deals up to succeed, you earn something even more valuable than revenue: trust. And in business, trust is the ultimate long game. It’s what gets you invited back to the table again and again.

Expanding beyond the “owner”

I’ve said before that one person can end up owning Create, Do, and Manage. That happens. But let’s be honest—no single person carries the whole thing. In any organization—let’s keep using the startup as our example—different functions get involved at different points. And when you map those functions against the process, the mess shows itself fast.

That’s why I saved this for later. Once you’re already thinking like a Create/Do/Manage person, you can see clearly how the way most organizations run this process screws it up royally every single day. Let’s dig into each function: why they sit where they sit, how things start to go wrong, and what has to change.

Sales

Why they are where they are: Sales is the tip of the spear. They drive the number and get rewarded for bookings. Sometimes they carry all three steps just because they have to. But more often, they stop at closing the deal. They’re literally built to “close and move on.”

What’s the consequence: When sales walks away at the close, renewals are at risk before the ink even dries. Delivery teams scramble to cover gaps. Resources are wasted. Bridges are burned almost as soon as they’re built.

How to widen the mind: If you want sales to care, make them own the aftermath. Reward “manage” thinking. Tie their comp to outcomes beyond the signature. Force them to stay involved. When sales owns the consequences, they start thinking holistically instead of just hunting the next contract.

Pre-Sales

Why they are where they are: This one’s obvious. Pre-sales is in the name. They support sales by showing why the customer should buy, connecting the product to pain, and helping prove the value. In many ways, they could be the bridge builders between what the product does and why it matters.

What is the consequence of where they sit: Pre-sales should be tied directly to implementation, but most of the time, they aren’t. They live in the sales process, not the delivery process, which means they don’t have to care about what happens after the contract is signed.

How to widen the mind: Make pre-sales partner with delivery and own the handoff. Sometimes this happens, but more often it doesn’t. Push them to stick around past the perfect demo—maybe even tie them to upsells with delivery—so they feel the customer’s pain firsthand. That experience forces them out of the “demo bubble” and gives them perspective that changes how they sell.

Analyst Pool / Sales Engineering

Why they are where they are: This is where you start to see a function that straddles both sides. Analysts or sales engineers know the guts of the product, so they often help shape use cases pre-sale and tweak or optimize post-sale. They may not create the idea, but they’re critical in making it real.

What’s the consequence: Detail can be both a blessing and a curse. Analysts can sink a deal by being too literal about what works and what doesn’t. They often assume that “delivering the work” equals success, forgetting that relationships and big-picture context matter. And because they tend to be tactical, they’re rarely strong at managing relationships.

How to widen the mind: Train them in alliance management. Make them responsible for people, not just deliverables. That shift forces them to look up from the task list and see the larger chessboard. When they stop thinking only as “doers” and start acting as bridge builders, they become far more valuable to both sides.

Global Services

Why they are where they are: Global services live in the scoping, shaping, and delivery zone. They get deep into customer needs and processes, and they often sell the whole organization—sometimes even customizing solutions to wow the customer. That empathy is great, but it can also work against scale.

What’s the consequence: In their quest to serve every need, they risk over-customizing and drifting away from the company’s broader goals. They may end up solving for one customer so specifically that they miss opportunities to repeat and scale what works.

How to widen the mind: Drive them toward “customized scale.” Break down silos, cross-pollinate across accounts, and define acceptable levels of customization that still support growth. Their empathy is a massive asset—but it needs boundaries so it doesn’t become a trap.

Solutions / Product

Why they are where they are: Product is tasked with creating what customers want. Sometimes they do it broadly, sometimes for a specific account. But here’s the problem: they’re often disconnected from business terms, from why those terms matter, or from what was promised in a deal. Instead, they chase features, scale, and market trends.

What’s the consequence: Put a product person in a sales meeting and watch it derail. They’ll geek out on features, dive into market research tangents, and forget that the customer just wants their pain solved. Scale thinking takes over, customer empathy disappears, and the deal loses steam.

How to widen the mind: Make them sit in the deal-making process. Force them to talk to angry customers. Get them customer-facing in a controlled way. A great product person should think scale, yes—but only after they’ve been present in the room, heard the pain, and cared about the human across the table. That’s where real product-market fit comes from.

Why care about Create, Do, and Manage?

By now, it’s obvious this isn’t as simple as just three neat steps. My goal wasn’t to oversimplify, but to give you a conceptual model—a way of framing the chaos—so you can see how the pieces should actually fit together. Because when they do, new ideas can move more seamlessly into successful business without all the waste and friction that usually drags them down.

It’s hard enough to get one company working smoothly. Layer on the dynamics of two companies trying to align, and it gets harder. Now multiply that across dozens of customers in one industry. Then across multiple industries. Each with their own culture, quirks, and priorities. If you think about it too long, it feels impossible.

And yet—business happens anyway. Deals still get done. Things still move forward. The real question is how efficiently. Because the closer we can get to frictionless execution, the more successful we’ll all be. And the danger zone, the place where so much goes wrong, is right at that transom: moving from idea to terms, to implementation.

That’s where empathy matters most. If you can’t teach your people to be “business empathetic”—to understand what it takes to carry an idea through creation, negotiation, and delivery—you’re leaving money on the table. Imagine if every person involved in a deal made it just 5% more efficient by understanding their counterparts better. The financial rewards would be enormous.

So be business empathetic. Learn to live on that intercompany transom most people avoid. Understand not just your piece of the puzzle, but what happens before and after you touch it.

This model is simple, but the reality is always complex. That’s the point. Like any good language-based framework, Create/Do/Manage is about giving you a way to think. A way to see the whole picture so you can run deals more cleanly, more scalably, and with a little less waste every time.