You Hit the Bull’s Eye. Was It the Right Bull? (Start With Why)

We all get excited when we achieve a milestone we had set for ourselves. When we hit the bull’s eye.

But the pertinent question to ask yourself is:

Did you hit the right bull?

What’s your Why?

I love to ask this question to candidates at job interviews, to all new members joining my organization, and also people I meet at seminars and conferences.

And in a majority of cases what I get in return is a blank stare, or at most a half-hearted ramble.

I get it, it’s a bit of a twisted question, and it can be confusing. Let me explain.

In today’s fast-paced, highly competitive environment it is easy to get sucked into execution, and lose sight of the bigger picture. When starting a company, managing a group, or working toward personal objectives, we tend to prioritize the nuts-and-bolts before we know which direction we’re heading.When I first came across the idea of Starting with Why with Simon Sinek’s bestselling book of the same name, I had a bit of an epiphany. I was struck by the fact that most people and most companies fail to pay attention to the Why, and instead get lost in the How and What.

“The worst thing to do is to do well, what need not be done at all.”

In this post I will discuss the importance of starting with why, and I’ll do this with the help of a few analogies.

Analogies

In the first analogy, you are assuming the position of the captain of a cruise ship sailing on the London — New York route for travelers looking for an experience and a getaway. The ship has a capacity of 5000 guests, with more than 500 crew on board. You are tasked to plan and lead the next sailing from London to New York — How would you go about doing that?

In the second analogy, you are playing a leadership role in a corporation, responsible for a business unit or a product, and leading a medium to large organization.

In the third and final analogy we focus on you and your personal ambitions and goals in life.

The Why

The first question to ask yourself is: Why are you doing what you’re doing? What inspires you in your role as captain?

Your “why” is the reason you get up in the morning. It is a manifestation of your core ideals, priorities, and interests. It is your vision.

As captain of the ship, your vision could be: “to be the most luxurious and safest ship to set sail on earth’. As you can tell, the vision needs to be grand, inspiring, motivating. It is the vision that keeps you, as the captain of the ship, and your entire crew on board, motivated and inspired to work every day. It is also the vision that keeps your customers motivated, and believe in and trust your ship vs other ships.

As a leader in an organization, your first task should be to craft and articulate your organization’s vision, or to reiterate it if it’s already defined. You need to make sure your entire organization understands the vision, and are inspired by it. And you need to do this BEFORE you even consider looking at your priorities, your goals or your roadmap. All that will happen later.

As an individual, you need to determine what you want to achieve in your life — your personal vision, your bucket list. You should be able to picture yourself 10 years later doing what you’d like to be doing, being where you’d like to be, with whom you’d like to be.

The What

Once you have articulated a clear vision for your business, your team or yourself, you need to move to the next step — the What.

Your “what” is the goal or objective that you want to achieve. The goal should be aligned to your vision, and ultimately lead you closer towards it. It’s like a milestone that you will need to cross in your journey towards the vision.

In the ship analogy, the What would be your objective for the upcoming journey. This could include the destination you want to reach, the time you intend to reach, and the customer satisfaction standards you intend to meet as you complete the journey.

In a business environment, the What would include your organizational objectives or goals for the coming fiscal year or quarter. You should also include measures of success as you define your objectives. Key results (part of the OKR model) are a popular method used, but you can use any that works best for your organization.

In your personal life, the What would be your personal objectives — like new year’s resolutions for the year — except these need to bring you closer to your personal vision. For example, if your vision is to ultimately become a professional basketball player, your objective for the year could be to up your game performance to a certain level before the end of the year. It’s important to have a timeline and a measure attached to your goals, so you know whether you’re on track or not.

The How

Once you have clear objectives or goals defined, you can then move to the next step — the How.

Your “How” is the roadmap, the blueprint that charts your path to the objective. The roadmap is only possible to build if you are clear of the outcomes, the objectives, the goals.

Going back to the ship analogy, the How would include all aspects of execution that you would need in order to achieve your objectives of the journey. This could include a mapping/navigation system to keep you on track, fuel supplies and management, accommodation of guests on board, training for the staff on board, safety equipment and standard checks, contingency plans (what if you hit an iceberg?), etc. As you can tell, this is likely going to be a long list of things that need to happen on the ground in order to achieve the goal.

In a corporate environment, the How would include your product roadmap, your team’s execution plan, your resourcing strategy, contingency plans, processes and standards you want to set in order to achieve the goals. Typically, the leader shouldn’t be involved in the How, and instead give autonomy to the teams to carve our the processes, the execution plan to achieve the defined goals.

For your personal objectives, your How would be your TODO lists — the tasks that you have committed to completing in order to achieve your goals. In the basketball player analogy, your How could include your training schedule, practice schedule and diet schedule in order to inch closer to your goals.

Conclusion

Starting with Why ensures you choose the right direction and the goals that make most sense for your situation. But the Why shouldn’t be forgotten once it is defined, and instead should be revisited to make sure you are always headed in the right direction. You should keep reminding yourself, your team, your organization about the Why, so they continue to stay inspired, and headed in the right direction.

A good boss is a master of this art, and juggles between leading and managing as they navigate from the why, to the what, to the how, and continues to inspire the team so they help move the organization towards the Why.

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