Start With Why (13 page)

Stranded on the ice, the crew of the
Endurance
boarded their three lifeboats and landed on tiny Elephant Island. There Shackleton left behind all but five of his men and embarked on a hazardous journey across 800 miles of rough seas to find help. Which, eventually, they did.

What makes the story of the
Endurance
so remarkable, however, is not the expedition, it’s that throughout the whole ordeal no one died. There were no stories of people eating others and no mutiny.

This was not luck. This was because Shackleton hired good fits. He found the right men for the job. When you fill an organization with good fits, those who believe what you believe, success just happens. And how did Shackleton find this amazing crew? With a simple ad in the London
Times
.

Compare that to how we hire people. Like Shackleton, we run ads in the newspaper, or on the modern equivalents, Craigslist or
Monster.com
. Sometimes we hire a recruiter to find someone for us, but the process is largely the same. We provide a list of qualifications for the job and expect that the best candidate will be the one who meets those requirements.

The issue is how we write those ads. They are all about WHAT and not about WHY. A want ad might say, for example, “Account executive needed, minimum five years’ experience, must have working knowledge of industry. Come work for a fantastic, fast-growing company with great pay and great benefits.” The ad may produce loads of applicants, but how do we know which is the right fit?

Shackleton’s ad for crew members was different. His did not say WHAT he was looking for. His ad did not say:

“Men needed for expedition. Minimum five years’ experience. Must know how to hoist mainsail. Come work for a fantastic captain.”

Rather, Shackleton was looking for those with something more. He was looking for a crew that belonged on such an expedition. His actual ad ran like this:

“Men wanted for Hazardous journey. Small wages, bitter cold, long months of complete darkness, constant danger, safe return doubtful. Honour and recognition in case of success.”

The only people who applied for the job were those who read the ad and thought it sounded great. They loved insurmountable odds. The only people who applied for the job were survivors. Shackleton hired only people who believed what he believed. Their ability to survive was guaranteed. When employees belong, they will guarantee your success. And they won’t be working hard and looking for innovative solutions for you, they will be doing it for themselves.

What all great leaders have in common is the ability to find good fits to join their organizations—those who believe what they believe. Southwest Airlines is a great example of a company with a knack for hiring good fits. Their ability to find people who embody their cause makes it much easier for them to provide great service. As Herb Kelleher famously said, “You don’t hire for skills, you hire for attitude. You can always teach skills.” This is all fine and good; the problem is, which attitude? What if their attitude is not one that fits your culture?

I love asking companies whom they like to hire, and one of the most common answers I am given is, “We hire only passionate people.” But how do you know if someone is passionate for interviewing, but not so passionate for working? The truth is, almost every person on the planet is passionate, we are just not all passionate for the same things. Starting with WHY when hiring dramatically increases your ability to attract those who are passionate for what you believe. Simply hiring people with a solid résumé or great work ethic does not guarantee success. The best engineer at Apple, for example, would likely be miserable if he worked at Microsoft. Likewise, the best engineer at Microsoft would probably not thrive at Apple. Both are highly experienced and work hard. Both may come highly recommended. However, each engineer does not fit the culture of the other’s company. The goal is to hire those who are passionate for your WHY, your purpose, cause or belief, and who have the attitude that fits your culture. Once that is established, only then should their skill set and experience be evaluated. Shackleton could have had the most experienced crew money could buy, but if they weren’t able to connect on a level much deeper than their ability, their survival would not have been a foregone conclusion.

For years, Southwest didn’t have a complaints department—they didn’t need one. Though Kelleher rightly talked about the need to hire for attitude, the airline in fact deserves more credit for hiring the good fits responsible for providing great service. Kelleher was not the only one making the hiring decisions, and asking everyone to simply trust their gut is too risky. Their genius came from figuring out why some people were such good fits and then developing systems to find more of them.

In the 1970s, Southwest Airlines decided to put their flight attendants in hot pants and go-go boots as part of their uniforms (hey, it was the 1970s). It wasn’t their idea; Pacific Southwest, the California-based airline after which Southwest modeled itself, did it first, Southwest simply copied them. Unlike Pacific Southwest, however, Southwest figured out something that would prove invaluable. They realized that when they recruited flight attendants, the only people who applied for the job were cheerleaders and majorettes. That’s because they were the only people who didn’t mind wearing the new uniforms. Cheerleaders and majorettes, however, fit in perfectly at Southwest. They didn’t just have a great attitude, their whole disposition was about cheering people on. Spreading optimism. Leading crowds to believe that “we can win.” They were perfect fits at a company that was the champion of the common man. Realizing this, Southwest started to recruit only cheerleaders and majorettes.

Great companies don’t hire skilled people and motivate them, they hire already motivated people and inspire them. People are either motivated or they are not. Unless you give motivated people something to believe in, something bigger than their job to work toward, they will motivate themselves to find a new job and you’ll be stuck with whoever’s left.

Consider the story of two stonemasons. You walk up to the first stonemason and ask, “Do you like your job?” He looks up at you and replies, “I’ve been building this wall for as long as I can remember. The work is monotonous. I work in the scorching hot sun all day. The stones are heavy and lifting them day after day can be backbreaking. I’m not even sure if this project will be completed in my lifetime. But it’s a job. It pays the bills.” You thank him for his time and walk on.

About thirty feet away, you walk up to a second stonemason. You ask him the same question, “Do you like your job?” He looks up and replies, “I love my job. I’m building a cathedral. Sure, I’ve been working on this wall for as long as I can remember, and yes, the work is sometimes monotonous. I work in the scorching hot sun all day. The stones are heavy and lifting them day after day can be backbreaking. I’m not even sure if this project will be completed in my lifetime. But I’m building a cathedral.”

WHAT these two stonemasons are doing is exactly the same; the difference is, one has a sense of purpose. He feels like he belongs. He comes to work to be a part of something bigger than the job he’s doing. Simply having a sense of WHY changes his entire view of his job. It makes him more productive and certainly more loyal. Whereas the first stonemason would probably take another job for more pay, the inspired stonemason works longer hours and would probably turn down an easier, higher-paying job to stay and be a part of the higher cause. The second stonemason does not see himself as any more or less important than the guy making the stained glass windows or even the architect. They are all working together to build the cathedral. It is this bond that creates camaraderie. And that camaraderie and trust is what brings success. People working together for a common cause.

Companies with a strong sense of WHY are able to inspire their employees. Those employees are more productive and innovative, and the feeling they bring to work attracts other people eager to work there as well. It’s not such a stretch to see why the companies that we love to do business with are also the best employers. When people inside the company know WHY they come to work, people outside the company are vastly more likely to understand WHY the company is special. In these organizations, from the management on down, no one sees themselves as any more or any less than anyone else. They all need each other.

It was a turn-of-the-century version of the dot-com boom. The promise of a revolutionary new technology was changing the way people imagined the future. And there was a race to see who could do it first. It was the end of the nineteenth century and the new technology was the airplane. One of the best-known men in the field was Samuel Pierpont Langley. Like many other inventors of his day, he was attempting to build the world’s first heavier-than-air flying machine. The goal was to be the first to achieve machine-powered, controlled, manned flight. The good news was Langley had all the right ingredients for the enormous task; he had, what most would define as, the recipe for success.

Langley had achieved some renown within the academic community as an astronomer, which earned him high-ranking and prestigious positions. He was secretary of the Smithsonian Institution. He had been an assistant in the Harvard College Observatory and professor of mathematics at the United States Naval Academy. Langley was very well connected. His friends included some of the most powerful men in government and business, including Andrew Carnegie and Alexander Graham Bell. He was also extremely well funded. The War Department, the precursor the Department of Defense, had given him $50,000 for the project, a lot of money in those days. Money was no object.

Langley assembled some of the best and brightest minds of the day. His dream team included test pilot Charles Manly, a brilliant Cornell-trained mechanical engineer, and Stephan Balzer, the developer of the first car in New York. Langley and his team used the finest materials. The market conditions were perfect and his PR was great. The
New York Times
followed him around everywhere. Everyone knew Langley and was rooting for his success.

But there was a problem.

Langley had a bold goal, but he didn’t have a clear sense of WHY. His purpose for wanting to build the plane was defined in terms of WHAT he was doing and WHAT he could get. He had had a passion for aeronautics since a very young age, but he did not have a cause to champion. More than anything else, Langley wanted to be first. He wanted to be rich and he wanted to be famous. That was his driving motivation.

Although already well regarded in his own field, he craved the kind of fame of a Thomas Edison or Alexander Graham Bell, the kind that comes only with inventing something big. Langley saw the airplane as his ticket to fame and fortune. He was smart and motivated. He had what we still assume is the recipe for success: plenty of cash, the best people and ideal market conditions. But few of us have ever heard of Samuel Pierpont Langley.

A few hundred miles away in Dayton, Ohio, Orville and Wilbur Wright were also building a flying machine. Unlike Langley, the Wright brothers did not have the recipe for success. Worse, they seemed to have the recipe for failure. There was no funding for their venture. No government grants. No high-level connections. The Wright brothers funded their dream with the proceeds from their bicycle shop. Not a single person working on the team, including Orville and Wilbur, had a college education; some did not even finish high school. What the Wright brothers were doing wasn’t any different from Langley or all the others trying to build a flying machine. But the Wright brothers did have something very special. They had a dream. They knew WHY it was important to build this thing. They believed that if they could figure out this flying machine, it would change the world. They imagined the benefits to everyone else if they were successful.

“Wilbur and Orville were true scientists, deeply and genuinely concerned about the physical problem they were trying to solve—the problem of balance and flight,” said James Tobin, the Wright brothers’ biographer. Langley, on the other hand, was consumed with acquiring the level of prestige of his associates like Alexander Graham Bell, fame that he knew would come only with a major scientific breakthrough. Langley, Tobin said, “did not have the Wrights’ passion for flight, but rather was looking for achievement.”

Orville and Wilbur preached what they believed and inspired others in the community to join them in their cause. The proof of their commitment was self-evident. With failure after failure, most would have given up, but not the Wright brothers’ team. The team was so inspired that no matter how many setbacks they suffered they would show up for more. Every time the Wright brothers went out to make a test flight, so the stories go, they would take five sets of parts with them, because they knew that’s how many times they were likely to fail before deciding to come home for the day.

Then it happened. On December 17, 1903, on a field in Kitty Hawk, North Carolina, the Wright brothers took to the sky. A fifty-nine-second flight at an altitude of 120 feet at the speed of a jog was all it took to usher in a new technology that would change the world.

Remarkable as the achievement was, it went relatively unnoticed. The
New York Times
was not there to cover the story. Driven by something bigger than fame and glory, the Wright brothers were content to wait to tell the world. They understood its true significance to the world.

What Langley and the Wright brothers were trying to create was exactly the same; both were building the same product. Both the Wright brothers and Langley were highly motivated. Both had a strong work ethic. Both had keen scientific minds. What the Wright brothers’ team had that Langley did wasn’t luck. It was inspiration. One was motivated by the prospect of fame and wealth, the other by a belief. The Wright brothers excited the human spirit of those around them. Langley paid for talent to help him get rich and famous. The Wright brothers started with WHY. Further proof Langley was motivated by WHAT, a few days after Orville and Wilbur took flight, Langley quit. He got out of the business. He could have said, “That’s amazing, now I’m going to improve upon their technology.” But he didn’t. He found the defeat humiliating—his own test flight had landed in the Potomac River, and the newspapers all made fun of him. He cared so much about what others thought of him, he was so preoccupied with becoming famous. He wasn’t first, so he simply quit.