Start With Why (19 page)

In this rendering the HOW level represents a person or a small group responsible for building the infrastructure that can make a WHY tangible. That may happen in marketing, operations, finance, human resources and all the other C-suite departments. Beneath that, at the WHAT level, is where the rubber meets the road. It is at this level that the majority of the employees sit and where all the tangible stuff actually happens.

Dr. King said he had a dream, and he inspired people to make his dream their own. What Ralph Abernathy lent the movement was something else: he knew what it would take to realize that dream, and he showed people HOW to do it. He gave the dream structure. Dr. King spoke about the philosophical implications of the movement, while Abernathy, Dr. King’s onetime mentor, longtime friend and financial secretary and treasurer of the Southern Christian Leadership Conference, would help people understand the specific steps they needed to take. “Now,” Abernathy would tell the audience following a rousing address by Dr. King, “let me tell you what that means for tomorrow morning.”

Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. was the leader, but he didn’t change America alone. Though Dr. King inspired the movement, to actually move people requires organizing. As is the case with almost all great leaders, there were others around Dr. King who knew better HOW to do that. For every great leader, for every WHY-type, there is an inspired HOW-type or group of HOW-types who take the intangible cause and build the infrastructure that can give it life. That infrastructure is what actually makes any measurable change or success possible.

The leader sits at the top of the cone—at the start, the point of WHY—while the HOW-types sit below and are responsible for actually making things happen. The leader imagines the destination and the HOW-types find the route to get there. A destination without a route leads to meandering and inefficiency, something a great many WHY-types will experience without the help of others to ground them. A route without a destination, however, may be efficient, but to what end? It’s all fine and good to know how to drive, but it’s more fulfilling when you have a place to go. For Dr. King, Ralph Abernathy was one of those he inspired and who knew HOW to make the cause actionable and tangible. “Dr. King’s job was to interpret the ideology and theology of non-violence,” said Abernathy. “My job was more simple and down-to-earth. I would tell [people], ‘Don’t ride those buses.’”

In every case of a great charismatic leader who ever achieved anything of significance, there was always a person or small group lurking in the shadows who knew HOW to take the vision and make it a reality. Dr. King had a dream. But no matter how inspiring a dream maybe, a dream that cannot come to life stays a dream. Dr. King dreamed of many of the same things as countless other African Americans who grew up in the pre–civil rights South. He spoke of many of the same themes. He felt the same outrage perpetrated by an unjust system. But it was King’s unflappable optimism and his words that inspired a population.

Dr. King didn’t change America by himself. He wasn’t a legislator, for example, but legislation was created to give all people in the United States equal rights regardless of skin color. It wasn’t Dr. King who changed America; it was the movement of millions of others whom he inspired that changed the course of history. But how do you organize millions of people? Forget millions, how do you organize hundreds or tens of people? The vision and charisma of the leader are enough to attract the innovators and the early adopters. Trusting their guts and their intuition, these people will make the greatest sacrifices to help see the vision become a reality. With each success, with every tangible demonstration that the vision can in fact become reality, the more practical-minded majority starts to take interest. What was previously just a dream soon becomes a provable and tangible reality. And when that happens, a tipping point can be reached and then things really get moving.

The pessimists are usually right, to paraphrase Thomas Friedman, author of
The World Is Flat
, but it’s the optimists who change the world. Bill Gates imagined a world in which the computer could help us all reach our greatest potential. And it happened. Now he imagines a world in which malaria does not exist. And it will happen. The Wright brothers imagined a world in which we’d all take to the skies as easily as we catch the bus. And it happened. WHY-TYPES have the power to change the course of industries or even the world . . . if only they knew HOW.

WHY-types are the visionaries, the ones with the overactive imaginations. They tend to be optimists who believe that all the things they imagine can actually be accomplished. HOW-types live more in the here and now. They are the realists and have a clearer sense of all things practical. WHY-types are focused on the things most people can’t see, like the future. HOW-types are focused on things most people can see and tend to be better at building structures and processes and getting things done. One is not better than the other, they are just different ways people naturally see and experience the world. Gates is a WHY-type. So were the Wright brothers. And Steve Jobs. And Herb Kelleher. But they didn’t do it alone. They couldn’t. They needed those who knew HOW.

“If it hadn’t been for my big brother, I’d have been in jail several times for checks bouncing,” said Walt Disney, only half joking, to a Los Angeles audience in 1957. “I never knew what was in the bank. He kept me on the straight and narrow.” Walt Disney was a WHY-TYPE, a dreamer whose dream came true thanks to the help of his more sensible older brother Roy, a HOW-type.

Walt Disney began his career creating cartoon drawings for advertisements, but moved quickly to making animated movies. It was 1923 and Hollywood was emerging as the heart of the movie business, and Walt wanted to be part of it. Roy, who was eight years older, had been working at a bank. Roy was always in awe of his brother’s talent and imagination, but he also knew that Walt was prone to taking risks and to neglecting business affairs. Like all WHY guys, Walt was busy thinking about what the future looked like and often forget he was living in the present. “Walt Disney dreamed, drew and imagined, Roy stayed in the shadow, forming an empire,” wrote Bob Thomas, a Disney biographer. “A brilliant financier and businessman, Roy helped turn Walt Disney’s dreams into reality, building the company that bears his brother’s name.” It was Roy who founded the Buena Vista Distribution Company that made Disney films a central part of American childhood. It was Roy who created the merchandising business that transformed Disney characters into household names. And, like almost every HOW-type, Roy never wanted to be the front man, he preferred to stay in the background and focus on HOW to build his brother’s vision.

Most people in the world are HOW-types. Most people are quite functional in the real world and can do their jobs and do very well. Some may be very successful and even make millions of dollars, but they will never build billion-dollar businesses or change the world. HOW-types don’t need WHY-types to do well. But WHY-guys, for all their vision and imagination, often get the short end of the stick. Without someone inspired by their vision and the knowledge to make it a reality, most WHY-types end up as starving visionaries, people with all the answers but never accomplishing much themselves.

Although so many of them fancy themselves visionaries, in reality most successful entrepreneurs are HOW-types. Ask an entrepreneur what they love about being an entrepreneur and most will tell you they love to build things. That they talk about building is a sure clue that they know HOW to get things done. A business is a structure—systems and processes that need to be assembled. It is the HOW-types who are more adept at building those processes and systems. But most companies, no matter how well built, do not become billion-dollar businesses or change the course of industries. To reach the billion-dollar status, to alter the course of an industry, requires a very special and rare partnership between one who knows WHY and those who know HOW.

In nearly every case of a person or an organization that has gone on to inspire people and do great things, there exists this special partnership between WHY and HOW. Bill Gates, for example, may have been the visionary who imagined a world with a PC on every desk, but Paul Allen built the company. Herb Kelleher was able to personify and preach the cause of freedom, but it was Rollin King who came up with the idea for Southwest Airlines. Steve Jobs is the rebel’s evangelist, but Steve Wozniak is the engineer who made the Apple work. Jobs had the vision, Woz had the goods. It is the partnership of a vision of the future and the talent to get it done that makes an organization great.

This relationship starts to clarify the difference between a vision statement and a mission statement in an organization. The vision is the public statement of the founder’s intent, WHY the company exists. It is literally the vision of a future that does not yet exist. The mission statement is a description of the route, the guiding principles—HOW the company intends to create that future. When both of those things are stated clearly, the WHY-type and the HOW-type are both certain about their roles in the partnership. Both are working together with clarity of purpose and a plan to get there. For it to work, however, it requires more than a set of skills, it requires trust.

As discussed at length in part 3, trusting relationships are invaluable for us to feel safe. Our ability to trust people or organizations allows us to take risks and feel supported in our efforts. And perhaps the most trusting relationship that exists is between the visionary and the builder, the WHY-guy and the HOW-guy. In organizations able to inspire, the best chief executives are WHY-TYPES—PEOPLE who wake up every day to lead a cause and not just run a company. In these organizations, the best chief financial officers and chief operating officers are high-performing HOW-types, those with the strength of ego to admit they are not visionaries themselves but are inspired by the leader’s vision and know how to build the structure that can bring it to life. The best HOW-types generally do not want to be out front preaching the vision; they prefer to work behind the scenes to build the systems that can make the vision a reality. It takes the combined skill and effort of both for great things to happen.

It’s not an accident that these unions of WHY and HOW so often come from families or old friendships. A shared upbringing and life experience increases the probability of a shared set of values and beliefs. In the case of family or childhood friends, upbringing and common experiences are nearly exactly the same. That’s not to say you can’t find a good partner somewhere else. It’s just that growing up with somebody and having a common life experience increases the likelihood of a shared common worldview.

Walt Disney and Roy Disney were brothers. Bill Gates and Paul Allen went to high school together in Seattle. Herb Kelleher was Rollin King’s divorce attorney and old friend. Martin Luther King Jr. and Ralph Abernathy both preached in Birmingham, long before the civil rights movement took form. And Steve Jobs and Steve Wozniak were best friends in high school. The list goes on.

For all the talented HOW-types running today’s organizations, they can achieve success that will last their lifetimes, but they will spend their lifetimes running their companies. There are many ways to be successful and drive profits. Any number of manipulations, only some of which I’ve touched upon in this book, work quite well. Even the ability to create a tipping point is possible without creating lasting change. It’s called a fad. But great organizations function exactly like any social movement. They inspire people to talk about a product or idea, include that product in the context of their lifestyle, share the idea or even find ways to advance the prosperity of the organization itself. Great organizations not only excite the human spirit, they inspire people to take part in helping to advance the cause without needing to pay them or incentivize them in any particular way. No cash-back incentives or mail-in rebates required. People feel compelled to spread the word, not because they have to, but because they want to. They willingly take up arms to share the message that inspires them.

After a three-month selection process, BCI finally chose a new ad agency to help develop a campaign to launch their new product line. Big Company Incorporated is a well-known brand operating in a fairly cluttered market space. As a manufacturer, their products are sold via a third-party sales force, often on the shelves of big-box retailers, so they don’t have direct control over the sales process. The best they can do is to try to influence the sale from a distance—with marketing. BCI is a good company with a strong culture. The employees respect the management, and in general the company does good work. But over the years the competition has grown fairly stiff. And although BCI has a good product and competitive pricing, it is still tough to maintain strong growth year over year. This year, BCI management is particularly excited because the company is launching a new product they really think will make BCI stand out. To help promote it, BCI’s agency has launched a major new ad campaign.

“From the leading maker,” says the new ad, “comes the newest, most innovative product you’ve ever seen.” The ad goes on to talk about all the new features and benefits, and includes something about the “quality you’ve come to expect from BCI,” something the BCI executives felt quite strongly about including. BCI executives have worked hard to build their company’s reputation and they want to leverage it. They are very excited about their new campaign and are really banking on the success of this product to help drive sales in general. They know they do good work, and they want to get the message out. They need it to be loud. And with a budget of millions of dollars to advertise their new product, in that respect, BCI succeeds.