Why Start With Why?
A blank screen. A blinking cursor. Each flash of a that little vertical line started to beat like a drum. Louder and louder. Take a deep breath… why am I doing this again?
That was me three months ago, trying to write the About Us page for my new company’s website. I had just gone through the most difficult, self-reflective period of my professional life and come out the other side with a conceptual idea of a business that I wanted to build. I had talked it through with my wife and family. I had given my employer notice that I was leaving. I was getting all my ducks in a row for launch. Yet, somehow I couldn't write this one page that should have been so simple. Then, the title of a book I read a few years ago started to echo in my head: Start With Why...
This post is the second in an 11-part series that will detail the trajectorE Navigation System (tENS), a 10-step process for executing strategic growth and improvement projects. If you missed part 1 of this series, which provides an overview of tENS, you can find it here. The focus of this edition is the foundational first step, which is to review why your organization exists and assess where you are on that long term journey. Before launching a significant growth or improvement initiative, you need to ensure it will propel the organization in the right direction. To do this, you need to know your starting point as well as where the organization is intended to go over the long term. If your organization hasn’t clearly defined it’s Why then you need to take the time to do this. If it exists only as words on the wall that are meaningless to most people in the organization, then a review and possibly a refresh of them is in order.
“Start With Why” is the title of Simon Sinek's 2009 book and the subject of his popular TED Talk that describes how great leaders and companies approach things differently than most. The most common question we ask someone we meet in a professional setting is "What do you do?" you then may move on to ask How they do that, but rarely if ever do you ask Why. That is the way many companies and leaders approach their employees and customers: What We Do, How We Do It and then, maybe, Why We Do It. Great companies get their employees and their customers on board by starting with Why.
How do you articulate your Why as an organization? A common way to do this is by writing it down in the form of a Mission and/or Vision statement. Interestingly, there is a fair bit of variability among how companies have approached these statements; some have a Vision only, others only have a Mission statement and many have both. In order to document why your business or organization exists, you need to dig down to the root of the fundamental problem that you are trying to solve, as concisely as possible. The Walt Disney Company does an excellent job of this in their Vision statement: “To make people happy.” This is an excellent Why statement. Who wouldn’t want to be a customer of a company trying to make them happy? What employee, or in Disney's case "cast member”, wouldn’t be inspired by this? Note that words like “profit” are omitted, because if that’s the only reason your business exists, then you don’t have the foundation of long term success.
I am of the school of thought that the Mission statement defines why the organization exists and the Vision defines what you want it to become. Is it a global company? Is it a municipal non-profit? Is it a natural resources company or is it an e-commerce company? Amazon has a great vision statement: “Our vision is to be earth's most customer centric company; to build a place where people can come to find and discover anything they might want to buy online.” This statement makes it clear what Amazon plans to do and the geographic reach is has planned over the long term. It also drops in a sprinkle of how they want to achieve this: by being customer centric.
Most organizations document their How in a set of Values, which are intended to drive the right behaviours across their organization. With this in mind, you won’t be surprised to hear that Starbucks includes “ethically sourcing the finest coffee beans” as a value, Westjet notes “Fun, friendly and caring” among theirs, Facebook wants to “Be bold”, and Disney lists “Creativity, dreams and imagination” among their core values. These Values set the foundation of a company’s culture and should drive decision making and strategic direction.
Many companies underestimate the importance of this thought process and the power of these statements. Take Manitowoc Company for example. Until earlier this year, it was trying to compete in both the heavy industrial crane and foodservice equipment industries, while their Mission was “to continuously improve economic value for our shareholders.” Not very inspiring for anyone other than their shareholders. In fact, it wasn’t even that inspiring for them because Wall Street had been pushing for this company to break up for some time (see this article by Jim Cramer). Then in February 2016, the board of directors approved the break-up of the company into a crane company and a foodservice equipment company to allow “each to capitalize on the opportunities in their respective markets.” This is a great example of a company not having a single, coherent Why, which led to market forces breaking it up into separate organizations that do.