Start With Why

part is, it is also good for business. We do really well. We have beau-
tiful offices, you should stop by sometime to see. We work with 
some of the biggest companies. I'm sure you've seen our ads. We're 
actually doing pretty well."
Now, how certain are you that the second pitch was better than 
the first?
Three Degrees of Certainty
When we can only provide a rational basis for a decision, when 
we can only point to tangible elements or rational measurements, 
the highest level of confidence we can give is, "I
 think
this is the right 
decision." That would be biologically accurate because we're 
activating the neocortex, the "thinking" part of our brain. At a 
neocortical level we can verbalize our thoughts. This is what's hap-
pening when we spend all that time sifting through the pros and 
cons, listening to all the differences between plasma or LCD, Dell 
versus HP.
When we make gut decisions, the highest level of confidence we 
can offer is, "The decision
 feels
right," even if it flies in the face of all 
the facts and figures. Again, this is biologically accurate, because gut 
decisions happen in the part of the brain that controls our emotions, 
not language. Ask the most successful entrepreneurs and leaders 
what their secret is and invariably they all say the same thing: "I 
trust my gut." The times things went wrong, they will tell you, "I 
listened to what others were telling me, even though it didn't feel 
right. I should have trusted my gut." It's a good strategy, except it's 
not scalable. The gut decision can only be made by a single person. 

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START WITH WHY 
86 
It's a perfectly good strategy for an individual or a small 
organization, but what happens when success necessitates that more 
people be able to make decisions
 that feel
right?
That's when the power of WHY can be fully realized. The ability 
to put a WHY into words provides the emotional context for deci-
sions. It offers greater confidence than "I think it's right." It's more 
scalable than "I feel it's right." When you know your WHY, the 
highest level of confidence you can offer is, "I
 know
it's right." When 
you
 know
the decision is right, not only does it feel right, but you can 
also rationalize it and easily put it into words. The decision is fully 
balanced. The rational WHATs offer proof for the feeling of WHY. If 
you can verbalize the feeling that drove the gut decision, if you can 
clearly state your WHY, you'll provide a clear context for those 
around you to understand why that decision was made. If the 
decision is consistent with the facts and figures, then those facts and 
figures serve to reinforce the decision—this is balance. And if the 
decision flies in the face of all the facts and figures then it will 
highlight the other factors that need to be considered. It can turn a 
controversial decision from a debate into a discussion.
My former business partner, for example, would get upset when 
I turned away business. I would tell him that a potential client didn't 
"feel" right. That would frustrate him to no end because "the client's 
money was as good as everyone else's," he would tell me. He 
couldn't understand the reason for my decision and, worse, I 
couldn't explain it. It was just a feeling I had. In contrast, these days 
I can easily explain WHY I'm in business—to inspire people to do 
the things that inspire them. If I were to make the same decision 
now for the same gut reason, there is no debate because everyone is 
clear WHY the decision was made. We turn away business because 
those potential clients don't believe what we believe and they are not 
interested in anything to do with inspiring people. With a clear 
sense of WHY, a debate to take on a bad-fit client turns into a 

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CLARITY, DISCIPLINE AND CONSISTENCY 
87 
discussion of whether the imbalance is worth the short-term gain 
they may give us.
The goal of business should not be to do business with anyone 
who simply wants what you have. It should be to focus on the peo-
ple who believe what you believe. When we are selective about 
doing business only with those who believe in our WHY, trust 
emerges. 

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