Start with why

Discipline of HOW
Once you know WHY you do what you do, the question is HOW will you do it?
HOWs are your values or principles that guide HOW to bring your cause to life.
HOW we do things manifests in the systems and processes within an
organization and the culture. Understanding HOW you do things and, more
importantly, having the discipline to hold the organization and all its employees
accountable to those guiding principles enhances an organization’s ability to
work to its natural strengths. Understanding HOW gives greater ability, for
example, to hire people or find partners who will naturally thrive when working
with you.
Ironically, the most important question with the most elusive answer—WHY
do you do what you do?—is actually quite simple and efficient to discover (and
I’ll share it in later chapters). It’s the discipline to never veer from your cause, to
hold yourself accountable to HOW you do things; that’s the hardest part. Making
it even more difficult for ourselves, we remind ourselves of our values by
writing them on the wall . . . as nouns. Integrity. Honesty. Innovation.
Communication, for example. But nouns are not actionable. They are things.
You can’t build systems or develop incentives around those things. It’s nearly
impossible to hold people accountable to nouns. “A little more innovation today
if you would please, Bob.” And if you have to write “honesty” on your wall to
remind you to do it, then you probably have bigger problems anyway.
For values or guiding principles to be truly effective they have to be verbs. It’s
not “integrity,” it’s “always do the right thing.” It’s not “innovation,” it’s “look
at the problem from a different angle.” Articulating our values as verbs gives us
a clear idea . . . we have a clear idea of how to act in any situation. We can hold
each other accountable to them measure them or even build incentives around
them. Telling people to have integrity doesn’t guarantee that their decisions will
always keep customers’ or clients’ best interest in mind; telling them to always
do the right thing does. I wonder what values Samsung had written on the wall
when they developed that rebate that wasn’t applicable to people living in
apartment buildings.
The Golden Circle offers an explanation for long-term success, but the
inherent nature of doing things for the long term often includes investments or
short-term costs. This is the reason the discipline to stay focused on the WHY
and remain true to your values matters so much.

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