Start with why

I Have a Dream (and He’s Got the Plan)
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

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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.

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