Connecting the Why

The most potent guiding star in sales, decision-making, and leadership is knowing, connecting, and communicating the why.

For a startup leader, why spells out the reason, cause, or purpose underlying an action or decision. It is the “so what” that can bring clarity of purpose and priority.

Why is the essence of motivation

Why can tell the compelling origin story of a startup. It can communicate the heartfelt rationale behind a new product. It can provide the reason for pouring blood, sweat, and tears into getting something across the finish line. An authentically developed and communicated why helps others understand where you are coming from and provides a coherent and understandable reason for the direction your team is headed.

For example, at Fifth Eye, the whole team knows that the fundamental why motivating the founders to start the company was to save lives. Our why is developing a way to collect and process streaming data, extract meaningful clinical insight out of it, and feed it into the patient care process in a real-time way.  That vision – of saving lives – guides our big decisions and motivates our team through the inevitable peaks and valleys of the startup journey. And it is a goal that resonates with the doctors and nurses who want to use our product.

Why is the driver of priorities and better decisions

Knowing the context provides the landscape for good decisions, and the why often defines the fundamental target. Knowing the why is pivotal to deciding between options.  By identifying the why and communicating it well, you provide a flexible and robust framework for your team’s decision-making, and a reason for your customers and investors to commit. 

For example, as I considered the opportunities and challenges facing us in our first product launch, I realized it was essential to distill all of that context down into a clear target, a goal that we needed to achieve, with the why rationale to back it up. The most critical driver of success in our product launch was not the typical need to generate many discrete leads, but instead to focus on making sure that our users were delighted with their experience with our product. Ensuring our team understood why that outcome was so critical by clearly articulating the motivation behind this strategy enabled everyone to come into alignment. They then could prioritize the details of their work to combine their respective capabilities in a coherent, focused way.  This shared mental model allows each person to optimize within their scope of control and be empowered to move us forward.

Why is the fuel of leadership

Why operates at multiple levels. It can be why this specific task is essential. It can be why this strategy is the right one. It can be why the company exists (what problem the company is intended to solve). As a leader, you need to become adept at identifying or defining the why at each level. Making sure you include the why as you define direction provides critical information that empowers creative problem-solving. Orienting every stakeholder around the why at various levels enables you to delegate the planning and execution down into the team, knowing that there is some flexibility on the how as long as the focus remains on accomplishing the direction defined by the why.

Tips for Connecting the Why

Underlying everything you do as a startup leader needs to be a clear understanding of why.  Pursue the following ideas to harness the power of why for your startup:

• Continually expand and cultivate your understanding of the context surrounding your startup and the problems at hand. This provides the foundation of understanding the relevant whys.
  
  
• Invest the time to identify or clarify why you are doing what you are doing.  Think about asking a series of why questions if you are trying to uncover the root cause motivating factor. By repeatedly asking why, you can work your way from superficial reasons down to the fundamental reasons.
  
  
• Find ways to authentically communicate that underlying reason to the stakeholders involved. By exposing the why(s), you provide a set of decision filters and provide ways to motivate others to join in, guide decisions, and harness the power of why to clarify purpose and priorities.
  

The concepts in this post are abstract yet powerful leadership tools. The power of a defined why can be applied at every level from executives to technicians, from team members to stakeholders to customers for deeper motivation, better decision-making, and effective delegation.