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Book Tag: Purpose

Start With Why

This book is a helpful reminder to start with WHY or begin from somewhere very different. When you begin with Why, you get the chance to align What you do with How you do it. Your life, products, or services are designed by the decisions that uphold your Why. And that is inspiring. 

By design or manipulation 

There are two ways to influence behaviour 

Inspire

Manipulate

Why, How and What (in that order) make up The Golden Circle. Great companies organise their resources around their Why to ensure that what they do and How they do it clearly reflects their Why.  

The alternative is to influence behaviour through manipulation. Recognisable manipulations in business include:

Price

Promotions

Fear

Aspirations

Peer pressure

Novelty

True innovation changes the course of an industry. Changing the colour of packaging does not. 

Think bigger. Would a quarter of US railroad companies have gone bust in 1894 had they seen themselves as mass transportation companies?  

Apple works to empower the individual by providing 1000 songs in your pocket. The competition tells you What they do and How they do it, giving you a 5GB MP3 player. 

Using biological systems as an analogy 

Why: Limbic 

What and How: Prefrontal cortex

We can win the mind by overusing features and benefits; the heart is a little trickier. 

We can’t explain Why we like Apple, but we can verbalise or rationalise our decisions through What we do and How we do it. It is unlikely to be a true reflection of our Why, but it is a rationalised answer. 

The emergence of trust

Focus on the people who believe what you believe. The goal of business should not be to do business with anyone. When you are selective about who you do business with, trust emerges. 

Communicate your why and then demonstrate it by acting on your values and beliefs. When we have a sense that another person or organisation is driven by things other than self-interest, trust emerges.

A company is a culture. A group of people brought together around a common set of values and beliefs. Hire for attitude, not skills. Recruit on the Why. Skills you can acquire.

Great companies don’t hire skilled people and motivate them; they hire already motivated people and inspire them

In pursuit of why. Great companies hold themselves accountable for how they do it. What they do serves as tangible proof of what they believe in, their Why. 

Dilution of the why [the thing that kills your coaching]. Come to work. Manage systems

Work on preset goals. No longer inspired by a cause greater than themselves. As the company grows, the Why is diluted, and at some point, the What they do and Why they do it diverge.  

What you measure gets managed. A desire to return to the early days of business is a symptom of misalignment between why and what. The business metrics are not aligned to your Why. 

The question is how to incentivise behaviour to create a culture?

Only when individuals can trust the organisation will they personally take risks to advance that culture or organisation. Think of trust like a safety net underneath a trapeze artist. Creating a culture in which when we fail, we are safe. Not under threat or undermined. 

Be aware that some people are risk-seeking. But at what cost to the culture or the organisation? Seek a net goal of reciprocal behaviour. Trust between employees and management is what brings customer service, not a focus on the customer. Focus on the customer comes when the employee trusts the company to act on the organisational values.

Outline your expectations. Trusting that a customer is always right is not a policy that can be upheld if you have not defined who you serve, how you serve them, and your company’s expectations. 

When talking to employees about the companies Why, seek alignment with the employee’s self-interests. What they do and How they do it matters.    

Why is a belief.

How are the actions.

What are the results of those actions.

What it takes to uphold your Why. 

  • Clarity
  • Discipline
  • Consistency

Innovate or manipulate?

Everett Rogers, in the book Diffusion of Innovations, describes how innovation spreads through the population. Based on adoption, the population can be broadly split into five classification segments. 

Innovators

Early adopters

Early majority

Late majority

Laggards

Treat each adoption classification as a separate marketplace.

The chasm is the gap between early adopters and the early majority.

The early majority need a personal recommendation. Tried and trusted.

How does a company evolve to cross the chasm?

The challenge is to get enough people to talk about what you do. The dispersal of ideas to the majority. Tipping point.

The pitfall. Meet the practical requirement of the majority, but don’t court their loyalty. 

To improve risk tolerance, apply polish and add value or reduce price in this group. 

People incorporate, embed, your ideas, your products or services, you’re What into their own lives. What’s to their own Whys.

Companies never have the time or money to do it right the first time, but they always have the time and money to do it again.

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Anything You Want

Anything You Want is a book that reminds, inspires, and pokes me to build my utopia. I feel the same way when I watch Mr. Magorium’s Magic Emporium film—anything is possible. 

What’s your compass? What makes you happy? Develop a personal philosophy of what makes you happy and what’s worth doing. Follow your own path. Don’t be on your deathbed with regret that you pursued little distractions, not big dreams.

Examples of distractions include: 

Money. Begin with costs as low as you can get them and keep them that way. Often, we don’t pursue our dreams to their rightful conclusion because we fail to prepare to push through The Dip.

Stuff. Owning things won’t make you happy. Have enough. 

New ideas/products/invitations, etc: Avoid distractions. Learn to say HELL Yes or NO. 

Keep sufficient room in your life for the HELL YES moments and do not fill your life with mediocrity by failing to say NO.

Customers: Learn to exclude. In fact, practice the art of exclusion before starting a business. The art of kind and thoughtful exclusion requires practise. Inclusion involves everybody, and that is unlikely to make you happy. 

Once you are clear on who you want to serve. Begin by using the Pareto 80:20 principle. You can always adapt accordingly. Keep most of your customers happy, most of the time—in this case, 80% of the time. For the other 20% who are no longer your customers, be kind and say goodbye.

Design your life accordingly, before any thoughts on setting up a business. Slow down. Get clear on what makes you happy. Write leadership directives and then begin to design your business. Not before. If you are in a hurry, you are not ready. Slow down.

Business design: You must understand the different business models available and how they can apply to what makes you happy. Be clear on this before moving forward. 

The future belongs to those who believe in the beauty of their dreams. Business is not about money; it’s about making dreams come true for your customers and you. When you make a company, you create great ways to improve the world and yourself. Make it your utopia in which you get to create and design your perfect world.

Focus on what would improve the service you offer. Everything focused on how you can help, from spending money to hiring staff and putting in systems. Will it make your customers and you happy? 

Money allows you to continue to improve your service, have fun, and make people happy. Gain acceptance that you already have enough. This avoids the mistake of spending money in search of happiness.  

Anti-growth: opposite of ambition. Think in a way that is opposite to being ambitious.

Utopian view from the customer’s view: In a perfect world, my ideal customer would want / I want (if you are the first customer). Write out the key points that your business will focus on. Four is probably enough. For example, as a personal trainer, my ideal client may want me to check up on their progress, offering a FREE session if no progress has been made to understand why. The upside of FREE: You may uncover a new service or a new way of working. Besides, your client is now happy, and that is the sole purpose of your business. You both win.

Why making yourself your first customer is a smart move: If you accept that business is not about money but about making dreams come true for your customers and you, then when you make it a dream come true for yourself, you will be making a dream come true for someone else, too. Be your first customer.

Finding customers then becomes easy as you begin to pay attention to what you want in your utopia, and therefore what would help those who share your dream. For example, Derek talks about the struggle of independent musicians, of which he was one, to sell their music. Turns out friends and others felt the same way; CD Baby was born.

Finding customers: Ask: How can I help you now? Word of mouth will take care of the rest of it.

Existing customers: All customers want your focus on them. Do what you are good at. Persistently improving and inventing, not persistently promoting what isn’t working. Do only what makes you happy. No distractions. There are no rules to determine what function you should serve in your business. Do only what makes you happy.

Checking questions: Is the work you are doing going to make your customers happy? Will it make you happy? If not, are you hiding?

What hiding looks like: One way to hide involves you working on a project that neither the staff nor your customers understand or care about. But it makes me happy! Sure, fire yourself as you are no longer useful, and continue if it makes you happy.

Other forms of hiding include writing business or expansion plans unless your customers want you to expand. Don’t.

Two common misconceptions when starting a business: Grand plans: A business plan will not survive the first contact with a customer, and is therefore pointless, as you have no real idea what people truly want until you get started. Remember that the whole point of your business is to make your customers and you happy. This needs thinking about, as does the design of your business, not cash flow, SWOT, or any other type of fortune-telling system.

Funding: You don’t need money to begin helping people.

Don’t push water uphill unless you have a pump. If your idea is not a hit, switch. We all have lots of ideas; nobody wants to see you chasing one bad idea after another. Yes, a hit record is a hit record and makes your life easier. But what if your hit records don’t make you happy? What if making a hit record was not your dream? Demand appears to take care of itself.

Instead, think about making progress, however slow, towards your big dream. It makes you happy, and your customers are happy. Isn’t that enough? Maybe until your idea hits the downhill slope, you have a hobby that makes you happy. Remember to persistently improve and invent, not persistently promote what isn’t working. Look for progress, however slow. That might be enough for you.

There is always more than one way. One business plan is one way to do it. Try multiple ways to do the same thing. We see the world through our own narratives. Create scenarios that make you see the world, your problem, and your business through a different lens. Asking those who are already in the position that you covet will allow you to see if it is actually where you want to be.

Make yourself unnecessary to your business. Do not put your business into survival mode—a business that fails to solve the problem to resolve the problem, even if this makes your business purpose redundant. Make yourself replaceable.

Again, this can appear like confusing advice. Designing a business to create a dream lifestyle flies in the face of the advice provided thus far. Yet, designing a business that is so efficient that it no longer requires you is a different outcome. You serve your clients so effectively that you have made yourself redundant.

Also, consider that in time both your dream and your outlook on life may change. Maybe the market has changed, or the needs of your customers. All of which may challenge your role.

The key question is this: Are you helping? If not, why not? Maybe you are hiding from doing the work that your staff and your customers notice and appreciate. Instead, you are working on plans that have little or no impact on them.

Communication takes time and feedback. Be clear when communicating. What change do you seek? Miscommunication is expensive: time wasted dealing with your communication mishap, silence if the message is not heard or understood. Most of all, the change you seek has not happened. Feedback loops are critical to learning.

Little things make all the difference. Tiny details, care, and attention all show that this is your utopia, your chance to create something that you love. Others may love it too.

Focus on one thing until successful. Delegate but verify before you move on, for as long as it takes. Build in regular reviews. If you can’t allocate the time, wait until you can give it your full attention. Currently, it can’t be that important.

A word on business design: Execution is more important than an idea. Execution gives you scale and is therefore the multiplier of the idea. Great idea, poor execution: low value both for the customer and the company. Poor idea, great execution: an exciting prospect if you can persist with making it better, provided you have the resources and the patience to do the work.

Set up your business like you don’t need the money. This appears counterintuitive. Design your life so that your business is not designed to prop up your lifestyle, only to make you and your customers happy. If you need additional money, create your business as a hobby or review your lifestyle design before thinking about starting a business. People will sense that your business is a money-making machine and be turned off. Needy is creepy. If your business idea is good, if it resonates with people, you will make money.

If making money is the purpose of your business, ignore these notes. It will be poor advice for you.

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