Who Not How: The Formula to Achieve Bigger Goals Through Accelerating Teamwork

by Dan Sullivan

“You pile up enough tomorrows, and you’ll find you are left with nothing but a lot of empty yesterdays.” —Meredith Willson

The sad truth is that most people spend the majority—if not the entirety—of their lives putting off the things that matter most.

According to recent studies, excessive online consumption leads to procrastination and lack of motivation.

Procrastination will ruin your life and limit your potential. Because procrastination stops you from achieving your goals, you miss the continuous uptick in confidence that comes from making progress.

“Personal confidence comes from making progress toward goals that are far bigger than your present capabilities.”

“Your future is your property.”

“A man who dares to waste one hour of life has not discovered the value of life.” —Charles Darwin

What procrastination means is that your goal or ambition is great. It’s something you’d like for yourself, but you’re not the right person to execute the plan to achieve it, at least not right now. You need a Who to get you through whatever stage you’re in, because at the moment, you’re clearly not the Who in possession of the needed knowledge or capability. If you were, you wouldn’t be procrastinating. Procrastination is wisdom—if you listen to it.

Procrastination is a very powerful signal telling you that it’s time to get another Who involved. You’re stuck. You need help.

You only have two options when you procrastinate. The first and most common approach is to ask yourself, “How do I do this?” This generally leads to more procrastination. “How?” is the question society and our public education system have trained us to ask the moment we have a goal or desire. The second, and more effective option, is to simply shift the question to, “Who can help me with this?” By doing so, you can stop procrastinating and feeling discouraged. Instead, you can experience an injection of energy, confidence, and creativity. Another powerful variation of this question could be, “Who can achieve this goal for me?” Who has the skills, knowledge, connections, and expertise to get this done ASAP? Asking “Who?” is the automatic response you need to develop every time you think of a new goal or desire.

The first thing we must learn then is to clearly define what we want. Ulrich wanted to play music with other musicians. That was his goal.

Not only do you have to know what you want, but you must clearly communicate your desires to others.

The “right” Who is always ready and waiting. All you need to do is express your vision clearly.

The Impact Filter, as a one-page document, solves this most pervasive leadership conundrum, and is comprised of the following questions: What is the project? Purpose: What do you want to accomplish? Importance: What’s the biggest difference this will make? Ideal Outcome: What does the completed project look like? Best Result: If you do take action? Worst Result: If you don’t take action? Success Criteria: What has to be true when this project is finished?

Being able to articulate and express your goals is one of the most important and fundamental skills necessary for success.

Every time you have a new goal to achieve, or have a specific project you want done, complete the one-page Impact Filter to clarify your thinking, define the vision, and ultimately, find the right Whos to execute the vision. If the Impact Filter is done well, meaning you’ve clearly explained what successful completion looks like, then it will be obvious to the right Who that they are the one for the job.

Without question, it takes courage to tell people your vision. It takes courage and leadership to get other people involved.

There are plenty of incredible and capable people who want to and will help you. All you need to do is tell them your vision.

That’s one of the biggest mistakes entrepreneurs and leaders make: micromanaging their Whos and insisting that they do their jobs in a particular way, when the only thing that matters is the end result. Once success has been defined, restrain yourself from needing to know or care “How” it gets done. Your only concern should be that it gets done.

“Having a capability is not an obligation to use it.”

But Who Not How is about results, not an obsession with “process.” Allow your Whos to worry about the How and trust them to achieve the desired result within the designated timeframe. Don’t micromanage their process. Let them do what they do because they are the experts, not you.

All he needs to do is clearly articulate his vision. He or one of his assistants then needs to find the relevant Whos that can effectively and efficiently get the job done.

“I now realize that my potential is virtually limitless when I focus on Who instead of How. My goals are not constrained by me. There are endless Whos out there and I can add that capability to anything I’m trying to accomplish.”

“What is the ultimate quantification of success? For me, it’s not how much time you spend doing what you love. It’s how little time you spend doing what you hate.” —Casey Neistat

Rather than asking, “How are we going to do this?” he asks, “Who are we going to get, either internally or externally, to make this happen?”

Will you stop tolerating the wasteful and painful use of your time? How you spend every second on this planet matters. You get in life what you tolerate.

Start by simply eliminating all tasks or distractions that are unnecessary to your future self. Often, we engage in tasks simply out of habit. If it can be eliminated altogether, then eliminate it. Your future self will thank you.

You can’t achieve massive goals in a day. Some of your goals may be so big that they take years to achieve. Even still, you can make massive progress every 90 days. Breaking down your goals into 90-day increments is good for focus and motivation. By chunking down your goals into smaller steps, you can focus more directly on what is right in front of you. You can make tangible and short-term progress, and then look back every 90 days and measure tangible progress. This gives a sense of movement and momentum.

Here are the questions on the one-page Moving Future process, which will help you improve your time every 90 days: Looking back over the past quarter, what are the things you have achieved that make you the proudest? What are the current areas of focus and progress that make you the most confident? Looking ahead at the next quarter, what new developments, projects, or goals are giving you the greatest sense of excitement? What are the five new “jumps” (progress) you can now achieve that will make your next 90 days a great quarter regardless of what else happens?

Challenge: Add at least one Who to your goals in the next 90 days in whatever area of your life you choose. By adding a Who, your commitment will increase and your behavior will improve. As a result, your confidence that you can achieve bigger results in that particular area will improve over the next 90 days.

“It’s more satisfying to be useful now than to be remembered later.”

“Efficiency is doing things right. Effectiveness is doing the right things.” —Peter Drucker

By investing in Whos you not only utilize their time and resources, but also free yourself up to focus your time and attention on your most high-value activities. In turn, your earning capacity improves. This is Freedom of Money.

if you have enough money to solve a problem then you don’t have a problem.

I Know I’m Being Successful When: I can wake up every day and ask, “What would I like to do today?” My passive revenue exceeds my lifestyle needs. I can live anywhere in the world I choose. I’m working on projects that excite me and allow me to do my best work. I can disappear for several months with no effect on my income. There are no whiny people in my life. I wear my watch for curiosity only. I have no time obligations or deadlines. I wear whatever I want all the time. I can quit anytime.

Dean believes time is very important, but actually sees attention as the crown jewel. Your attention is always 100 percent engaged in something, even if that’s distraction. The problem with asking “How?” is that you’re basically telling yourself, “I’m willing to spend my finite attention on this task—finding out how to learn it, learning it, actually doing it, and one day, maybe, training someone else on how to do it.” This line of thinking negatively impacts how you spend your time, which directly impacts your Freedom of Money.

“How” requires your time and attention. “Who” requires someone else’s.

Unlike technical problems, adaptive problems do not have a known answer, according to Dean. Because they don’t have a known answer, they require a creator. That’s where you are the “Who.” Everything that has ever been invented or innovated was done by a Who, acting as a creator, solving an adaptive problem.

“The most useful thing you can do for other people is appreciate their value.”

“Civilization advances by extending the number of operations we can perform without thinking about them.” —Alfred North Whitehead

“Once I made a decision, I never thought about it again.” —Michael Jordan

High performance and continued development of skills requires intensity of focus and what psychologists call “flow,” which is pure absorption in what you’re doing.

Some people don’t invest in Whos like Connie because they don’t view them as an investment, but as a cost. They worry about the amount of money they’ll have to pay their Who, rather than thinking about how that Who could elevate their vision and free up their time. The time I spend writing books and recording podcasts is worth at least 10X or even 100X the time I spent scheduling podcasts. If I’m scheduling podcasts, I’m diminishing my potential for freedom of both time and money. By having Connie support my vision, I have more time and more money. As a result, both Connie and I are more successful than either of us would have been without the relationship. Because I’m achieving more with her help, I’m making more. Because I’m making more, she’s making more.

The question is: Are you going to add a Who? Do you want to free up your time and your mind? What areas of your life and business most need a Who right now?

Remember the new question you must master: “Who can help me achieve this goal?”

“You can have everything you love in life as long as you give up what you hate.”

Money avoids the person who doesn’t value their time. Only those who improve their time, value it, and use it more effectively experience money freedom. Once you add Whos to handle your Hows, then your time will be best spent on those things that make the biggest impact.

Motivationally, supply actually follows perceived demand. When you believe something must be done, you somehow find the ability to get it done. This is why deadlines are so powerful. When there is a demand or requirement, you find the motivation. Without that pressing demand, your needed motivational supply doesn’t show up.

The famed historian, Will Durant, explained it this way: “The ability of the average man could be doubled if it were demanded, if the situation demanded.” In psychology, this idea is called the Pygmalion Effect, and what it means is that as people, we are either rising or falling to the expectations of those around us. When the demands are high, we show up. When they are low, we settle.

You need to increase the demand on yourself to focus and succeed. You need an environment and situation forcing you to rise up to the level of your goals. In order to do that, you need to increase the demand on yourself and others to produce the desired result. Pressure can bust pipes or make a diamond. You need the pressure to succeed. You add that pressure by increasing your investment. This forces you to better use your time, which enables you to increase your income capacity or Freedom of Money.