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

by Dan Sullivan

It takes wisdom to recognize that 1) other people are more than capable enough to handle much of the Hows, and 2) that your efforts and contribution (your “Hows”) should be focused exclusively where your greatest passion and impact are.

As a culture, we’ve been trained to focus on “How” and to work in isolation.

The originator of the Who Not How framework and primary author of this book—Dan Sullivan—didn’t write one word you’re about to read. He didn’t even see the book until it was almost done, and even then, his notes were short, and I took only some of them. Yet, the book is better than he would have written himself—even with help. And he’ll tell you it’s exactly what he wanted, perfectly positioned to help his ideal reader, you. How could this be? How could the person who created and mastered a concept not be the one to write the book? And why would he want to do it this way? Dan was living his core premise: Who Not How.

A much better question is: “Who can help me achieve this?”

That’s what real leadership is: Creating and clarifying the vision (the “what”), and giving that vision greater context and importance (the “why”) for all Whos involved. Once the “what” and “why” have clearly been established, the specified “Who” or “Whos” have all they need to go about executing the “How.” All the leader needs to do at that point is support and encourage the Who(s) through the process.

You absolutely need a Who if you’re trying to accomplish something new and challenging, unless you’re fine not getting the result you want in the near future.

When you’re ready to get results quickly and effectively, then find the right Who. As your ambition increases, you’ll need to get faster and faster at foregoing the frustration of How. Instead, you’ll go straight to the Who that can get the result.

Ultimately, Who Not How is about teaching you how to focus on what you can do, and then finding other Whos to do what they can do.

This is what Dan Sullivan calls Freedom of Purpose. Your purpose and vision expand when you have powerful Whos who can take your goals to places you couldn’t have imagined yourself.

Harvard psychologist Dr. Robert Kegan has a term for this—The Transforming Self—and he considers it the highest form of psychological and emotional evolution. According to Kegan, the basest form of psychological development is the Socializing Self, which is when a person operates out of fear, anxiety, and dependence. You don’t make your own decisions. You don’t have your own goals. Instead, you are simply trying to be accepted by your peers and will do anything you can to conform with them. Above the Socializing Self is the Authoring Self, which is when you’ve gone from unhealthily dependent to a much more healthy independence. You’ve developed your own sense of self. You have a worldview, goals, and an agenda. However, you have a perceptual filter that you cannot see beyond. Everything you do is to confirm your bias and achieve your narrow goals. This is where most people stop in their development, highly convinced of their own perspectives and unwilling to alter those views. The Transforming Self is different from the Authoring Self in that rather than being individualistic and competitive, it is more relational and collaborative. When at this higher level, you engage in collaborative relationships for the sake of transformation. All parties have their own perspectives, beliefs, and agendas. Yet they come together for the purpose of having their own views, and even their own identities and sense of self expand. The whole becomes new and greater than the sum of all parts.

As Dan says, “The only way to make your present better is by making your future bigger.”

“This book is not for you. It’s not for the people who work for Strategic Coach. It’s not for the people in Strategic Coach. Those people get the Who Not How idea. This book is for the people who should be in Strategic Coach but aren’t yet, and we have to write it for them.”

book: If you’re going to apply higher levels of teamwork in your life, you’ll need to relinquish control over how things get done.

A core aspect of leadership is being explicit about the vision. The more explicit you are in what you want, the faster you’ll attract the right Whos to help you achieve that vision. The leader explains the “What” and “Why” and then allows the “Who” to execute the “How.”

The promise of this book is dead serious and simple: Every time you apply Who Not How by imagining a new goal and getting Whos to work toward it, you will improve your time, increase your income, expand your relationships, and deepen your purpose.

In fact, I have benefited directly from Richie’s work. I reached out to him when I was a young writer trying to get my business off the ground. We have worked together for years now, collaborating on various projects.

Who Not How is about utilizing relationships, and being transformed by them.

In Dan and Babs’s experience, your team can and should operate seamlessly without you.

The first Who is always yourself: Improve yourself, value yourself, and ensure that you are in optimal form—happy, creative, and connected to the most important people in your life.

According to the Self-Expansion Model developed by married psychologists, Dr. Arthur Aron and Dr. Elaine Aron, humans have a primary motivation for “self-expansion,” which is the desire to enhance your efficacy or confidence.

The point here is, as you engage in relationships, you expand your efficacy as a person. Your efficacy is your ability to produce results, and it is based on the resources you have to put toward those results. Resources can be financial, but they can also be so much more than that. Encouragement, time, and focus are just as essential as monetary support. Resources not only expand your ability to produce results, but can have a transformational effect on you as a person—on your identity, worldview, and skill level. For instance, with the resource of a piano teacher, your skill can be enhanced to a level not possible without.

Dan often says that the best way to measure your progress is by noting the amount and quality of collaborations happening in your life. According to the Self-Expansion model of psychology, this makes absolute sense. Your efficacy as a person is based on the resources you have, which are a direct by-product of your relationships. Every relationship can be viewed as teamwork, directed toward a purpose.

CHAPTER TAKEAWAYS “How” limits you to your own knowledge and capabilities. “How” requires that you be the one to engage your time and attention into the particular task. “How” decreases your Freedom of Time. “Who” immediately connects you with different knowledge, insights, and capability. “Who” is about getting the desired result as effectively as possible. “Who” can immediately free up hundreds of hours, which you can spend in better and more meaningful ways. “Who” expands your vision for what is possible, because you no longer see yourself as the sole means of achieving the result. Self-expansion is a core human motivation, and it occurs through Whos.

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

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?”

In psychology, the term “selective attention” describes the idea that as humans, we have an incomprehensible amount of data coming into our brain through our senses. However, our conscious mind filters the information and pays attention to the things that seem relevant or important. It is for this reason that when you buy a new car you start seeing the same model everywhere or why you can hear your name in the sea of noise in a loud room. Dan has a really good quote that captures the power of selective attention: “Your eyes only see and your ears only hear what your brain is looking for.”

Dan has created a tool that helps to define the vision, what successful completion of the project looks like, and why it is so important. He calls this tool the Impact Filter.

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?

CHAPTER TAKEAWAYS People waste a large portion of their lives procrastinating. Procrastination is the by-product of having a goal and asking “How?” instead of “Who?” Procrastination has many negative effects, such as decreased well-being, frustration, and ultimately, a loss of ambition. Paradoxically, though, procrastination is actually wisdom. It is your inner genius saying, “This goal is amazing! But you’re not the one to do everything involved!” Leadership involves being clear and explicit about the vision. The Impact Filter is a one-page tool for defining the vision or goal and why it is so important for all Whos involved. Asking “Who can help me achieve this?” may be a stretch if you’ve never truly committed to huge goals. There are countless brilliant and capable Whos out there waiting and wanting to help you. They need only to hear and understand your vision.

“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

You can start small. Each small win builds confidence and an increased sense that you can create the life you want. 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?

CHAPTER TAKEAWAYS Your potential is virtually limitless when you stop asking “How?” and start asking “Who?” When you ask “Who?” you can create results 10X or even 100X faster than if you ask “How?” You can apply Who Not How both personally and professionally. You can free up thousands of future hours by finding Whos. By freeing yourself up from Hows, you’ll have a reborn sense of purpose and clarity. You’ll feel like you’ve been given another life to live. Every 90 days, you can free up your time, energy, and focus by getting Whos to support your ambitions in all aspects of your life.

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. You can’t improve your money freedom without increasing the Whos in your life. Freedom of Money is also about having the money you need to solve whatever problem you have. As you’ll learn in Chapter 6, if you have enough money to solve a problem then you don’t have a problem.

From Dean’s perspective, there are two types of problems in business: technical and adaptive.

Technical problems are when the answer is already known. You just need to find out how to do it. For example, if you want to set up a WordPress website, that is a technical problem. There are tutorials, YouTube videos, and businesses out there that can help you solve that problem. With any technical problem, it’s optimal to ask, “Who can do this for me? Why? Because if you ask, “How can I set up this blog?” then you’re creating for yourself an enormous and long-term commitment.

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.

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.

When you free up your time, you free up your mind.

CHAPTER TAKEAWAYS You can’t have money freedom until you achieve time freedom. By freeing up your time, you get the invaluable benefit of freeing up your mind. By freeing up your time, you can focus on higher impact activities—such as strategizing or creating—which will automatically increase your income. Improving how you spend your time automatically improves your ability to make money. Making the single decision to add a Who to a specific area of your life eliminates decision fatigue in that area. Eliminating decision fatigue from your life should be one of your primary goals if you want to be a high performer and increase your income.

Every time you invest in a vision, your commitment to that vision increases. By investing in that initial Who, as well as experiencing the painful lessons along the way, Nicole got committed. Psychologists call this Escalation of Commitment: Every time you invest yourself in something, you become more committed to it.

Transformational Leadership Theory is the number one leadership theory in the world as of the writing of this book. Transformational leaders embody four characteristics:

Individualized Consideration: The degree to which, as the leader, you attend to each team member’s needs, act as a mentor or coach to each member, and listen to concerns and needs. You give empathy and support, keep communication open, and place challenges before your team so they can grow. You give respect and celebrate the individual contribution that each person can make to the team.

Intellectual Stimulation: The degree to which, as the leader, you challenge people’s assumptions, take risks, and solicit ideas from your team. You stimulate and encourage creativity in your team, and you nurture and help team members to think independently. You help them build confidence so they can make their own decisions and take their own risks. You take learning very seriously, placing high value on it, and you see unexpected situations as opportunities to learn. You allow your team members ...

Inspirational Motivation: The degree to which, as the leader, you articulate a vision that is appealing and inspiring to your team. You challenge your team to increase their personal standards, while you communicate optimism about future goals, and provide meaning for the task at hand. Every member of your team needs a strong sense of purpose in order to be motivated to act. Purpose and meaning provide the energy that drives the group forward. As the visionary and leader, your ability to powerfully and persuasively communicate the vision is essential. You must make the vision understandable, precise, powerful, and engaging so that your team will become increasingly willing to put more effort into com...

Idealized Influence: As the leader, you act as a role model for high ethical behavior, you instill positive pride and create a culture among your team, and you gain respect and trust. People follow you because of who you are. You have high moral authority. People want to be wi...

According to Self-Determination Theory, every human being has three basic psychological needs related to their work: A sense of competence Autonomy in how they do their work Positive and meaningful relationships Social environments that support these three needs create high levels of intrinsic motivation, psychological and physical wellness, and enhanced performance in all of their people. But how these needs are applied is a critical part of the formula.

Interestingly, though, research has found that teams who have high levels of autonomy but low goal clarity, as well as little performance feedback, actually perform worse than teams with low autonomy. However, when a team has 1) high autonomy, 2) high goal clarity, and also 3) gets regular feedback on their results, then their performance shoots through the roof. Put simply, autonomy without clarity is ultimately a disaster. The Who will wander in circles freely but will not go in a meaningful direction.

This brings us to the primary issue with leadership: Lack of clarity of vision and inability to articulate that vision leaves Whos with no identity and no clear purpose. They become frustrated and lose their confidence. It’s not because they lack ...