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

by Dan Sullivan

It can be easy to focus on How, especially for high achievers who want to control what they can control, which is themselves. It takes vulnerability and trust to expand your efforts and build a winning team. 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. Your attention and energy should not be spread thin, but purposefully directed where you can experience extreme flow and creativity.

It is only through teamwork and collaboration that you can achieve things you previously thought impossible.

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.

“There is no limit to the amount of good you can do if you don’t care who gets the credit.” —Ronald Reagan

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.”

Research shows that only 16 percent of creative insight happens while you’re at work. Instead, ideas generally come while you’re at home or in transit, or during recreational activity. You need time and space, and most important, relaxation and recovery, to allow ideas and solutions to ferment and form.

Far too often, the Who lacks critical clarity not only about the overall vision, but about their role in that vision. Therefore, they can’t bring their available resources to the table.

By working with you, they bless your life, and you bless theirs. You get their resources, and they get yours. They become your Who, and you become theirs.

Sounds like church, doesn't it?

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. Let your Who do their How.

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.

“Try not to become a man of success, but a man of value. Look around at how people want to get more out of life than they put in. A man of value will give more than he receives.” —Albert Einstein

A keystone concept in psychology is known as the fundamental attribution error (also known as correspondence bias or over-attribution effect), which is the tendency for people to overemphasize dispositional or personality-based explanations for how a person acts while underemphasizing situational explanations. In Western culture especially, where we focus so much on the individual, there is a strong cognitive bias to assume that a person’s actions depend on what “kind” of person they are, rather than on the social and environmental forces that influence the person.