With today being Father’s Day, the thought I keep coming back to is how much raising a kid and running a company feel like the same job.
Ten days ago, I was on a call with a Visionary, frustrated with his Integrator. Same mistake, third time. He’d told the guy exactly what to do and it still came out wrong.
I asked him one question. “When you handed it off, did you tell him the rule, or did you teach him the why?”
Long pause. “I told him the rule.”
Teach the Why
You can tell the kid the thing, or you can teach the kid the why. The rule travels about ten feet. The why travels everywhere they go. Even where you’re not.
A rule tells someone what to do once. The why lets them make the call the next hundred times. Without you in the room.
A rule works great in the exact same situation. But struggles in a fast-changing world. Which of those is a better description of your landscape? The why makes it possible to adapt/improve the rules. Always doing right. Always getting better.
Simon Sinek built a whole book on this, START WITH WHY. His point lands harder than most people give it credit for: people don’t commit to what they’re told, they commit to what they understand. Give someone the rule and you get compliance (sometimes). Give them the why and you tap into their brain power. You get judgment. Judgment is what you actually want from the great people around you.
Every rule you hand down without the why is a string that runs back to you. Run enough strings and you’ve built a company that can’t move three feet without someone asking you for permission. You wanted to multiply yourself, but instead, every issue, decision, problem and complaint lands back on your desk.
And it shows up exactly when you don’t want it to. The team that only knows the “what” is the team that calls you on a Sunday. (Maybe even on Father’s Day?) The team that owns the “why” is the team that lets you close your laptop and actually be free.
People think freedom comes from hiring more or working less. It comes from transferring the why, over and over, until the people around you make the same calls you would have made. Or even better. A team that owns the “why” runs without you. That’s not a soft skill. That’s the hard asset.
Teach the “why”, and the business keeps its word when you’re gone. That’s a freedom worth building.
So, for today, three questions:
- Where are you still handing out rules when you should be teaching the why?
- Who keeps coming back to you for the answer? Not because they can’t do it, but because nobody ever explained the reason behind it?
- And the hard one: if you didn’t show up tomorrow, would your team know why you do it the way you do, or only what you told them to do?
That last question is the same one a father eventually asks about their kids. Worth sitting with this weekend.
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