What is your WHY? What is your personal WHY? What is your business WHY? Have you defined your WHY? What is your personal purpose? What is the company’s purpose? These are some of the questions that I will ask when we start working together as your business consultant.
I was at a client’s the other day and we started to go through the questions, and he started to get frustrated as he could not answer any of the questions that I was asking. Then he asked if that was a problem, and I stated this is why I am here and to help him define his why and the businesses why so that we can track and measure the results and milestones to getting to the ultimate WHY.
I ask clients all the time, what is the end goal? What is the exit strategy? When is enough, enough? Another client that I asked these questions to stated he wanted to retire in ten years. I asked what if he could retire sooner? What is the magic number? He didn’t know. If you do not know the magic number, how can you make decisions to get you there? What are you measuring? How do you know you are on the right track to get you to your goal?
Leaders who know their personal WHY and the companies WHY are happier, and their businesses are more successful. Customer service comes naturally as the team members are happier as they know the company’s WHY, and they can get behind something. They work for the WHY and not for the company.
When is the last time you looked at your company’s vision statement or mission statement? Has it changed? Are you still following and aligned with the current company values?
In the book Start With WHY, the author Simon Sinek talks about leadership, communication skills and how to understand and ask about the company’s WHY? How branding and marketing needs to be about the WHY and not the company or the product to be successful.
Author Dan Martell talks about understanding the why in his book Buy Back Your Life, Martell talks about measuring what matters and making sure that you are asking the right questions so that you can measure what is important to you. If you cannot define it, how you are supposed to measure it. If you do you know your company’s WHY, how are you supposed to measure the results. Measuring creates a positive expectancy around the outcome. Without measurements, how do you know the outcome?
My job as your business consultant is to ask the hard questions that you didn’t know you needed to ask. For instance, “if someone were to buy your company tomorrow, what is the first thing that they would change?” Then I ask, “why haven’t you changed it?” We don’t know what we don’t know, but not knowing your WHY can cost you time, money and team members. Again, by asking the right questions, you can define your WHY. From there, the measurables and goals will fall into place. Albert Einstein once said “A problem defined, is a problem that is half solved” or something like that, but you get the point. What’s stopping you from discovering or defining your WHY?
