Business runs on a series of decisions. Whether it’s deciding what to sell, who to sell it to, or how to staff your organization, leaders have to make tons of decisions every day.
Many businesses and people rely on data to guide their decision making. We obsess over discovering details, thinking this will lead to better decisionmaking. We read books and journals, go to trade conferences, and ask our friends for more information.
But in many situations, more data doesn’t help make a better decision. We’re often tempted to think that a project didn’t work because of some missing vital detail. But sometimes, we have the entire premise of our information gathering incorrect, or we start with a wrong critical assumption. In these cases, no amount of extra data would have helped us make the right decision.
Sinek uses an example to illustrate how easily we can make mistaken assumptions. Read this description of a leader and imagine who it is:
“A 43-year-old man was sworn in as the leader of his country on a cold January day. This man was raised Roman Catholic. His predecessor was a general who led his nation’s armed forces in a wary to defeat Germany.”
Who are you picturing? It’s tempting to think of John F. Kennedy. But in fact, it’s January 1933, and the description is of Adolf Hitler.
The point is that it’s easy to make wrong assumptions without knowing it. In these cases, collecting more data might not correct your decisionmaking, because you start with a flawed assumption about what’s driving your business.
What’s the alternative to making decisions with data? By trusting your gut. In many situations, we have no relevant data or ignore the evidence, yet we make decisions using our intuition that turn out just fine.
When you start with WHY, you define a guiding direction that allows you to make proper decisions, even with incomplete data. Essentially, your WHY is the correct assumption about your business, and you avoid getting misled by false assumptions.
Sinek uses an analogy of a group of American executives who visited a Japanese car assembly line. The executives were confused by the door installation process. In the United States, a line worker would take a rubber mallet and tap the door on the edges to fit it perfectly into the car frame. In the Japanese manufacturing line, this step was missing. The American executives were perplexed.
The Japanese guide explained: their doors simply fit without manual adjustment, because they were designed to fit perfectly from the beginning. They engineered the right outcome from the beginning.
When you know WHY you’re doing what you’re doing, you’re able to start making correct decisions from the outset.