Start with the WHY. Remember the HOW.

My partner was away recently, and I needed to prepare a healthy meal that was easy to cook and my kids enjoy eating. I chose fish pie but despite my best efforts it did not taste as good as fish pie prepared by professional chefs.

This might sound like a simple common story from households across the globe, but on closer inspection there are remarkable similarities that relate to how learning is (or is not) embedded in organisations.

WHY?

Let’s unpack our fish pie story in more detail…

Simon Sinek has recently inspired the world to ‘Start with Why’ when you plan to communicate with impact. Why?(!) – because countless research has demonstrated that the part of our brain that makes decisions is motivated by the ‘why’. It is the very reason that organisational change initiatives and leadership courses have been highlighting this as critical to gaining buy-in for years.

Being clear on my ‘why’ was the motivation needed in preparing that fish pie. Healthy, tasty and easy. If I could find something to tick those boxes, we weren’t having takeaway!

WHAT?

The ‘what’ focuses on logic, definitions and detail that are easily expressed with words. Humans are generally good at thinking in these terms. Business is littered with examples of well defined, logical information. Examples of this include:

• ● Organisational Goals
• ● Capability Frameworks & Communication Models
• ● Job descriptions
• ● Metrics and KPIs
• ● Marketing tools

These tools are everywhere and employees understand the rationale for them.

But something is missing because there many businesses with these tools alone are not delivering exceptional results.
This is because there are rules for how they come alive and stay alive in organisations and they must be followed.
Which explains why being clear on the ingredients and recipe for a fish pie certainly did not do the job for me.

HOW?

How is hard to measure and how is hard to verbalise.
David Beckham can explain in detail WHAT he is trying to do when he kicks a football and WHY, but he cannot explain exactly HOW he does it so well. Nobody has managed to ‘decode’ his technique in a way that can be replicated. What is clear is that Beckham spent hour after hour, week after week practicing to get it just right.
Staying on this theme, in his book ‘Bounce’, former Olympic table tennis player Matthew Syed raises the topic of disciplined and deliberate practice. Syed presents diverse research that suggests one of the key differences between the very best in their field and the next best is thousands of hours of additional practice put in over the years. Disciplined, focused practice building systems, routines, habits and ultimately muscle memory.
Similarly, David Beckham spent hours kicking a football through a car tyre that his uncle tied to a tree in his local park. It’s dedication and practice like this that made him so good.
So… no wonder my fish pie was not cooked as well as the professional chefs cook it. I failed to put in the hours of cooking practice that they have.

IN CONCLUSION

In the pursuit of excellence, the relationship between WHY, WHAT and HOW is intertwined. Focus therefore should be placed on all three areas, but in a fast-paced organisation it is hard to remain disciplined in perfecting the HOW.
At home it is ok for my fish pie to be average, but at work we are the professional chefs of our field. Mediocre just does not cut-it in our increasingly competitive world. There are rules for driving and managing performance that are being overlooked. Strategy trumps execution in most organisations, and even when we try to strike a balance, getting it right is hard.
We’ve worked incredibly hard over the years at Healthcare Interaction to create the perfect methodology for HOW to succeed.
It is true that we are behavioural change experts and our methods are backed by scientific research to provide a clear WHY.
And yes, our tools and processes are defined to offer clarity and metrics for WHAT is important.
But where we can help you to stand apart is by providing simple methods to bring and keep these things alive to solve your current and future business challenges.
That’s how we have been successfully supporting clients for more than 20 years and why we have many cast-iron case studies to evidence the quality of our work.

Contact us to today find out more.

Written by: David Barvick