Start With Why

working at a bank. Roy was always in awe of his brother’s talent and imagination, but he also knew that Walt was prone to taking risks and to neglecting business affairs. Like all WHY guys, Walt was busy thinking about what the future looked like and often forget he was living in the present. “Walt Disney dreamed, drew and imagined, Roy stayed in the shadow, forming an empire,” wrote Bob Thomas, a Disney biographer. “A brilliant financier and businessman, Roy helped turn Walt Disney’s dreams into reality, building the company that bears his brother’s name.” It was Roy who founded the Buena Vista Distribution Company that made Disney films a central part of American childhood. It was Roy who created the merchandising business that transformed Disney characters into household names. And, like almost every HOW-type, Roy never wanted to be the front man, he preferred to stay in the background and focus on HOW to build his brother’s vision.
    Most people in the world are HOW-types. Most people are quite functional in the real world and can do their jobs and do very well. Some may be very successful and even make millions of dollars, but they will never build billion-dollar businesses or change the world. HOW-types don’t need WHY-types to do well. But WHY-guys, for all their vision and imagination, often get the short end of the stick. Without someone inspired by their vision and the knowledge to make it a reality, most WHY-types end up as starving visionaries, people with all the answers but never accomplishing much themselves.
    Although so many of them fancy themselves visionaries, in reality most successful entrepreneurs are HOW-types. Ask an entrepreneur what they love about being an entrepreneur and most will tell you they love to build things. That they talk about building is a sure clue that they know HOW to get things done. A business is a structure—systems and processes that need to be assembled. It is the HOW-types who are more adept at building those processes and systems. But most companies, no matter how well built, do not become billion-dollar businesses or change the course of industries. To reach the billion-dollar status, to alter the course of an industry, requires a very special and rare partnership between one who knows WHY and those who know HOW.
    In nearly every case of a person or an organization that has gone on to inspire people and do great things, there exists this special partnership between WHY and HOW. Bill Gates, for example, may have been the visionary who imagined a world with a PC on every desk, but Paul Allen built the company. Herb Kelleher was able to personify and preach the cause of freedom, but it was Rollin King who came up with the idea for Southwest Airlines. Steve Jobs is the rebel’s evangelist, but Steve Wozniak is the engineer who made the Apple work. Jobs had the vision, Woz had the goods. It is the partnership of a vision of the future and the talent to get it done that makes an organization great.
    This relationship starts to clarify the difference between a vision statement and a mission statement in an organization. The vision is the public statement of the founder’s intent, WHY the company exists. It is literally the vision of a future that does not yet exist. The mission statement is a description of the route, the guiding principles—HOW the company intends to create that future. When both of those things are stated clearly, the WHY-type and the HOW-type are both certain about their roles in the partnership. Both are working together with clarity of purpose and a plan to get there. For it to work, however, it requires more than a set of skills, it requires trust.
    As discussed at length in part 3, trusting relationships are invaluable for us to feel safe. Our ability to trust people or organizations allows us to take risks and feel supported in our efforts. And perhaps the most trusting relationship that exists is between the visionary and the builder, the WHY-guy and the HOW-guy. In organizations able to inspire, the best chief executives are WHY-TYPES—PEOPLE who wake up every day to lead a cause and not just run a company. In these organizations, the best chief financial officers and chief operating officers are high-performing HOW-types, those with the strength of ego to admit they are not visionaries themselves but are inspired by the leader’s vision and know how to build the structure that can bring it to life. The best HOW-types