7 Steps to Help You Stop Thinking How and Start Thinking Who
Every entrepreneur is a bus-driver.
That’s essentially the point Jim Collins makes in his classic, Good to Great. In a chapter titled “First Who… Then What,” Collins shows that every business is like a bus, and the truly great ones are those who’ve managed to put the right people in the right seats.
For the entrepreneur, then, taking your company from launch to maturity depends less on your vision and more on the people you recruit (employees, partners, investors, etc.) to help you realize it. Why? Because the road ahead is more treacherous than you think, and the right people will help you steer the bus better than you could on your own.
More fundamentally, though, entrepreneurs are like any other human—limited by the horizons of their own expertise and experience. Our brains are trained to operate within those bounds. But, when we lean on others, we can retrain ourselves to get beyond our limitations and develop a more excellent vision than we could ever come up with alone.
Most entrepreneurs get all this at a conceptual level. But, when the rubber hits the road, they default to thinking more about how to get there and less about who can help them. I’ve done it. You’ve done it. We’re all learning how to overcome it.
This doesn’t mean we neglect the former. Not even close! It just means we’ve got to get our who straight so that we can better explore and execute the how. Here are 7 steps to help entrepreneurs do just that:
- Know Your Limits
Like I said above, to be human is to be limited. Since entrepreneurs are human beings (the jury is still out on Elon Musk), we need to know where those limits are:
- Mind - What do you know? What don’t you know?
- Body - How much time can you spend working without sacrificing your health?
- Soul - How far can you go without allowing your work to take over your life?
- Connections - How wide is your personal network?
These are just a few of the dimensions an entrepreneur can explore about him- or herself. There are many more. Get to know yourself and your limits. There’s only so much of you to go around. It’s only when you know how much of you there is that you’ll be able to look for the specific people who can take you beyond yourself.
2. Develop Your Vision
There’s an old Hebrew proverb that every entrepreneur should memorize: “without a vision, the people will perish.” Without a vivid picture of the way things should be in the future, we lack the direction we need to act intentionally in the present. This is true for our businesses and our personal lives. Without a vision, we wander aimlessly.
Stop and consider your vision for all of life. Who do you want to be? How do you want to spend your time? Where do your family and friends fit in? What does whole-life success look like, and how does your business move you closer to that goal?
Turning more specifically towards your business, ask yourself the big questions about who you are as a company and why you exist. What’s your mission? What’s the burning problem you’re out to solve? What would it mean for your business to succeed?
3. Set Your Sights
Vision is no exact science, try as we might to saddle it with all kinds of SMART goals, KPIs, OKRs, and whatever other acronyms we use to measure progress.
Still, you’ve got to set your sights on something. You can’t leave your vision hanging up in the clouds; you need to bring it down to earth with real and realistic goals.
So, ask yourself a few questions:
- Where do we want to be in 90 days? 1 year? 3 years? 5 years?
- How big do we want to get?
- How will we measure success?
- Are our goals realistic?
- Will my ambitions help me build a company that matches my vision?
Your answers will evolve over time, but dealing with questions like these will give language to your business aspirations so that you can communicate them with others.
4. Look for Curiosity
To this point, the who we’ve been focused on is mainly you. This was a crucial moment in the journey from how to who, because you need to know you before you can find the right who (insert lame chocolate milk joke here).
As you begin to look for others who can help, set your sights on curiosity. The most helpful people are the curious ones. They listen intently when you cast your vision. They ask insightful questions that make you think hard about what you’re doing:
- What is it about this business that matters to you?
- Why did you set that goal there?
- Explain to me what you’re trying to accomplish over here?
- Why did you think of this? Why didn’t you think of that?
The last thing you want is an absentee investor or an employee who doesn’t care enough to learn anything about the business beyond his or her immediate sphere of responsibility. That person may get the job done, but they won’t truly help you grow.
In the right hands, curiosity is worth its weight in goal. Let curious people dig into your vision, and they’ll help you make something better than you could ever imagine.
5. Prioritize Creativity
From payroll to product development, you need competent people to tackle the mechanics of putting together a company. But, when it comes to growing your business, competence can only take you so far. What you need is creativity.
When Netflix began to disrupt the home entertainment market, it wasn’t because they had a stellar team of envelope stuffers and developers. No, it was because they had the insight to see where video rentals were going and the creativity to offer new, disruptive solutions.
We could say the same about a million other companies today—big and small.
Look for people who bring more to the table than their ability to read a spreadsheet or make widgets. Prioritize the creatives; they’ll use their skills to help you see things through fresh eyes and set your business apart from everyone else in the market.
6. Favor the Flexible
Business moves at the speed of fiber. Startup culture is no exception. You need people committed enough to uphold your standards and stick to your strategy yet nimble enough to adjust their tactics quickly to meet the moment’s demands.
There is a balance to maintain here. Flexibility doesn’t mean compromising moral or professional integrity. It’s not about looking for the path of least resistance.
No, flexible people are humble enough to recognize when they need to change their approach for the mission’s sake. Like a star quarterback, they’re willing to call an audible when they survey the field and realize the play they called isn’t going to work.
That’s not wishy-washy; it’s wisdom, and you want it on your team.
7. Expect the Same
In The Work of Leaders, the authors very helpfully present what they call the VAE model of leadership: Vision, Alignment, Execution. We’ve already talked about vision, and execution is the practical side of the how. But, what about alignment?
Alignment is what unleashes your people and their potential to help you bridge the gap between vision and execution. Without it, you’ll never jump that chasm. You can gather the best who’s in the world to help you grow your business, but they won’t do you a lick of good unless you can get them all moving in the same direction.
The secret to alignment is two-way communication. What’s your vision? Where have you set your sights? What do you want to accomplish? Discuss these things with your team, get their input, and inspire them to take ownership of your goals.
Define your expectations together, and then hold one another accountable. You’ve got all the right people in the right seats; now it’s just a matter of moving the bus forward.
Conclusion
Entrepreneurs aren’t just bus-drivers; we’re visionaries. But, vision is always limited by the horizon of our own experience. That’s part of what it means to be human.
At the same time, though, human beings are made to connect—to “supplement” our limitations by reaching out to others and inviting them to take us way beyond ourselves.
When you start with the who instead of the how, you’ll tap into this deeply human way of thinking. The “ceiling” on your goals and ambitions will disappear as others challenge you to rise up and build something greater than you could ever dream up on your own.