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How: the worst, most asked planning question

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How now, never later.

It’s a terrible long-range planning question, but we love to ask “HOW will we get from where we are to our three year objective?” Asking HOW ensures nothing remarkable will happen and is much more likely to lead you to disaster.

Business planning gurus and academics love to teach us to answer all the outstanding questions before we get moving. And “how” we get from where we are to where we want to be is stressed above all else.

Life Happens
The problem is life. It keeps getting in the way of our best plans, and no matter how well we plan how to get where we want to go, as soon as we start moving, the world and life starts messing with our plan. It simply never works out anything like we planned, and the farther out we are planning, the less likely it is to work out.

A Harvard researcher found that 97% of all businesses leave their prime objective in order to be objective. The world’s greatest past and present businesses (Apple, Google, Facebook, HP, 37signals, etc.) all started out to do something other than what they ended up doing. And none of them did much pre-planning, if any.

Even among those few that wasted time pre-planning, they all took a left turn fairly early on to make money. Ben and Jerry put together a nice plan to make bagels, then they went out to buy a bagel machine and found they were expensive. The bagel machine salesman told them ice cream machines were less expensive, so we have Ben & Jerry’s ice cream instead of bagels.

Strategic vs. Tactical
“How” is not a strategic question. It shouldn’t be asked in long ranging planning. That doesn’t make it irrelevant. It is a great short-term, tactical question. Once you figure out where you want to be three years from now, ask “How will I get from where I am to the next step?” Use “how” to answer one step at at time on the way to your long-range objective.

Use “how” only in the short term
Webvan.com pre-planned how to get all the way from non-existent to being a $2billion company, and never wavered from their great plan. They went bankrupt a few years later, taking all $2billion in investor’s money with them. Like Webvan, answering the long-range “how” is much more likely to make us think we’ve got it all figured out, and will keep us from responding to the cues from the real world that always lead us to success. Remarkable things come from answering short-term “how”. Disaster is more likely when answering long-term “how”.

Never use “how” for long-range planning. Use “why”, “where” and “when” for the long-range stuff. Once you know exactly where you want to end up and when, then ask “How do get from where I am to the next step?” Come up with a plan to get through the next few weeks, then ask short-term “how” again. And do it a thousand times on the way to your objective.

A Thousand Short-term “hows”
Life and business are to fluid to ask long-term “how”. Keep “how” for the short term. You’re much less likely to run into problems if you ask a thousand short-term “hows” than if you ask a thousand long-term “hows”.

How now, never later.

People who ask HOW work for people who ask WHY

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Ask WHY a lot more than HOW.

Here are six questions, in the order you should ask them, that will help you start, grow and build your business. The most important ones are the ones you ask least often.

90% of the answer is asking the right question. Are you asking the right questions? In the right order?

Successful business owners ask Who, What, Where, When, Why and How, much differently than reporters use them. TIMING (asking at the right stages) is very important, and the FOCUS of the question is, too.

Here’s the order in which you should ask them as you start, grow and build your business:

WHY – the most important, least asked question (in both the long and short term). Why are you doing this? What is the end game? If you don’t know why you are in business (it’s not the money, it’s never the money), or why you are buying that copier (“it’s shiny” is the wrong answer) you are done from the start. Everything starts and ends with WHY. Ask it EVERY TIME you ask one of the other questions if you want to be successful.

WHAT – the favorite question of the “craftsperson” – the easiest question to get lost in. We’re taught to ask this question first – “What am I selling?”. If you answer WHY first, you’re much more likely to come up with the right WHAT to sell. Know WHY, then ask WHAT.

WHO – Once you know WHY you are in business, and WHAT you are selling,
a) WHO is your target market (hint: it’s not everyone who can fog a mirror)?
b) WHO will work with you? (they don’t have to all be employees).
c) WHO will you buy supplies from?
The best answer to all of these is whoever will provide the lowest maintenance, highest profit culture for you. Ask WHO long before you actually need any of these people – it’s a culture question and if you don’t have a great grasp on WHO before you need them, you’ll hire for skills. Never hire for skills, only for culture.

WHERE – Has multiple long-term and short-term uses, but is rarely used well. Answer it after WHY, WHAT and WHO.
a) “Location” WHERE – used to get a lease
b) “Marketing” WHERE – Know WHO, than ask WHERE to find them? Make it about a) demographics, b) associations, c) strategic alliances, d) cohort groups (similar demographics). The best “Marketing WHERE”? – WHERE do most of your future clients come from? Invest there!
c) “Direction” WHERE – closely related to “WHY” (knowing WHY informs WHERE you are going. Knowing WHERE you are going only helps if you put a date on WHEN you will be there. WHERE ARE YOU GOING?? (WHY?) Extremely Important.
d) “Sane Assessment” WHERE – Do you know clearly where you are right now? a) Strengths/Challenges b) decision-making skills c) leadership style d) business strengths/challenges (market, product, revenue, profit, cashflow).

WHEN – one of the least asked, best questions. We don’t like WHEN because it holds us accountable to do something, which is why we should fall in love with it. Just like with WHY, ask WHEN every time you ask another question, and employ the Three-Step Decision-Making Process:
a) Make a decision (that is not a decision yet)
b) Put a date on it (when)
c) Go public – declare the date and ask someone to support you getting there.

HOW – the worst, most asked question in business planning. HOW is a buzz-kill; it focuses on the fear of the POSSIBLE, not the PROBABLE. It will uncover 127 things that COULD go wrong (possible) without telling you which four of the 127 WILL actually go wrong (probable). It also gets us involved in all kinds of nonsensical preventative planning for things that will never happen while we ignore the four things that are already a problem. HOW is paralyzing unless it is always used in conjunction with MOVEMENT and the other five questions. There are two uses of HOW, one bad, one good:
a) “Long-term HOW” – you should almost never use HOW to answer a long-term question, such as “How do we get all the way from where we are to where we want to be three years from now?” That’s fortune telling and voodoo. Business planners love this question, but no question is of lower value than “long-term HOW”.
b) “Short-term HOW” – this is actually a great question – “How do I get from where I am to the next step?”, because you are asking it about current realities that actually need a HOW to solve them. Use HOW for short-term implementation, not for long-range planning.

WHY, then WHEN; rarely HOW.
Ask WHY first. Always. Then get used to asking WHY and WHEN with every one of the other questions. Only ask HOW when addressing the next few steps. Never ask it about the distant future.

If you get in the habit of asking WHY and WHEN with every question, and asking HOW only about the next few steps, you’re much less likely to run into problems, and much more likely to build a great business.

Which one of these questions do you need to focus on right now in order to build your business? WHY? And WHEN will you act on it?

The Single Most Important Question in Business

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…is the one we ask least often.

As responsible business owners, we invest a lot of time answering the “what” question. What will I sell? What should my price be? What kind of marketing should I do?

We find “how” intriguing as well – How will I find clients? How will I make ends meet this month? And we’re even okay with “who” (who is my ideal client) or “where” (where do I locate, advertise, network, etc.?).

All of these questions – who, what, where and how can be just plain fun to play around with. Why? (hint – this is a pretty important question) – Because they are largely theoretical questions. I can answer ALL of them brilliantly and do absolutely nothing – frozen in my tracks but feeling as if I’ve made great progress. But we’re really just playing office again. Merely doing complex (but easy) things that make us feel important and impress others.

The 2nd most important question in business (see last week’s post) is “when”. We avoid it like the plague because when we attach it to all the other questions (who, what, where, and how), we suddenly lose control of our future. Instead of managing our plans, we are now managed by our Plan, required to take action and move forward when we’d rather sit around thinking about it and just play office some more.

But the biggest, most important question in business is avoided even more then “when”. And it’s the most important question for determining our success.

Why?

On the most strategic level, if you don’t know why you’re in business, you’re going to fold when the going gets tough. And on the most tactical level, if you don’t know why you want to buy that snazzy new printer, you’re going to wonder why you can’t make money.

The “why” question should be attached to every other question you need to answer. What should I sell (why should I sell it)? How will I find clients (why do I want those clients)? Where should I locate (why is this a great place to be?)

And most importantly, “why” even needs to be attached to “when”. When do I want to be at 100 clients (why then and not later/earlier)? When do I want to have a fully mature business (why then and not later/earlier)?

When we ask why, we have a better chance of making decisions that are all aligned with our long-term plan (asking “why” makes us get a long term plan). When we avoid asking why, we make individual decisions in individual vacuums and wonder how we ended up right where we started at the beginning of the year. The result – a business going many directions at once and ultimately going nowhere.

Why gives us clarity of purpose.

If you won’t ask why, don’t bother with the other questions. They are all mechanical questions and don’t matter outside of “why”.

Why are you in business? Why do you do business they way you do? Why do you think it will take you 20 years to grow a mature business (why not 5)? Why do my customers buy from me? Why am I stuck at the same revenue as last year?

Why don’t you ask why more often?

Seth Godin wrote a book called The Dip in which he contends we quit when we shouldn’t and don’t when we should. If we asked why more often in business, Godin, wouldn’t have had a book to write. Answering why helps wake us up to stupid habits that aren’t helping us but just make us comfy (or impressive). And more importantly, answering why we’re in business gives us the motivation to push through the dips, to move from survival, through success, to significance.

Every time you ask a who, what, where or how question, ask “when”, then ask “why”. You’ll make more money in less time. Why do you think that might be true?