“Concentrate all your thoughts upon the work in hand. The Sun’s rays do not burn until brought to a focus”. — Alexander Graham Bell
We’re living in an age of “Why”. We want to be inspired by everything. Companies are fighting to articulate their social value. Politicians are sacrificing policy positions for narratives of inspiration or anger. Every piece of media comes with institutional baggage around what it means or who it represents.
And let me be the first to say that none of that is a bad thing. You can look back at the industrial revolution or pre-industrial cultures and see how they devalued the human being. People were valued for their utility, but not for their worth as an individual with ideas and emotions.
People like Simon Sinek have reminded us all that anyone can bring more than a strong back or able hands. They can bring new ideas and incredible levels of commitment but only when they believe that what they’re doing has value.
But in our full-throated pursuit of the Why, powered by self-help YouTube stars and a legion of business consultants, I’m afraid we’re losing our grasp on the Power of How.
Don’t get me wrong. You most likely know how your job works. At some level, you’ve almost certainly thought about many Hows in your life.
But the pursuit of Why in politics and public life can gloss over the unsexy process of how we’ll accomplish a goal. And we, as a people, have taken to being inspired by the power of Why over the less inspiring How.
If a sock company brands itself as socially progressive because it donates socks to the homeless with every sale, it has a very clear Why in place — generating profit and pursuing a particular social good. But what happens when their donations outpace the needs of their local homeless shelter? Or their unit cost increases and their profit goal and social good goal are in competition? Are you as a consumer concerned about the sustainability of the social good or just the feel-good Why when you make your purchase?
I won’t take a political position here, but it’s hard not to look at the recent State of the Union address under this same light. It was one of the longest modern State of the Unions but was unusually light on specific policy positions. Instead, it focused primarily on the stories of individuals. There were many hot takes after the 2016 election about the power of President Trump’s narrative compared to Hillary Clinton’s long list of policy prescriptions. Again, a focus on Why over How.
There’s nothing wrong with being inspired, and I’m as deep a believer in the power of meaning as you’re likely to find. But we can’t let our recent love affair with Why lead us away from How we’ll do it. If Why is the gas that powers the engine, How represents the tires that let it go. Less action-packed, but no less important.
Don’t lose sight of the Power of How. Some ways of doing things really are better. The non-profit rating group Give Well is a great example. They started as a group of investment bankers trying to understand the outcomes of charitable donations. The more they dug into the data, the more they realized that most charities rely on feel-good personal narratives as a branding technique but rarely report real outcomes. And beyond that, they found that the traditional methods for rating charities (overhead vs. interventions or supporter reviews) had little to do with how many people were helped. Charities with larger staffs, like a tutoring group, might help many more people in more meaningful ways than charities that that spent more on their mission, like distributing flyers to raise awareness. Give Well has built a platform to help donors put their money towards causes that generate the most good for the most people. You, as a donor, can know that your dollars are going to groups that have passed rigorous vetting standards and who make outcome measurements available publically.
We’re starting to see conversations emerge that bring the question of How back into focus. Facebook certainly meets a lot of Whys for us, but is the way we’re using it good for us? AI promises to be the next stage in human’s technological evolution, but how will it materially affect lives of the average person? Even positions on issues like Climate Change, which were once primarily narrative driven, have seen movement when it comes to how society could be impacted and what we should be doing about it.
Don’t stop seeking the Why. Look for inspiration and seek meaning. But don’t stop there. Demand the How. How do we do it? How do we do it for more people? How do we make it sustainable?
How may never be sexy. It’s often the long, slow drudge of getting it done and will probably never make your heart race. But in a world of too many Whys, the How might be what matters most.