“Who Not How” Book Review

Hello and welcome to episode number 30 of the Strategy Corner, where a goal is to get you to take action. I’m your host, Michel Zink, the owner of Intentional Solutions Corp. On today’s episode, we’re going to do another book review. I know. I can’t believe it. It’s been 10 episodes since my last one. And for this book review, I have chosen a book by Dan Sullivan. Now, if you all do not know who he is, he’s a great coach. He owns a business called Strategic Coach. And they are located in Canada, but they do a lot of things around the U.S. He also offers a lot of wonderful videos on YouTube and his website has a lot of videos and audios that you can listen to, a lot of free content he offers. I heard about him through, I believe, Brooke Castillo, but I cannot remember exactly. But he’s got a lot of like little mini books that he puts out. And I love a lot of his concepts that he talks about. I feel like he’s a real master when it comes to how to get things done and the best way to get things done and how to do more with limited time.

So today I’ve chosen him because of all of those reasons. He also has a couple of podcasts. So if you want to go on. I know for myself I have bought a few of his books. I’ve never worked with him directly. I’ve never done any of the strategic coach programs or anything. But I do listen to all his podcasts and get different ideas from him all the time because he’s very generous in sharing a lot of his concepts. OK. So I’m going do the same thing that I’ve done with my other book reviews where I read out of the book. Because every time I read a book, I always highlight there’s always just such great information in them. So we’re gonna start off again.

The book is Who Not How You’re Single Formula for Achieving Bigger Goals through Accelerating Teamwork. And this is by Dan Sullivan, who is the owner of Strategic Coach. OK. Page number six is where we’re starting. And this as procrastination occurs when your goal is good, but you’re not the best person to perform the action to achieve the goal. How leads to frustration and fatigue, but when you instead consider all of the who’s available to you to help you achieve your goal, it increases your energy and keeps you endlessly fascinated and motivated.
Page number seven. Every time you have a new goal, you’ll stop and ask yourself if you’re the right person to work on it, or if maybe you’re just the right person to communicate the idea to others and take advantage of their unique capabilities. I know for myself that I’ve heard Dan talk about this concept, who not how but just recently read this book over Christmas. And that’s when I really started thinking about who should be looking at listening to my podcast and doing all of the work that you have to do behind the scenes. And that’s when I decided that I was going to go ahead and hire someone to do that work. I’ve done that admin work. I’ve, you know, edited all my podcasts up until January, but I really started to think about the time commitment and if I was the right person. So through this book, I learned I’m not the right person to do this. And so it got me creatively thinking about, well, if not me, then who? It says your communication is key when it comes to utilizing this method to achieve your goals. You have to be totally clear about not only what you want, but why you want it. And this is when I connected with the gentleman who’s doing my podcast right now. I was very clear with him as to why I was looking to outsource this.

OK. Page number eight. Once someone has learned this concept and seen the diagram, they can go all the way back to their childhoods and see that their biggest breakthroughs always happened when they had a goal and enrolled other people into implementing some part of the crucial action that was necessary to achieve that goal. Page number nine, when you take advantage of someone’s else’s capability by enlisting them to perform an activity that takes you closer to your goal, you make that person valuable. All you’re asking of others is to do what they’re great at and love doing but with teamwork toward a particular, measurable, achievable goal. Page number twelve this is chapter one bigger and better ambition. The payoff is that in the future you’re a more capable and confident person. Page number 14, you’re getting somewhere that has a measurable completion, but the completion gives you a new starting point to do something else.

Page number 19, when you’re of the mindset that you won’t achieve bigger and better results unless it’s an execution of your individual capability, it puts an enormous emphasis on competition rather than collaboration. And that’s a field in which payoffs are scarce. So let me read that one more time. When you’re of the mindset that you won’t achieve bigger and better results unless it’s an execution of your individual capability, it puts an enormous emphasis on competition rather than collaboration. And that’s a field in which payoffs are scarce. So this is really good, especially for your solo entrepreneurs or even a manager of an organization, even a leader. A lot of times we feel like if we have an idea, we have to actually perform the task. Or actually do the thing that we’re thinking about. But in reality, the more that we get people to help us collaborate, the more that it’s a win-win for us and that we get to accomplish more things because we are people helping us and we’d have to do everything. And then it also is very uplifting for others to be asked to help as well. So we need to remember the who, not what, so that we can start achieving more and collaborating more effectively.

Chapter number four. Page 30. I’ve met people who have had a lot of success in life who don’t feel successful because of the goals they either didn’t achieve or achieved with the help of other people. Test you’re doing nothing. Here’s the test I do every time I have a new goal; I ask can I achieve this goal by doing nothing? The answer is usually no. I have to do something. But the something that I have to do is create a framework so that other people can understand how they can use these capabilities toward achieving the goal. So you can follow each new visualization of every new goal with this test question. After I define each new goal for others to understand how can I do nothing and have other people supply all of the hows necessary to achieve my desired result? This approach to your goals really drives resourcefulness. It gets you super focused on which parts only you can do and then actively becoming wise and intelligent about who else you can find and how else you can tap into other people’s capabilities. And then you see that between nothing and everything. You have a particular role and it focuses you on what you can do to trigger the teamwork.

Page number 32. All of this utilizing, combining and improving of capabilities begins with you visualizing a bigger and better goal and then acknowledging that you shouldn’t be doing all of the hows on your own. Page number thirty-three. Moving forward, you’re going to see an ever-expanding network of who’s to move toward the goals you envision. If you go out to just enough of those other rooms to start, then other who’s you involve will you design the achievement. Once you trigger a bigger and better goal, you don’t have to have all of the who’s in mind right away. If you go out to just enough of those other rooms to start, then other who’s you involve will think of who else would be perfect for the project and your network grows. Every goal will call for a particular number of who’s who could do the necessary number of hows. And while it can’t always be known before the project gets going, the team work will develop and create itself as it moves toward the goal. It’s not mechanical, it’s organic. And your only role to start every new team or project is to simply is simply to define what the achievement is so that all of the necessary who’s can do all the necessary how’s.

Page number thirty-seven. The process of achieving your goal has to allow each who to achieve personal goals to make progress and to expand their capabilities. Page number 38. Remember that you’re talking about something that doesn’t exist yet, so you can’t assume that people will automatically be on board with your idea. Every result that you include must be a measurable one, either a number or an event that will have to happen or won’t happen. This will clarify and simplify things for everyone you want to be involved in achieving the goal because it will give them a vision like you have of what the great results will be of their individual and combined goals. So what he’s saying here is when you’re really devising the who’s and what you want to happen, you need to make sure that the individuals that you get into collaborate with you know exactly what you want to happen for this to be a success. So you need to include measurable goals so that people will be able to know if they’re doing it right. We each have a sense of personal uniqueness, but you’re consistently cooped up in a how world your uniqueness can become negative because you’re isolated inside of it. When you expand out to teamwork, your uniqueness is completely integrated with other people’s uniqueness. And that’s a massive liberating experience.

Page number 42, always at the center of everything is you trying to expand out into the world and enlisting the right team members to achieve the goal. Keep in mind that these team members are doing it for your project, but they’re not doing it for your reasons. They have their own reasons for participating. Page number forty-five. All you need is to have the confidence that they will get it done. This is enough to free you up from the hows and focus your time on envisioning and defining your goals in the future. Page number forty-nine. When you do all the hows yourself, the goals you aim for are bigger and better for you. But when you use teamwork to achieve your goals, you start creating bigger and better goals that are good for everybody and that gets everyone excited about participating in the project.

Page number fifty-one transformative satisfying if you did all the hows yourself to achieve a new goal, the process and results wouldn’t be any different than any time in the past when you’ve done all the hows yourself. But when you engage in teamwork and find the right who’s to do all the hows, you’re allowing them to do it, how they see fit, giving them the freedom to use their unique capabilities and insights that transforms the project. Page number fifty-four. Not only is growing who not how capability going to accelerate your daily success and improvement, each of your new achievements is going to automatically generate new goals. If their process of seeing and achieving new goals keeps getting easier, why would you ever want to stop? Achievements generate goals and goals generate achievements. It’s a closed loop where the growth generates new growth.

Page number fifty-six. As you continually master and expand your who, not how capability, it consists of a single following format. Visualize. Define. Achieve. Repeat. What you do with this great ability of yours to visualize things being bigger and better in the future makes all the difference. If you draw the wrong conclusion about what should come next after you visualize a new goal, it will cause you enormous unhappiness. But if you draw the right conclusion, which is that your job is only to communicate the what and the why of your vision, then you’ll be successful in most satisfying ways and there will be no reason why the fantastic exponential process shouldn’t go on forever. The formula will always be the same. Have a bigger and better goal. Define the what and the why. Get the who’s to execute the hows. Expand your team work of who’s at integrate bigger and better project. That’s it. And this formula works no matter what’s happening in the economy or the outside world. You have your own economy, which means you don’t need to stress about any outside factors.

And that’s what I love about Dan. This gentleman, I believe is in his 80s now or 70s and he wants to live to like in his hundreds. And he just has such an expansive mindset. He has such an expansive and open mindset that he’s always thinking of new ideas. He’s never holding himself back from creating new things, even at his age. He knows that he has way more time on this earth and wants to continually engage other individuals on creating amazing things. So I want to read over this last paragraph one more time to make an emphasis of what he’s talking about.

The formula will always be the same. Have a bigger and better goal. Define the what and the why, right? Because we really need to know the why. Get the who’s to execute the hows. Expand your team work of who’s an initiate bigger and better projects. That’s it. So long story short, this whole concept of who, not what is about expanding your brain is about thinking of new projects and realizing that you don’t have to be the one to actually execute on this project. Then engaging others is one of the best things you can do.

And it not only stimulates and makes you feel more abundant, but it also makes others feel more abundant and it allows you to create and dream even bigger and bigger. So again, Dan Sullivan is a coach and he has a business called Strategic Coach. And you can find the link in my show notes for their website. So what your call to action is this week is to go ahead and think about what is a project or an idea or a goal, something that you’ve wanted to accomplish. But, you know, you just haven’t had the time to. You’ve thought about it, but you thought, well, you know, I can’t do it on my own. Maybe you work for an organization and you’ve had some really good ideas. But again, your time is valuable and your time is limited. So you just haven’t done anything about it.

So your call to action this week is think about something that you’ve wanting to do and then start thinking about who you could possibly get to do the things. Remember you just find the what and the why. And then you go find the who’s to help you do it. It doesn’t mean that your first shot out of the gate asking you who is going to say yes. Because remember, the reason why they want to do it is totally different with the reason why you want to do it. But after you explain to them specifically what you’re looking for, they might have someone that they would recommend or they might volunteer and help you out as well. But the big thing is to start thinking bigger and better so that you can actually accomplish a lot more dreams than you already had. And like I said, I own my own business. There’s just me. And the way that I’ve utilize this system to optimize my time in my impact in the world is by, for instance, hiring someone to help me out when it comes to editing these podcasts. That’s been a big time-saver and it’s allowed me to do other projects. So that shows one way that I’ve utilized the who, not what in my life.

OK, so now it’s your turn. Please go to iTunes, Stitcher, Google Play and subscribe to the Strategy Corner. Go to my website, Intentional Solutions Corp., and sign up to get my weekly blog post, which also has a link to the latest podcast. You could also click on the link for start a conversation. And there you can fill out your information and then will be emailed to me. And if you’d like to have a complementary strategy session, just go ahead and put that in the notes and I’ll be sure to reach out to you.

Until next time remember: through action and growth, progression happens. Let’s take action together. Thank you. And create an amazing week.