Start with who, not why | Hacker News Reader

Start with who, not why

softwaredoug.com

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The gyronavigator work becomes about the sailor we want to bring home; about the calibration technician we save time and headaches.

What if the person paying the sailor doesn't want to pay to fix the slightly buggy navigation system, or if the person paying the technician doesn't care if they have to spend time on calibration? Then the reason to pay to do the work drifts to the "why" by default - its safer to navigate with a working system, it's cheaper to calibrate if there are fewer headaches.

"Start with why" is about startups, and building products to sell to people, as much as it is about the reason to do work. A lot of the time you can frame that as a "who" to justify how you spend your time, but if you're building a startup you'll sell more focusing on the "why", because people don't always value the "who" if they're paying the bill but they're not the user.

One thing I like about XP is that it focuses on people who directly interact with what you build - programmers, users and domain experts.

From the article:

> Without putting ‘who’ first, you can’t create trust. You’ll only have politics and dysfunction.

This addresses your point. If people in charge don't care about those who are affected by their decisions, AKA not taking responsibility, then you have a deeper problem.

The article states that the 'why' should fall out of the 'who' and that the 'who' is someone you care about and work with. There is a very effective ideal behind that and anything on top that gets in the way should be subjected to scrutiny and not accepted as a given.

Perhaps we should decide what to build deciding who will use it and why they'll use this instead of something else. Then when building the team, maybe we start with who we want working on it and then show them why it needs to be built. When selling it to the decision makers, start with why they should choose it, which is part of choosing who to target for the sale (apart from targeting for the use). The two really go hand in hand, but starting from one or the other in various circumstances makes a lot of sense.

Now, if I was selling directly to end users, like home users, I could try to start with target audience (who) first, or start with why people would want the product first. If I don't know who I'm building it for or what those people need, I have to build something pretty general. If I have a market in mind before a prototype to turn into a product, then I can reason more about what niche I'm filling. I guess one can succeed or fail either way, and surely many have.

I don't necessarily agree with the point of the article, but I do think that "who" question is often avoided in "why" analysis.

My guess is that "who" in "why" can get very personal and touchy and let's face it - no one wants to deal with that. Personal example - I worked in an environment where romantic relation between executives spawned a project that resulted in customer acquisition cost of ~15k$ where maximum revenue per customer in targeted segment didn't exceed 100$. In the projects I've worked on there was always some office politics/ego to stroke/taboo social dynamic that had to be sustained in order to produce tangible and absolutely not related results.

Most of the software is designed for or driven by people so if "why" analysis doesn't include anyone then there might be an elephant in the room.

There is a saying that people join a company but leave a team/manager. I think there is a sense of truth to it.

But no need to make it a dichotomy. Make the work meaningful (mastery, autonomy and purpose), have good income to support a living, make a loving team. That's the CAP theorem of work. If you are a founder, strive to make all three happens. If you are an employee, look for company provide the 3 as much as possible. You won't know deeply if you are in a loving/supporting team before you join, hence the saying people quit a team

To me, artist of any sorts are more about making work meaningful. Startup is ultimately about return to investment, aka money. Management is about creating caring environment. A small shop that creates beautiful work, has stable stream of income and a close group of colleagues is IMO the nirvana of working

I was hoping for an essay about a more user-oriented approach to formulating a project vision. Who are we building software for? Who are we helping them to help (the end-end-user)?

This article seems to be about who to hire. Furthermore, it stands as an antithesis to meritocracy and inclusivity. I mean sure, don't hire assholes, but "surround yourself with people you truly love" is not a healthy demand.

I think — as usual — the true advice is somewhere in the middle. If you just hire people you like, you and up with a bunch of your friends and very likely not a functional team. You will have a good time, but it might not be very successful. It might even be not a good time at all, because people you like are not necessarily people you like to work with.

If you just hire people who fit the precise description of the task, you end up with people who all can technically do exactly what you thought you needed. But firstly what you thought you needed can turn out to be wrong and even if you are right what is needed can change.

Secondly a big part pf working together is some sort of compatibility. People must and should not all be the same, but they should complement each other well and be able to work together effectively. If you don't look at the "who" and "with whom" at least a little bit, this is a huge risk.

This rings hollow because nothing "started" with this person.

He was dropped into a team inside a huge defense contractor to do a tiny technical task within the much larger purpose of that company. It's great that he liked and valued who he was working with, but it's not a condition he created or can advise others to create. His "who", however important it was to him, was nothing without the "why" of the company.

I have a manager who is extremely people-oriented. It's nice, but mostly in the sense of not doing harm. Team meetings are full of kindness and accolades, but people aren't engaged because the meetings lack substance and purpose. We have the meetings primarily to "feel like a team", rather than to engage in the purpose the team exists for.

You still need the why to generate meaning and self-respect.

Yeah. Balance is important. I worked on a few teams where I really liked the people, but ultimately we were building a stupid product that existed only because some exec thought it would be a good idea, rather than because any users actually wanted it. (In one case, we were literally told "we have X huge website which we sell $$$ of advertising on - we want another site just like that, so go off and build one"!) Ultimately, the cognitive dissonance of building something we knew was pointless, but where nobody was willing to actually say it, felt utterly soul-destroying.

Now I'm working at a place where I really like the people, and I really like what we're building. The balance feels like it's much closer to the right place now.

The "who" is definitely what it's mostly about at the IC level. Just like soldiers in the trenches, they don't care about the ideals they are fighting for. They are trying to stay alive and keep their friends alive.

In both cases, you need leaders (not necessarily managers) to paint the vision you are trying to achieve in a way that can inspire the group to action. But once the march begins, that's quickly forgotten, and it's all about the Who.

Military teams are built around trust in underlying training and well-defined roles with well-defined hierarchy with clear paths of ownership and succession. Everybody knows who will take charge of the fire team if the fire team leader is dead, everyone knows who will take the squad if the squad leader is dead. The succession path is tested every time one of those leaders is away. The working leaders in fire teams and squads are the only word or authority that matters, most of the time.

This is the biggest thing I had to get used to in corporate environments. Software teams, even when you're a lead, really only have hierarchy starting with a manager. Managers, on the other hand, are rarely technical (or technical enough) and are oddballs in the example of a fire team. It'd be like throwing someone from admin into an engineering battalion and being like, "hey, here's a metal detector, you're in charge now."

And yet, for most of history, people didn't want to fight the enemy at all. Their biggest motivation was protecting each other.

I think that's likely a very rosey interpretation of history. In times of strife, and war, "protecting each other" and "fighting the enemy" are synonymous. Warrior cultures, past and present, generally have a fairly well defined escalation of force, which includes the time to fight and de-escalation.

https://www.reddit.com/r/history/comments/b6k528/percentage_...

Most people don't want to fight. It's only recently we've gotten much better at indoctrinating soldiers into killing machines.

You need both. The most noble cause is still going to be a pain in the ass if you have to work with awful coworkers, but fun coworkers in a meaningless job with no direction is going to be hollow.

> I have a manager who is extremely people-oriented. It's nice, but mostly in the sense of not doing harm. Team meetings are full of kindness and accolades, but people aren't engaged because the meetings lack substance and purpose. We have the meetings primarily to "feel like a team", rather than to engage in the purpose the team exists for.

I recently left a role mainly because of the same situation. In short, there was no team in the true sense of the word. The meetings were listless, just people in a room / on a Zoom. The level of energy and engagement forever teetering on empty.

Simply put, this isn't management, it's bad management. Kindness to the point of mindless is not sustainable. Management can have many colors so to speak, but forgettable beige should not be one of them.

What do you think could fix this issue of low engagement during the Zoom meetings?

It's on the manager to put an end to shallow, robotic management theater and replace it with something meaningful or at least enjoyable. Don't do the round-robin project updates that are of no value to anyone - if you've set up the culture correctly, people will talk to each other when they need to. Use the time to do something that is of interest to everyone on the team, even if it's not directly related to the everyday work. If you can't think of anything, don't hold the meeting and think harder when you're planning for next week's meeting.

Ultimately, it's a symptom. But it helps to have an agenda. Perhaps an "assignment." It also requires someone - don't necessarily have to be the manager - to facilitate.

I get it. On-site teams to remote teams is work. But at this point, if leadership and management haven't figured it out then they're either negligent or incompotent.

How do you fix that? Either an excess in training or pink slips. I'm not saying someone should be sacked for being a bad manager. I'm saying they should be sacked for being content with being bad, and making no effort to fix that.

I guess good "who" included good "why". Good project leader transmits "why" onto others he works with, by just being who he is in the process of digesting "why".

For managers, the who is the why.

> For managers, the who is the why.

For managers, the "who" matters only as a factor determining the velocity and success of delivering the "why".

To put it differently, no matter how well the "who" is going, if the manager cannot deliver the "why" then he will be an ex-manager. Not so much the other way around.

Can you explain a bit more? Sounds as if you're saying that management is about building a team, but that the manager wouldn't personally care much about if they succeeded with the assigned tasks? S/he'd leave that to the team, trusting they got the things done?

Managers still get to negotiate their goals and/or what their team is supposed to do in the company. To me they are supposed to make the who and the why match, in any order it works for them.

Yeah, but you also need a leader, and that role usually also falls to the manager.

I don't think people are motivated that much by who they are working for or with. Nor is it the mission, but rather whether or not it aligns with the way they would like to shape the world around them. You will never get a vegan on boat at a meat processing plant, even in accounting. If it is litterally the only job around that pays well, they will be miserable there, but no matter why you process meat or who they can work with, they will hate their job because they would much rather train dogs or whatever, but that doesnt pay.

You need to find the right people who want to advance your field, otherwise you might as well do everything yourself because it would be an halfassed attempt at best otherwise (as demonstrated by the economy).

And then you need to involve them in every aspect they are interested in, companies should be democratic just like the states they operate from. Do more Co-ops. If you just want employees who blindly do what you want them to, then your enterprise will fail, slowly, but ultimately it will fail. Involve them on equal footing and it will soar. Because suddenly you dont have employees but co-owners as interested in your success as you are in theirs.

It is an excellent book, not just a TEDx talk. The concept comes from the "five whys" developed by Sakichi Toyoda at Toyota. Asking "why" five times typically reveals the root cause of a problem. If a business does not have a purpose, it won't exist for very long. It makes sense to explicitly define the purpose because implicit definitions lead to fuzzy logic.

> In my experience “why” doesn’t drive motivation and impact. Instead ‘who’ does.

I think this depends heavily on what the 'why' is - if it's a "Make the Company" - a new product, or challenging target for example - then the why will drive things. There's no point having a great 'who' if there's no 'why'.

But if it's a "Run the Company" - debugging and maintaining an existing system for example - the who can make and drive enthusiasm and delivery much more.

I work for the money.

If the pay and the working conditions are good, I am happy.

I am intrinsically interested in solving puzzles and doing a good job. Doing it the best I can is already my default, if you try to add external stuff, you will only ruin it. Want me to pretend I actually care about the product or "mission"? Sweety, that will cost extra!

The "who" can be nice but as long as people are not toxic I don't care that much. I have friends outside work.

WHO matters, but it's definitely not more important than WHY.

Who changes as people come and go — as they receive better offers or more significant job titles elsewhere. Staff will always turn over for reasons in your control (and reasons outside of your control). But, if you have a strong WHY people will be able to rally towards a unique or differentiated idea. A strong WHY demands principles. Tactics can come later.

Our field is becoming more and more prone to people asking, perhaps even demanding a deeper meaning with our work.

Who are we catering to ? Why are we doing it like this ? What are the purpose of this ?

If you want to work you will have to sacrifice yourself every now and again, to steer to a certain goal something (most likely not you) has set out. Deal with it and make damn sure you don't just quit because you think you know better.

Programming and software development is filled with both young and old cats centered around them knowing better; having read somewhere or known someone, a tweet that has been liked etc. The evidence is shallow and subjective opinions strive like never before. People need to remember to celebrate others that sit down, churn out work no matter how it's done and with what tools.

Smart people don't attack something that is not working, they conquer it slowly but certainly. And they don't talk to much about it, because guess what - it's their job.

Many people, especially in tech, have such empty lives they demand their emotional needs be met at work. That’s how you end up with so much emotional management and “wellness” in the workplace instead of focusing on getting the job done by working together. They key phrase is “working together” which is different than living together.

> Smart people don't attack something that is not working, they conquer it slowly but certainly.

This!

The best attack is showing better.

I've recently tried this and got burnt. Spent a week of my own time doing a (what I believe to be) pretty serious improvement to both code structure and runtime behavior for a very green-field project. Showed it to Product Owner "This looks great to me, but you should talk with X see what he has to say". Talk to X, total subjective dismissal.

Now I could go on the offensive and push my vision slowly but certainly, but I won't. Ultimately, I am not responsible for the product, nor for the product owner or colleague's (ignorant?) attitude, and truly I don't want to spend my time improving more than what is *wanted* in the project and my own craft.

I would have better spent the time doing Leetcode than trying to improve this and I find it hard to see why I would engage in something 'slow but certain', against odds, for something that doesn't truly benefit narccisistic me.

Its not easy as that. You need to wait for good timing.

Once things depend on you totally, you do it your way and use that opportunity to further pitch your story. Because before that its just a theory, and after that its battle afterhour.

Its also true that this can not succeed always, but most of the time, given enough time, I will get what I want, the way I want it.

I feel like this arguing the same point though - who someone is is defined by their individual “why”. And a fake “why” can be identified if the individual in question does not execute in alignment with the mission/values they declare.

I found a lot of value in explaining who I am by my “why” statement which defines how I operate. It’s a way of succinctly telling someone what way I approach every situation. That statement (actually a question) is “what if we could make it better?”. Telling someone that’s my way of thinking and discussing cases helps me explain who I am.

Also reminds me of Carmine Gallo’s analysis of TED Talks - Pathos is a big component in making something memorable as we learn “who” the speaker is as they explain “why” they’re stood on stage right now talking about their subject.

Start with Why: great title, found the audiobook extremely tedious. In my experience, the deep Why for a thing’s existence is almost always best approached laterally.

A workshop tool I created: Celebration-5W [1], the Who, What, When, Where (have some fun with this one), and Why of the celebration you’re going to have when you’ve achieved your next big breakthrough. CC-BY-SA.

[1] https://www.agendashift.com/resources/celebration-5w

Edit: A much better book is Bob Moesta’s Demand-side Sales 101. Not just for salespeople, it’s the best treatment of jobs-to-be-done (JTBD) that I have come across. Who, When (their “struggling moments”), and How you might help them make progress.

„Why“ question is such a red herring. This is a trap perpetuated by the sellers of self help books. First, they convince you that you MUST know the answer and if you do, your problems are solved. Then, because this is a very deep, personal and open-ended question, you go on an existential journey and have no choice but to buy more of their crappy books that supposedly should help you find your „why“. You dont‘t need a „why“, because no one truly has it, not even the universe itself

We're just looking for a market fit, not to find God

That would make a great story. A marketing team accidentally finds God while looking for a new niche for their shit product.

That's why the people at Toyota don't go past the fifth "why"

I think the why here is more like “why do we need to make payments easier for online merchants” and suchlike

Who? The Why would drive my who. For example, if my friends and colleagues were the pool of team members, The Why would drive who would best fit. Not just in skills, but in the nature and purpose of the work.

Who can work but - even in the initial example - it's more random (read: less reliable). The Why is far more intentional. It says we're going on a journey, do you want a ticket or not.

Start with Why.

This reads to me like someone who has been raised to believe identity politics matters above all else. But to be more generous, sure, there are limits to the degree of arsehole people will tolerate as they follow the mission. However then let's look at Stallman. What really does seem to matter is still the mission.

A catch phrase that I have heard and use for all projects - “Always ask the who before the what before the how”

in Academia, non-profit and lots of "status game" environments, you're surrounded with people who peacock themselves to be all kinds of impressive-looking.

Start with Who is a great approach when working with people who care more about climbing the social rank / status game ladder.

Wasn't the point of 'Start with Why' more about the best way to communicate with customers as opposed to employees. At least that's what I took from it.

For me it was about brand, and brand impacts all who touch it.

Agreed, this article seems to focus solely on employees though. I think communicating your 'why' to customers is much more effective than 'who'.

I'd argue to the contrary: the "why" is more important than both "who" and "how". You "map" the latter two into the first.

> The most noble ‘why’ espoused by sociopaths only leads to cults and fascists.

This seemingly betrays a false understanding of fascism. Fascism very much espouses "who": They are keeping you down. They have taken from you what is rightfully yours. They are denying your birthright. They are inferior and patethic but also all-powerful and threatening. They are coming for your children.

Fascism doesn't require sociopathy, quite the opposite: fascism utilizes empathy but denies its out-group their status as human. Yes, it does so by promising a return to an imagined past greatness but the practical appeal works on a personal level.

I guess `why` author made equivalence to an ideology with which follows justification for removing freedoms you have outlined. The `who` on the other hand sounded more like deliberate democracy at the workplace.

The reason the author is so focused on "who" is because they've already answered the "why".

I'd say always start with what. Figuring out what to solve is the most vital part.

In my experience, that often leads to solving issues for nonexistent clients, or bad product-market fit.

I think the “what” has to be followed by a “because” or, like you alluded to, you end up solving a problem no one cares about.

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