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What vs. Why

Everyone wants to tell you what to do.

Vote for my candidate. Buy my product. Subscribe to my blog. There’s no shortage of advice on what you should do.

But knowing what to do is only part of the equation. Understanding why you should do it is the real question.

Agency — the ability to make choices — is life’s greatest freedom. But though we are free to choose our actions, we are not free to choose the consequences of those actions. Choose well and you reap happy consequences. Choose unwisely and your decision will haunt you, perhaps forever.

If you want to influence other people, do not tell them what to do. Rather, help them understand why they should follow your advice.

In my role as a lawyer, my job is not limited to advising my clients about their legal options but also includes helping them recognize the long-term consequences of those options. They need to appreciate how the law interacts with their business so that they can make sound decisions going forward. And they are more likely to “buy in” to my trial strategy when they understand how that strategy will play out.

As a teacher, my job is to help students make sense of the law so that they can give sound legal advice to their future clients. Making sense of the law involves more than discussing the topic of the day. It includes explaining the rules of court, providing insight into how judges think, and applying ethical principles to real-life situations. Students who understand the law in its proper context become lawyers who confidently help clients navigate through turbulent legal waters.

And in my most important area of influence, my critical (and never-ending) job is to teach my children how to have happy and successful lives. I must not only teach them what they must do while they are living in my home, but also help them understand why they should choose to follow those principles when I no longer oversee their lives. My job is to teach them the “why” of life so they will want to make good choices for themselves.

You may be able to use your position of authority to compel someone to do what you want them to do, but compulsion is short-lived. If you want to truly influence another person, teach them why they should do what you want them to do. And then let them choose.

When they understand the why behind a decision, knowing what to do becomes a much easier choice.

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Strengthening Your Negotiating Position

Everyone negotiates.

Let me rephrase that. Everyone negotiates every day.

Parents negotiate to convince toddlers to eat their “mmm, yummy, good” chicken nuggets. Teenagers negotiate for a later curfew or for expanded car privileges. Spouses negotiate to determine who will pick up Sally from her dance lessons.

Everyone negotiates every day.

Negotiation permeates every aspect of your business. You negotiate salaries with your employees and prices with your customers, lease terms with your landlord and vacation dates with your colleagues, payment terms with vendors and delivery deadlines with clients.

Your ability to negotiate directly impacts the success of your business.

The best advice I know on negotiating is simple, yet profound. I learned it from an unlikely source, a class on courtship and marriage. What is that critical advice?

The person with the least amount of interest controls the relationship.

Whether the negotiating involves asking for a date, landing a job, or making a sales call, the person who is least interested – the person who is willing to walk away from the deal – has the greatest say in whether and on what terms the deal gets done.

The best negotiations occur when both parties are equally motivated to create a long-term relationship. Each party then is willing to sacrifice immediate gains for the benefits of the ongoing relationship. A healthy marriage is a great example of this type of relationship.

But most negotiating occurs outside of long-term relationships. The way you handle that negotiation will determine whether you strike a fair deal or end up regretting the deal you make.

Let me emphasize this point with two examples. When I graduated from law school, I decided I needed a new car to celebrate my accomplishment. The Ford Taurus was the Motortrend Car of the Year; I knew it was the car for me.

While I was test driving the car, the salesman asked me what I had budgeted to spend on the car. Foolishly, I told him.

After we returned to the dealership and the salesman consulted with his manager, he informed me that the payment would exceed my ceiling by about $28 per month. I was so anxious to buy the car that I said yes even though I knew the price I had quoted was a fair one.

I spent the next four years regretting my decision, knowing that I had overpaid by more than $1300.

Nearly 30 years later, my oldest daughter decided it was time to purchase her first real car. She researched her options, settled on a vehicle, and asked me to accompany her to the dealership to make her purchase.

We told the salesman what we wanted. We test drove a vehicle and went to the showroom to negotiate the transaction.

I informed the sales rep that we were going to purchase a vehicle and we were giving him the first opportunity to make the sale. We needed his best price.

The sales rep visited with his manager and came back with a price that was substantially in excess of his best price. I thanked him, told him we would let him know, and got up to leave.

The sales rep began stammering about needing to talk to his manager to get a better price. In a few minutes, he came back with a reasonable price. We negotiated a fair deal because we were indifferent about whether we bought the car from him or from another dealer.

The person with the least amount of interest controls the relationship. Understanding this principle is a recipe for success.

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Always and Never

Unveiling a new product or service is an exciting event. 

From the moment that the seed of the idea first germinates in your mind until the time you display the full bloom in all its glory, you think about your growing idea every day.  It is your brainchild, something that you have nurtured with your full time and attention, often for months or years.

But when is that project completed? The longer I think about a project the more detailed that project becomes. If I don’t stop myself, I end up with a project that may be impossible to complete.

A few years ago, a speaker at a conference for entrepreneurs taught me something that has helped me remove the tethers from my ideas and allow them to fly earlier. The topic was how to prepare your pitch for prospective investors. 

“How do you know when your presentation is ready?” the speaker asked. “The answer is simple:  always and never.” 

Your presentation is always ready, he explained, because you may have to give it today. And it is never ready because once you give it, you will continue to work on and improve it.

Always and never. The idea has great power to help you move forward. 

If you wait to unveil your ideas until everything is perfect, you will have nothing to unveil. No matter how well conceived your idea, you will with time find ways to improve and enhance the idea. There never is a perfect time to unveil the idea. You have to instead decide when things are developed well enough to unveil.

Let’s say, for example, that you are reworking your website.  (And who isn’t?)  You can wait until everything is completed and perfect before you unveil your new website. Or you can unveil your new website in stages, presenting each new portion of the website as it becomes available. 

Adopting “always and never” as your motto helps you break monumental tasks into smaller components. Redesigning your website is a monumental task if it entails graphic elements, new design, search engine optimization, a blog, RSS feeds, media room, and new content. By the time you get through that list, you will have developed an entirely new list of projects.

If, on the other hand, you view an updated website as an “always and never” project, your list can consist of subcomponents of each of the larger tasks. Though redesigning a website may seem like a monumental task, you can complete smaller, discrete tasks.

When is your sales pitch done? Always and never. Your employee handbook? Your business plan? Your research and development? Always and never.

Stop worrying about perfection and instead focus on completing smaller, discrete tasks. When you recognize that your projects are “always and never” done, you have discovered the recipe for success.