Start with Why
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Simon Sinek’s “start with why” concept works well to describe the three elements of a decisionAccelerator model.
Sinek’s idea is that the “Why” defines the Purpose, Cause, and or Belief of what you are trying to achieve. Often we find that this is not clearly articulated or commonly understood by a group of people, yet without knowing the “why for” of something, it is very hard to define the steps to get there and it is hard to motivate people to extraordinary performance. We all need to know why we are doing something; just knowing what we are doing and how it is done is not enough.
So let’s look at this idea as it is applied to a decision model. The Goal statement is why we are doing it, the Objectives outline what we want to achieve, and the Alternatives are how we’re going to accomplish the Objectives.
WHY drives WHAT, and then HOW is the way in which we will achieve the “whats,” these can also be thought of as “wants” (i.e., this is what we want to achieve). In this example, the prioritized projects we will fund are selected/ranked based on how they contribute to the business objectives. These objectives drive our goal for the business unit.
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