WDYDWYD?

Why do you do what you do? That's the question used nowadays during employee team-building exercises in places like Silicon Valley, google and Twitter. The thought being, if you and your co-workers can hammer out WHY you do the kind of work you do, then perhaps the group of you can agree on the underlying shared core values that should be driving your business, the values that should in turn drive value definition and value delivery to your customers.

The goal is to dig deeper to expose any misalignment between what we do and what we would aspire to do, were we to follow our inner motivations.

Now, ask this same question of the decision makers within your most coveted customer segments. Dig deep enough, and if you find the answer to be similar, then you have struck gold. The discovery being, what matters most is not on your company's line card, or in the technical discussion of what your products do. What matters is that you connect with your customer on a deeper level of need.

WDYDWYD is a question every business manager needs to encounter on the path to becoming a business leader, because the answers are not written on lengthy and all-absorbing daytime to-do lists. They are written on many a wish list kept among our more private thoughts, tucked away nightly after the lights have been turned off.

jb