Find Your Why: a practical Guide for Discovering Purpose for You and Your Team pdfdrive com

If you belong to a team or division within an organization, it will likely have
its own subculture. In some cases, articulating that team’s WHY, the unique
contribution the team makes to the organization, can be very powerful. It can

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help connect those people on the team in a deeper and more meaningful way to
the difference the organization makes in the world.
If you want to discover the WHY of the entire organization it will come
from one of two sources: The first is from the founder’s WHY, which draws
from the origin story. If the founder is no longer available, we have a method
that engages people in the organization to identify the WHY based on the best
elements of the existing culture.
We’ve divided our approaches to Why Discovery into three chapters that address
these categories above. Whether you’re a founder, entrepreneur or an employee,
you’re one person and you will use the Individual Why Discovery process,
covered in chapter 3. If you are part of a team, group or division within a larger
company use the Tribe Approach covered in chapters 4 and 5. The Tribe
Approach is also the method you should use if you want to discover the WHY of
the entire organization and the founder is no longer actively involved.
But before you separate into individuals and tribes, let’s jump into the heart of
the process, the basic steps everyone follows.
Step 1: Gather Stories and Share Them
Each of us has only one WHY. It’s not a statement about who we aspire to be; it
expresses who we are when we are at our natural best. If, like Steve the steel
salesman, you’re already unconsciously living your WHY, then spelling it out for
yourself will turn it into an even more powerful tool. And if you’re struggling to
live your WHY, then finally understanding your purpose, cause or belief can
help you change course and realign with a new perspective, a new role or
perhaps even a new company to help you find the feeling of fulfillment that may
have eluded you thus far.
At its core, the WHY is an origin story. By looking to our past and teasing out
the most significant threads—the experiences we’ve had, the people we’ve been
influenced by, the lives we’ve touched and the highs and lows we’ve faced—we
can identify patterns. For individuals, our WHY is fully formed by our late teens.

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To uncover our WHY we must bring together our standout memories—our
defining moments—and examine them to find the connections. For tribes, the
WHY also comes from the past—either the origin story of how the company was
founded or from specific stories shared by other members of the tribe that
represent what makes them proud to be a part of the tribe. Either way,
discovering your WHY is like panning for gold in the river of the past: the gold
is there, lost in the debris of the river, hidden by rushing water. Only when you
take the time to pan for the significant moments of the past, retrieving them
nugget by nugget, will they turn into treasure.