Viewing offline content

Limited functionality available

Dismiss
Deloitte Middle East
Annotations
  • Services

    What's New

    • Deloitte175

      Join us for a celebration of 175 years of making an impact that matters.

    • Building the Resilient Organization

      2021 Deloitte Global resilience report

    • 2020 Global Gender Impact Report

      A collection of Butterfly Effect stories highlighting how our Deloitte professionals are positively impacting the lives of women and girls around the world

    • Audit & Assurance

      • Assurance
    • Consulting

      • Strategy, Analytics and M&A
      • Customer and Marketing
      • Business Operations
      • Human Capital
      • Enterprise Technology & Performance
    • Financial Advisory

      • Mergers & Acquisitions
      • Forensic
      • Real Estate
      • Turnaround & Restructuring
    • Risk Advisory

      • Strategic & Reputation Risk
      • Regulatory Risk
      • Financial Risk
      • Operational Risk
      • Cyber Risk
    • Tax

      • Global Business Tax Services
      • Indirect Tax
      • Global Employer Services
    • Deloitte Private

      • Family Enterprise
    • Legal

    • Sustainability

  • Industries

    What's New

    • Deloitte perspectives

      Leadership perspectives from across the globe.

    • Deloitte Insights App

      Our thought leadership and Dow Jones news, now at your fingertips

    • Future of Mobility

      Learn how this new reality is coming together and what it will mean for you and your industry.

    • Consumer

      • Automotive
      • Consumer Products
      • Retail, Wholesale & Distribution
      • Transportation, Hospitality & Services
    • Energy, Resources & Industrials

      • Industrial Products & Construction
      • Mining & Metals
      • Oil, Gas & Chemicals
      • Power, Utilities & Renewables
    • Financial Services

      • Banking & Capital Markets
      • Insurance
      • Investment Management
      • Real Estate
    • Government & Public Services

      • Civil Government
      • Defense, Security & Justice
      • Health & Social Care
      • Transport
    • Life Sciences & Health Care

      • Health Care
      • Life Sciences
    • MENA Sovereign Wealth Funds

    • Technology, Media & Telecommunications

      • Technology
      • Telecommunications, Media & Entertainment
  • Insights

    Deloitte Insights

    What's New

    • Deloitte Insights Magazine

      Explore the latest issue now

    • Deloitte Insights app

      Go straight to smart with daily updates on your mobile device

    • Weekly economic update

      See what's happening this week and the impact on your business

    • Strategy

      • Business Strategy & Growth
      • Digital Transformation
      • Governance & Board
      • Innovation
      • Marketing & Sales
      • Private Enterprise
    • Economy & Society

      • Economy
      • Environmental, Social, & Governance
      • Health Equity
      • Trust
      • Mobility
    • Organization

      • Operations
      • Finance & Tax
      • Risk & Regulation
      • Supply Chain
      • Smart Manufacturing
    • People

      • Leadership
      • Talent & Work
      • Diversity, Equity, & Inclusion
    • Technology

      • Data & Analytics
      • Emerging Technologies
      • Technology Management
    • Industries

      • Consumer
      • Energy, Resources, & Industrials
      • Financial Services
      • Government & Public Services
      • Life Sciences & Health Care
      • Technology, Media, & Telecommunications
    • Spotlight

      • Deloitte Insights Magazine
      • Press Room Podcasts
      • Weekly Economic Update
      • COVID-19
      • Resilience
  • Careers

    What's New

    • Millennial Survey 2022

      Gen Zs and millennials are striving for balance and advocating for change.

    • Candidate Profile

      After applying for a job in this country, you can access/update your candidate profile at any time.

    • Job Search

    • Students

    • Experienced Hires

    • Executives

    • Life at Deloitte

    • Alumni

    • Diversity and Inclusion

  • XE-EN Location: XE-English  
  • Contact us
  • XE-EN Location: XE-English  
  • Contact us
    • Dashboard
    • Saved items
    • Content feed
    • Profile/Interests
    • Account settings

Welcome back

Still not a member? Join My Deloitte

What’s wrong with what is that it’s not how

by Michael Raynor
  • Save for later
  • Share
    • Share on Facebook
    • Share on Twitter
    • Share on Linkedin
    • Share by email
Deloitte Insights
  • Strategy
    Strategy
    Strategy
    • Business Strategy & Growth
    • Digital Transformation
    • Governance & Board
    • Innovation
    • Marketing & Sales
    • Private Enterprise
  • Economy & Society
    Economy & Society
    Economy & Society
    • Economy
    • Environmental, Social, & Governance
    • Health Equity
    • Trust
    • Mobility
  • Organization
    Organization
    Organization
    • Operations
    • Finance & Tax
    • Risk & Regulation
    • Supply Chain
    • Smart Manufacturing
  • People
    People
    People
    • Leadership
    • Talent & Work
    • Diversity, Equity, & Inclusion
  • Technology
    Technology
    Technology
    • Data & Analytics
    • Emerging Technologies
    • Technology Management
  • Industries
    Industries
    Industries
    • Consumer
    • Energy, Resources, & Industrials
    • Financial Services
    • Government & Public Services
    • Life Sciences & Health Care
    • Tech, Media, & Telecom
  • Spotlight
    Spotlight
    Spotlight
    • Deloitte Insights Magazine
    • Press Room Podcasts
    • Weekly Economic Update
    • COVID-19
    • Resilience
    • XE-EN Location: XE-English  
    • Contact us
      • Dashboard
      • Saved items
      • Content feed
      • Profile/Interests
      • Account settings
    24 January 2014

    What’s wrong with what is that it’s not how

    25 January 2014
    • Michael Raynor United States
    • Michael Raynor United States
    • Save for later
    • Share
      • Share on Facebook
      • Share on Twitter
      • Share on Linkedin
      • Share by email

    Even if you know what that means, knowing is not always enough.

    My first gainful employment was with a small management-consulting firm writing marketing material and articles on quality management. As I churned out explanations of topics such as the importance of reducing variance in output, Gerry Michaelson, an éminence grise in the firm, would read my missives and offer various suggestions for improvement. He always ended with, “It’s not enough to tell people what to do. You have to tell them how to do it if you’re really going to make a difference.”

    This seemed like good advice to me, and I’ve tried to apply it ever since, despite the fact that “getting to how” can be extraordinarily difficult.

    Clayton Christensen is a Harvard Business School professor of no small reputation, and author of The Innovator’s Dilemma, the book that popularized Clayton’s discovery of “disruptive innovation” (whereby a product or service enters at the bottom of a market before eventually moving up to displace competitors). Clayton has built on that concept an edifice of research and consulting that has spawned significant new growth at hundreds of companies.

    Part of the reason for disruption theory’s success, I had come to believe, was that it bridged the “what-how” chasm. For example, Intel used disruption theory to respond to low-cost threats from competitors with its Celeron line of low-cost microprocessors. According to Clayton, then-CEO Andy Grove credits disruption theory with this success, not because it prescribed what the company should do—rather, it suggested how to think about the problem, and so the company was able to discover for itself what the appropriate response should be.

    Some years after the success of Celeron, in Clayton’s re-telling of events, Andy asked Clayton, “How do I set up these new businesses so that they’ll be successful?” Clayton summarized what has become the orthodoxy of disruption: “You need to set up new business units independent of the core. They need to have clear strategic charters that set them on a path to disruption,” and so on. Andy’s response was, “You haven’t told me how to do it, you’ve only told me what to do. I knew that!”

    “It was then,” Clayton told me, “that I realized I didn’t even know the difference between what and how.”

    If Clayton Christensen can fall into a what/how trap talking about disruption theory with a client who understands it and has used it successfully, what chance do the rest of us have?

    To make any headway on this problem, perhaps we need to define what it means to explain to someone how to do something.

    Here’s my best guess: When you have explained to people how to do something, they are able to do it. People must actually be capable of taking the right actions in the right sequence under the right circumstances to achieve the right result consistently. So, a cooking show that tells you how to make a soufflé will leave you able to make a soufflé. A how-to book on golf will leave you able to hit the ball down the middle of the fairway, within the limits of your physical abilities. With those criteria, I’ve never seen a cooking show or read a golf book that taught me how to do anything.

    I think the same can be said of advice-giving in just about every field, including management. Jack Welch, Larry Bossidy, Lou Gerstner—they’ve all tried to give us some insight into how to achieve the kinds of results they did. Yet with so much knowledge out there, why does the “knowing-doing gap” persist?

    I increasingly think that what or how advice depends less on the advice than the advice’s recipient. If Tiger Woods’s coach were to say, “Don’t hesitate at the top of the backswing,” Woods would be able to act on it. Me? Not a chance. The reason is that Woods’s abilities allow him to translate direction into action in ways that I cannot. In general terms, how devolves into what when it comes up against limits of one’s personal experience.

    In determining how to explain how, we may be able to take a page from Toyota’s approach to root-cause analysis. When something goes wrong, typically the company quickly identifies a proximate explanation. Then by asking, “So why did that happen?” four more times, Toyota finds that it often gets to the root cause of a problem.

    I’ve started using the “five whys” to test the usefulness of any advice I give or receive—whether a new task can be specified to whatever additional level of detail is required to connect with what people already know how to do. Until recipients can find an equivalence between what they already know how to do and whatever new thing they are being asked to take on, the advice will remain in the ultimately sterile land of what.

    So I think I’d tell Clayton not to feel bad. None of us knows the difference between what and how, if only because whether a particular recommendation counts as one or the other is a function of whom you’re speaking to.

    Credits

    Written by: Michael Raynor

    Cover image by: Matt Lennert

    Topics in this article

    Disruptive innovation

    Deloitte Consulting

    Learn more
    Download Subscribe

    Related

    img Trending

    Interactive 3 days ago

    Michael Raynor

    Michael Raynor

    Managing Director | Deloitte Services LP

    Michael is a managing director with Deloitte Services LP. His research and client work is focused on strategy and innovation in a wide variety of industries. He is the author or coauthor of four best-selling and critically-acclaimed books, including The Innovator’s Solution. His most recent work is The Three Rules: How Exceptional Companies Think, co-authored with Mumtaz Ahmed. He lives in Mississauga, Ontario, Canada.

    • mraynor@deloitte.com
    • +1 617 437 2830

    Share article highlights

    See something interesting? Simply select text and choose how to share it:

    Email a customized link that shows your highlighted text.
    Copy a customized link that shows your highlighted text.
    Copy your highlighted text.

    What’s wrong with what is that it’s not how has been saved

    What’s wrong with what is that it’s not how has been removed

    An Article Titled What’s wrong with what is that it’s not how already exists in Saved items

     
    Forgot password

    To stay logged in, change your functional cookie settings.

    OR

    Social login not available on Microsoft Edge browser at this time.

    Connect Accounts

    Connect your social accounts

    This is the first time you have logged in with a social network.

    You have previously logged in with a different account. To link your accounts, please re-authenticate.

    Log in with an existing social network:

    To connect with your existing account, please enter your password:

    OR

    Log in with an existing site account:

    To connect with your existing account, please enter your password:

    Forgot password

    Subscribe

    to receive more business insights, analysis, and perspectives from Deloitte Insights
    ✓ Link copied to clipboard
    • Contact us
    • Search Jobs
    • Submit RFP
    Follow Deloitte Insights:
    Global office directory Office locations
    XE-EN Location: XE-English  
    About Deloitte
    • Newsroom
    • Deloitte events
    • Our blog collections
    • Press releases
    • Press contacts
    • Corporate Responsibility & Sustainability
    • Report an ethics complaint
    Services
    • Audit & Assurance
    • Consulting
    • Financial Advisory
    • Risk Advisory
    • Tax
    • Deloitte Private
    • Legal
    • Sustainability
    Industries
    • Consumer
    • Energy, Resources & Industrials
    • Financial Services
    • Government & Public Services
    • Life Sciences & Health Care
    • MENA Sovereign Wealth Funds
    • Technology, Media & Telecommunications
    Careers
    • Job Search
    • Students
    • Experienced Hires
    • Executives
    • Life at Deloitte
    • Alumni
    • Diversity and Inclusion
    • About Deloitte
    • About Deloitte in the Middle East
    • Privacy
    • Terms of use
    • Cookies
    • Avature Privacy

    © 2022. See Terms of Use for more information.

    Deloitte refers to one or more of Deloitte Touche Tohmatsu Limited, a UK private company limited by guarantee (“DTTL”), its network of member firms, and their related entities. DTTL and each of its member firms are legally separate and independent entities. DTTL (also referred to as “Deloitte Global”) does not provide services to clients. Please see About Deloitte to learn more about our global network of member firms.