The Celery Test

 AUDIO http://youtu.be/t9aKBnLibo8

Imagine you are at a dinner party and you have four trustworthy friends give you advice on food to eat. One insists that the new oreos are all the rage and you have to get them. Another says no celery is simply wonderful this season. A third chimes in and argues that rice milk is the favored food item for children and adults. Finally, the fourth says M&M’s are the in-thing that should be not only in every home but in every business.

After hearing all of this apparently sage advice, you run to the grocery store and buy all of the above four items: the oreos, the celery, the rice milk, and the M&M’s. However, this is a jumble of things that may or may not be worth buying. However, starting with a clear filter of WHY, like I want to eat only healthy foods. The choices become crystal clear: I shall buy the rice milk and celery.

Let’s say I wanted to eat chocolate cake. Perhaps I could say that I wanted to gratify a part of my craving but that I would then have to work harder to fix the negative health impact that the food item would have. However, I would be under no illusion that it fit any of my WHY.

When we start with WHY, we have clarity of what we are doing. As Sinek says, it passes our Celery Test. Think of how many companies in particular make moves (WHATS and HOWS) without any clear filter of WHY.

No wonder why they get into difficult situations. Recently, I hired a new staff member and what seemed right was her WHY fit my organization’s WHY. She mentioned how in her past organization she disliked how the patients were being treated and what she liked most was how a patient’s life was changed from the procedure performed. So far she has lived up to her professed WHY, and that is wonderful.

=The transcript interview here:=

It’s called the celery test.

It’s as if you go to a dinner party and someone says to you, “You know what you need in your business? Oreo cookies. If you’re not implementing Oreo cookies in your business, I’m telling you, you’re leaving money on the table.”

Somebody else tells you: “Rice milk. In this economy? You have to be using rice milk.” Somebody else says to you: “M&Ms. We used M&Ms in our business, and we made millions! Facebook uses M&Ms. You’ve gotta do it.”

Somebody else says to you, “Celery. It’s all about celery.”

So what do you do? Which one do you follow? Which item do you buy? It’s all perfectly good advice from perfectly good people with perfectly good evidence. Which products do you buy? So we go to the supermarket and we buy them all. We buy celery and rice milk and Oreos and M&Ms. You may or may not get value out of all of these products, there’s no guarantee. You spend a lot of time at the supermarket, you spend a lot of money at the supermarket, and worse, when you’re standing in line in the supermarket with all of your products in your arms, your celery, your rice milk, your Oreos, your M&Ms, nobody can see what you believe. Because what you bought didn’t necessarily correspond to anything you believe.

Nobody can see what you believe. So people will walk past you and ignore you. Imagine if you knew your Why. Imagine if your Why was clear. Imagine if your Why was to always be healthy and only do things that protect the integrity of your body.

You will get all the same advice from all of the exact same smart people. The difference is, when you go to the supermarket, you’re only going to buy celery and rice milk. Those are the only two products that make sense. Right? You’re guaranteed to get value out of those products. You spend less time at the supermarket, you spend less money at the supermarket, so there’s an efficiency play, and when you’re standing in line at the supermarket holding your celery and holding your rice milk, everyone can see what you believe. Authenticity, right?

So somebody walking past can see, just by looking at your celery and your rice milk, they can look at you and say, “Hey, you’re healthy, you believe in being healthy? Me too.” Congratulations, you just attracted a customer, you just attracted a referral, an employee, an article, a blog, buzz.

Somebody says, “Hey, can you give some advice to me?” You just created that sense of cause in somebody else, simply because you said and did the things you actually believe.

Here’s the best part: as soon as I said the Why, before I even said we’re going to buy celery and rice milk only, as soon as I said the Why “to be healthy,” every single person listening to this knew we were only going to buy celery and rice milk before I said it. That’s called “scale.”

The more you talk about why you do what you do, those who work with you, those who work for you, those who work around you all know what you need and what the right decisions are, not because they’re trusting your gut, and not because you laid out some set of criteria. It’s because they know why you do what you do, and there are some decisions that are just obvious. They either make sense, or they don’t.

And that’s the power of Why. It is absolutely scalable.