The New How [Paperback]

Chapter 4. Phase I: Question

It is tempting, if the only tool you have is a hammer, to treat everything as if it were a nail.

—Abraham Maslow

Know What We Need to Ask and Answer

Isn’t it tempting to do what we’ve already done because it’s the road we know? It is for me. The next section we’re taking on is the “how” of creating better business outcomes.

Above the inside door of my office, there’s an Italian clock, and above that, there’s a little sign printed on regular laser printer paper. It reads “All Roads Lead to Rome.” My team gave it to me after an arduous time helping an e-commerce company hit their $24M product launch goal. The phrase had become the mantra for the last few weeks. “All Roads Lead to Rome” was what we kept repeating to our client (and to ourselves) to focus everyone on the process rather than fixating on getting to a specific answer, so we could create a strategy together that would actually work.

You lovers of history may recognize the phrase. I learned it during a college course in Western Civilization. The Roman Empire, you might remember, drove the greatest economic expansion in history—connecting remote places and people together through commerce. One way it did this was by building a vast network of roads connecting widespread communities so that Roman legions could deploy and harness resources wherever needed. The city of Rome was effectively the center and genesis of their universe, so the Empire built its roads from that place, outward. If you were somewhere ...