Thought Garden

Evergreen note

Two Kinds of Who Not How

2 min read

Summary

Who Not How (Dan Sullivan & Benjamin Hardy) argues for finding the right person rather than figuring everything out yourself. Living through a real week of it, though, I think that's actually two different moves wearing the same slogan — borrowing context you don't have, and deliberately delegating ownership so you never have to hold it all yourself. They look similar but solve different problems, and it's worth being clear which one you're doing at any given moment.

Key ideas

Borrowing context — situational, temporary. This is what happened standing in on unfamiliar work this week: not knowing the people, the products, or the history of a part of a programme that isn't normally mine, so leaning on people who did know it. The need is real but self-limiting — the more time spent in that part of the system, the less there is to borrow. It's an education, not a permanent arrangement.

Delegating ownership at scale — structural, permanent. This is closer to how a large delivery portfolio actually has to work: not managing every relationship directly, because at a certain size nobody could. Someone else holds the coordination as their job, not as a favour for one difficult week. That's a designed choice about how the operating model is built, not a gap you're hoping to close by learning faster.

The test that tells them apart: does the need disappear once you've learned enough, or does it persist regardless of how much you learn, because no single person could hold all of it at this scale? First answer = borrowing context. Second answer = delegating ownership.

Still open. Which of the two is actually the stronger, more useful lens for thinking about my own role right now — genuinely not sure yet. Worth revisiting once I've read the book properly rather than the old summary sitting in the vault.