The Importance of Why
Sunday February 7th, 2016. This date will forever go down in history as the day the Broncos won Super Bowl 50, when Von Miller became an MVP, and the day when Lady Gaga surprisingly rocked the National Anthem. However, for the six Kansas State FFA Officers it will be known not as the day of the Super Bowl, but the day that Becky Fouard took time out of her busy schedule to come to the great town of Manhattan, Kansas. The day included everything from learning techniques to improve our speeches for the upcoming banquet season (just an FYI, we are amped) to improving our outlook on our short time left in office.
One item that we covered in particularly was the “What, How, Why” theory that was presented to us in the version of a Ted talk by Simon Sinek. As seen in the model to the right, the outer most circle is ‘What.’ This is where most sales pitches and arguments begin. They use facts to persuade or to say how great their product is. At first this makes perfect sense, primarily because this is how most products are sold to us and how we try to “sell” or advocate for agriculture.
We initially don’t see anything wrong with this way of promoting, but what if I told you the quote from Simon Sinek that says, “People don’t buy what you do, they buy why you do it.” This quote speaks directly to agriculture and to myself. No matter what agricultural subject you Google search we discover that it isn’t hard to find negative articles, but it can be difficult to find positive ones. Could this possibly be because groups like HSUS, PETA, and the Non-GMO project direct their articles at the “why” of the argument and we focus our advocating on the “what.” For a precise example, PETA has an entire page on their website dedicated to “Why Animal Rights?” They tear into your emotions to give you an understanding of not what they are doing, but why they are doing it. They want you to feel a specific emotion, not know specific facts. What if you visit a pro-Ag site? The easiest thing to find is statistics. We have science to back us up, which is great, but that doesn’t reach the consumers instinct and emotion.
Consumers don’t buy what we do, they buy why we do it. They don’t care if we have facts to prove that antibiotics don’t enter our meat system, but they do care to know we treat our livestock with vaccinations in hopes that they don’t have to go through the pain of sickness and disease. Consumers care little that GMOs increase yields and are scientifically proven safe. However, they do care that there are starving kids, families, and individuals all across our world, and GMOs could be the first step to eliminating that problem. Our teachers and coaches hardly care that we are missing class or practice for an FFA event. They do care though, that we are missing to not only compete, but to expand our knowledge on the industry and a possible future career. Whatever you’re promoting, selling, or advocating start with the why, because “People don’t buy what you do, they buy why you do it.” I highly encourage everyone to watch this video. It was extremely impactful on me and the link can be found below
https://www.ted.com/talks/simon_sinek_how_great_leaders_inspire_action?language=en#t-154631
-Dean