Book Review: “Who Not How: The Formula to Achieve Bigger Goals Through Accelerating Teamwork”

Review by Myra Salzer

Dan Sullivan and Babs Smith are the co-founders of Strategic Coach, an entrepreneurial coaching program I attended for over 20 years. Dan is a truly brilliant coach to whom I will be forever grateful for the countless things I learned in his sessions over the years. Additionally, Dan has written numerous books for entrepreneurs. To my knowledge, Who Not How is the first one that was written by Dr. Benjamin Hardy and published by an outside publisher.

Who Not How says it all in its title: how to maximize what one accomplishes by taking a vision and finding the people (the Whos) to do the implementation instead of taking the time to learn how to do it oneself. The book sprinkles example after example of how to apply this simple principle. For readers of this blog, much of the material in the book is likely to be new and stimulating (for me, some of the content was redundant because of my years of having worked with Dan).

The fact that Dan Sullivan is listed as the author, even though he did not write a word of the book, was an excellent example of how he put the Who Not How principal into practice. He had the vision for the book and hired a Who to author it, Whos to market it, publish it, and distribute it, etc., etc.

While the target readers for the book are entrepreneurs, its message applies to inheritors as well, because as an inheritor, you have the financial freedom to delegate tasks, i.e., hire the Whos rather than taking the time to learn and/or complete the Hows.

If you want to leverage your time and energy to accomplish your purpose, I recommend reading this 175-page book. It’s a quick read that could change how you accomplish things, and it can give you tools to be more productive.