The "What" versus The "How"

My morning routine is pretty consistent. After my first coffee (absolutely essential, non-negotiable) I normally take about fifteen minutes to sketch out my LinkedIn post for the day. I’ve been thinking about writing this post for some time.

As I scroll through my LinkedIn feed, it strikes me that 90% of the content I see could be characterized as “What”. In my world of luxury and ultra-luxury, there is a diverse range of thought leadership around the problems facing luxury today, what observations are prevalent, and what the future of luxury holds etc. But while the content may describe trends or predictions, and sometimes even proffer a solution, it rarely breaks it down into the “How” that solution would actually be implemented.

As I sit here enjoying coffee two, I recognize that our firm is almost the complete opposite. Our “What” is the belief that extraordinary experiences are not built through isolated moments, but through the deliberate orchestration of interconnected signals, environments, behaviors, and emotional cues that together create experiences with depth, distinction, and lasting emotional impact. Our “What” consumes about 20% of our time.

The other 80% of the time we are in the arena with our clients working on the much harder question of the “How”. Here are three examples of “How’s” we are designing for right now:

🔹 An ultra-luxury resort in South Asia has a 23-point criteria on how to properly make a bed. They have hired local young ladies as housekeepers, but how do you embed these exacting standards into a team when many of them do not even sleep in a bed at home?

🔹 A luxury retail client, who serves almost exclusively HNW and UHNW clients, has recently hired a large number of Gen Z employees as their client services team. How do we get a team that spends more time on their phone than off it, to put down their devises and focus on delivering exceptional experiences to a demographic and cohort they have very little in common with?

🔹 A leading global personal security firm has a field-based team made exclusively of former law enforcement and ex-military special forces personnel. While their core security skills are exceptional, how do we teach them the interpersonal and behavioral skills required to interact seamlessly with their UHNW clients?

These are the challenges of the “How”. Sometimes there is an overlap in the experiences of the client and the colleague that can be used, along with narratives and storytelling, to create genuine connection between the two. And sometimes there is little to no overlap at all, but that goal remains the same.

So as I scroll through my feed, I’m always evaluating content into the What and the How. While the What can be intellectually stimulating and eloquent, it takes the client only a small part of the distance they seek to travel. It is the demanding How that gets them the sustainable results that drive real impact.