Flash of Enlightenment Think "Why" before "What"

So I've talked about SMART Goal setting and also on the importance of WHY also in terms of Goals. But now I've think I've come to an epiphany type of realization.

In every action that you do as a Young Leader your first question to yourself needs to be "Why am I doing this?"... "For what purpose am I doing this?"...

I know I had talked about this before, but before the why to me was more of an afterthought.... something to keep me motivated. But it's not. It should actually be the first thing!

OK, so I'll give two examples. One narrow in scope and one huge:

1. Meetings - Previous posts about meetings stuck to technical details without peeling one layer below. But I feel even if you follow those hints, tips, and tricks to a T... things will still be hit or miss. After all if I'm coming up with the agenda... and I say to myself "So what do we need to talk about talk about at this meeting?"Then I might come up with a list of things and I would like to talk about.
   
   But what if I really needed a decision to be made (not the topic just talked about). Or what if half of the attendees don't necessarily need to listen or participate in the conversation? Then, I haven't run an effective meeting, because I accomplish what needed to be done and I have wasted people's time.
   
   However, what if I went one step deeper and had thought about "Why do I want to have this meeting?"... "Why would my team members want to attend and participate in the meeting?" This way, now I am focused and will have an effective agenda and meeting... not just run an efficient meeting.
   
   
2. Goals - So we can extend the above to goals and goal setting. I would say the SMART Goals and strong Time Management would be very efficient. No doubt about that.
   
   However, to truly have effective goals.. you need to answer the "Why?" questions. "Why do I want an action?"... "Why do I do I want to do this specific action?"... "Why would anyone want to follow me in my vision?" (See Tony Robbins for further explanation on how the emotional connection to 'things' tangible and intangible are so important.)
   
   So lets narrow this down... Lets say you want to Write a Book. A SMART Goal might be to go to the library and check out 100 books on the topics that you might want to talk about in your book and outline your main ideas with a specific detail level that you can accomplish by next year.... (At little daunting, but reasonable).
   
   However, what if we ask the Why questions... "Why do I want to write a book?"... Maybe it's because, "I want to share my ideas to help people all over the world." "Why do I have to write a book instead of using any other media?" "I might not have to, because the internet allows people to share ideas throughout the world in all sorts of different ways". "Why couldn't I create a web Blog about my ideas and along with continuing research refine my ideas while still being able to share my ideas and help people all over the world?"... "Why not?!"
   

And that's it! Ask the Why questions.... go deeper.... be more effective!

As always comments are requested and appreciated!

Thanks,
-Jason