Start with Why by Simon Sinek (2009)

TL;DR: Having a WHY (purpose/belief) is important. Your business's long term success depends on it. The takeaway from a leadership perspective: Have a Purpose, A Belief, or a Cause to champion.


The GOLDEN CIRCLE opens: Imagine a circle inside a circle inside a circle. At the core is the WHY. In the middle is the HOW. The last layer is the WHAT.

WHY is the Belief. HOW's are the Actions you take to realize that belief. WHAT's are the Results of those actions
You may wonder why and what's the significance?


Simon Sinek gives the examples of Apple, the Wright Brothers, Martin Luther King Jr. and more. Apple because Simon posits their WHY is clear from the start. The Wright Brothers because compared to a contemporary also vying for manned-flight who had high status, money and resources; the Wright Brothers became the pioneers because the motivation came from within. Martin Luther King Jr because Martin Luther King Jr. And also he had this historical "I have a dream" speech. 



In Business, Simon writes:

People don't buy what you do, they buy why you do it
Way more Business-y terms:

WHAT: Products and Services of a company
HOW: Differentiating Value Propositions, Proprietary Process, Unique Selling Proposition
WHY: Purpose, Cause of Belief
For all this to work:


The WHY needs Clarity. The HOW needs Discipline. The WHAT needs Consistency. All in all it needs balance. Not one over the other. A leader needs to be able to communicate the cause clearly. The Values must be instilled. 

For Values or guiding principles to be truly effective, they have to be verbs. It's not "integrity", it's "always do the right thing". It's not "innovation", it's "look at the problem from a different angle". Articulating our values as verbs gives us a clear idea.
And when what one says and do are aligned with what ones believes, Authenticity brings forth Consistency.
Authenticity is when you say and do the things you actually believe.
A Leader needs a following. Or is it the other way around? Simon argues the best kind of leaders have followers that are willing to sacrifice from their own. Because they know, they'll do the same for them. A Companionship built in Trust. 
Trust is not a checklist. Fulfilling all your responsibilities does not create trust. Trust is a feeling, not a rational experience.
To trust our leaders mean we give value. The same way that we give value to other people means we trust them
Value, by definition, is the transference of trust.
Other excerpts, Simon says Forget the Competition, Your true competition is your own.

Companies that study their competitors in hopes of adding the features and benefits that will make their products "better" are only working to entrench the company in WHAT it does. Companies with a clear sense of WHY tend to ignore their competition, whereas those with a fuzzy sense of WHY are obsessed with what others are doing.

As a business plan, to focus on the masses is the wrong strategy, you need to focus your efforts on converting the Innovators and the Early Adopters.

According to the Law of Diffusion of Innovation, mass-market success can only be achieved after you penetrate between 15 and 18 percent of the market.

Again with the feelings, but this time equating it with Success

Achievement is something you reach or attain, like a goal.  [...] Success, in contrast, is a feeling or a state of being. 

And finally, Simon says
Finding WHY is a process of discovery, not invention.



Review:



I first learned of Simon Sinek through TED when a couple years back the interface for TED can show videos by popularity. One of the most popular was Simon Sinek's. The talk blew my mind. Simon is a great speaker. The book has a feel of being a like speech; parts of it read like one; parts read like Malcolm Gladwell; while some parts seemed like one of those business case studies. Although, I think it could have fit in to fewer pages and the message would still be the same.



I listened to one podcast recently with Simon Sinek as the guest, he mentioned one of the criticisms he got for Start with Why was it wasn't actionable. "Great ideas Simon, but how?." That's not hard to imagine because some people don't really know their purpose; or take the time to dig this out. Even the adults in us can find ourselves in places and phases when we seem to be only going through the motions. Anything relating to a belief is hard to measure or even to try to quantify. Do you measure it by the intensity of one's belief? Or by the perceived results the belief could take on? And so those are the additional questions spurred on by greater curiosity.



The argument that the Golden Circle rooted in biology could have been expanded more. It would be a decade by next year since the first release of this book; who knows what the discoveries and findings with Neuroscience have been since then.

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