More on this book
Community
Kindle Notes & Highlights
Those who are able to inspire will create a following of people—supporters, voters, customers, workers—who act for the good of the whole not because they have to, but because they want to.
This so true... Something very few team leaders realise. #StartWithWhy @simonsinek
When faced with a result that doesn’t go according to plan, a series of perfectly effective short-term tactics are used until the desired outcome is achieved. But how structurally sound are those solutions?
But if you ask most businesses why their customers are their customers, most will tell you it’s because of superior quality, features, price or service. In other words, most companies have no clue why their customers are their customers.
When companies or organizations do not have a clear sense of why their customers are their customers, they tend to rely on a disproportionate number of manipulations to get what they need. And for good reason. Manipulations work.
“they never have the time or money to do it right the first
time,” she said of her client, “but they always have the time and money to do it again.”
Real innovation changes the course of industries or even society. The light bulb, the microwave oven, the fax machine, iTunes. These are true innovations that changed how we conduct business, altered how we live our lives, and, in the case of iTunes, challenged an industry to completely reevaluate its business model.
the newest set of shiny objects designed to encourage a trial or a purchase. What companies cleverly disguise as “innovation” is in fact novelty.
I cannot dispute that manipulations work. Every one of them can indeed help influence behavior and every one of them can help a company become quite successful. But there are trade-offs. Not a single one of them breeds loyalty. Over the course of time, they cost more and more. The gains are only short-term. And they increase the level of stress for both the buyer and the seller.
There is a big difference between repeat business and loyalty. Repeat business is when people do business with you multiple times. Loyalty is when people are willing to turn down a better product or a better price to continue doing business with you.
How can a company claim to be customer-focused when they are so comfortable measuring the number of customers who will fail to realize any promise of savings?
Manipulations are a perfectly valid strategy for driving a transaction, or for any behavior that is only required once or on rare occasions.
Every day, the competition is doing something new, something better. To constantly have to come up with a new promotion, a new guerrilla marketing tactic, a new feature to add, is hard work. Combined with the long-term effects of years of short-term decisions that have
eroded profit margins, this raises stress levels inside organizations as well. When manipulations are the norm, no one wins.
There are a few leaders who choose to inspire rather than manipulate in order to motivate people.
It all starts with Why.
WHY: Very few people or companies can clearly articulate WHY they do WHAT they do. When I say WHY, I don’t mean to make money—that’s a result. By WHY I mean what is your purpose, cause or belief? WHY does your company exist? WHY do you get out of
bed every morning? And WHY should anyone care?
It’s worth repeating: people don’t buy WHAT you do, they buy WHY you do it.
“WHY did we start doing WHAT we’re doing in the first place, and WHAT can we do to bring our cause to life considering all the technologies and market opportunities available today?”
One is not better or worse; it depends on where you feel like you belong. Are you a rabble-rouser or are you with the majority?
The part of the brain that controls our feelings has no capacity for language. It is this disconnection that makes putting our feelings into words so hard.
That’s the problem with love; we only know when we’ve found it because it “just feels right.”
People don’t buy WHAT you do, they buy WHY you do it.
Perhaps it is a subtle clue our language-impaired limbic brain is sending us to help us see that the art of leading is about following your heart.
To lead requires those who willingly follow.
Loyalty, real emotional value, exists in the brain of the buyer, not the seller.
Trust begins to emerge when we have a sense that another person or organization is driven by things other than their own self-gain.
Those who lead are able to do so because those who follow trust that the decisions made at the top have the best interest of the group at heart. In turn, those who trust work hard because they feel like they are working for something bigger than themselves.
Some in management positions operate as if they are in a tree of monkeys. They make sure that everyone at the top of the tree looking down sees only smiles. But all too often, those at the bottom looking up see only asses.
