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Charisma has nothing to do with energy; it comes from a clarity of WHY.
Energy, in contrast, comes from a good night’s sleep or lots of caffeine. Energy can excite. But only charisma can inspire. Charisma commands loyalty. Energy does not.
We don’t want to come to work to build a wall, we want to come to work to build a cathedral.
Regardless of WHAT we do in our lives, our WHY—our driving purpose, cause or belief—never changes.
A route without a destination, however, may be efficient, but to what end? It’s all fine and good to know how to drive, but it’s more fulfilling when you have a place to go.
Those Who Know WHY Need Those Who Know HOW
It is the partnership of a vision of the future and the talent to get it done that makes an organization great.
This relationship starts to clarify the difference between a vision statement and a mission statement in an organization. The vision is the public statement of the founder’s intent, WHY the company exists. It is literally the vision of a future that does not yet exist. The mission statement is a description of the route, the guiding principles—HOW the company intends to create that future. When both of those things are stated clearly, the WHY-type and the HOW-type are both certain about their roles in the partnership.
For a message to have real impact, to affect behavior and seed loyalty, it needs more than publicity. It needs to publicize some higher purpose, cause or belief to which those with similar values and beliefs can relate.
By any definition these few companies don’t function like corporate entities. They exist as social movements.
people accept the lives they live and do the things they do not because they have to, but because no one ever showed them an alternative.
there is always another perspective to be considered.
Bruder is using the EFE Foundation to share his WHY on a global scale—to teach people that there is always an alternative to the path they think they are on.
WHAT you do can change with the times, but WHY you do it never does.
If people don’t buy WHAT you do, they buy WHY you do it, and if all the things happening at the WHAT level do not clearly represent WHY the company exists, then the ability to inspire is severely complicated.
When a company is small, it revolves around the personality of the founder. There is no debate that the founder’s personality is the personality of the company.
the leader’s job is no longer to close all the deals; it is to inspire.
The WHY exists in the part of the brain that controls feelings and decision-making but not language. WHATs exist in the part of the brain that controls rational thought and language.
Communication Is Not About Speaking, It’s About Listening
Apple’s clarity, discipline and consistency—their ability to build a megaphone, not a company, that is clear and loud—is what has given them the ability to command such loyalty.
If WHAT you do doesn’t prove what you believe, then no one will know what your WHY is and you’ll be forced to compete on price, service, quality, features and benefits; the stuff of commodities.
We are in pursuit of understanding the best practices of others to help guide us. But it is a flawed assumption that what works for one organization will work for another. Even if the industries, sizes and market conditions are the same, the notion that “if it’s good for them, it’s good for us” is simply not true.
Simply ensuring that WHAT you do proves what you believe makes it easy for those who believe what you believe to find you. You have successfully communicated your WHY based on WHAT you do.
Starting with WHY not only helps you know which is the right advice for you to follow, but also to know which decisions will put you out of balance.
With a WHY clearly stated in an organization, anyone within the organization can make a decision as clearly and as accurately as the founder.
Celebrate your successes,” said Walton. “Find some humor in your failures. Don’t take yourself so seriously. Loosen up and everybody around you will loosen up.”
Achievement is something you reach or attain, like a goal. It is something tangible, clearly defined and measurable. Success, in contrast, is a feeling or a state of being.
my vernacular, achievement comes when you pursue and attain WHAT you want. Success comes when you are clear in pursuit of WHY you want
Success comes when we wake up every day in that never-ending pursuit of WHY we do WHAT we do.
Those with an ability to never lose sight of WHY, no matter how little or how much they achieve, can inspire us.
The reason so many small businesses fail, however, is because passion alone can’t cut it. For passion to survive, it needs structure. A WHY without the HOWs, passion without structure, has a very high probability of failure.
Passion may need structure to survive, but for structure to grow, it needs passion.
To pass the School Bus Test, for an organization to continue to inspire and lead beyond the lifetime of its founder, the founder’s WHY must be extracted and integrated into the culture of the company.
Money is a perfectly legitimate measurement of goods sold or services rendered. But it is no calculation of value.
Just because somebody makes a lot of money does not mean that he necessarily provides a lot of value. Likewise, just because somebody makes a little money does not necessarily mean he provides only a little value.
Value is a feeling, not a calculation. It...
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If those outside the megaphone share your WHY and if you are able to clearly communicate that belief in everything you say and do, trust emerges and value is perceived.
When the person who personifies the WHY departs without clearly articulating WHY the company was founded in the first place, they leave no clear cause for their successor to lead.
Schultz had been enamored of the espresso bars of Italy, and it was his vision of building a comfortable environment between work and home, the “third space,” as he called it, that allowed Starbucks to single-handedly create a coffee-shop culture in the United States that had until then only existed on college campuses.
Yet, like Bill Gates, these inspired leaders have all failed to properly articulate their cause in words that others could rally around in their absence. Failing to put the movement into hard words leaves them as the only ones who can lead the movement.
For companies of any size, success is the greatest challenge.
Successful succession is more than selecting someone with an appropriate skill set—it’s about finding someone who is in lockstep with the original cause around which the company was founded.
He chastised his executives for driving expensive cars and resisted using a corporate jet for many years. If the average American didn’t have those things, then neither should those who are supposed to be their champions.
“Wall Street is in the business of making money between now and next Tuesday,” he said in the 20/20 interview. “We’re in the business of building an organization, an institution that we hope will be here fifty years from now. And paying good wages and keeping people working with you is very good business.”
Apple is just one of the WHATs to Jobs’s and Woz’s WHY.
Finding WHY is a process of discovery, not invention.
Learning the WHY of a company or an organization or understanding the WHY of any social movement always starts with one thing: you.
There is an old saying in the industry that 50 percent of all marketing works, the problem is, which 50 percent?
Henry Ford said, “If you think you can or you think you can’t, you’re right.”
If You Follow Your WHY, Then Others Will Follow You
