Start With Why: How Great Leaders Inspire Everyone to Take Action

by Simon Sinek

Only the Wright brothers started with Why.

But Martin Luther King Jr. had a gift. He knew how to inspire people.

Great leaders, in contrast, are able to inspire people to act. Those who are able to inspire give people a sense of purpose or belonging that has little to do with any external incentive or benefit to be gained.

You have to be careful what you think you know. Assumptions, you see, even when based on sound research, can lead us astray.

Playing the price game, however, can come at tremendous cost and can create a significant dilemma for the company. For the seller, selling based on price is like heroin.

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?

No matter where we go, we trust those with whom we are able to perceive common values or beliefs.

We are drawn to leaders and organizations that are good at communicating what they believe. Their ability to make us feel like we belong, to make us feel special, safe and not alone is part of what gives them the ability to inspire us.

Companies that fail to communicate a sense of WHY force us to make decisions with only empirical evidence. This is why those decisions take more time, feel difficult or leave us uncertain.

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 … we have a clear idea of how to act in any situation.

When WHY, HOW, and WHAT are in balance, authenticity is achieved and the buyer feels fulfilled.

“You know what I love about our company? Every single one of us comes to work every day to do something we love. We get to inspire people to do the things that inspire them. It’s the most wonderful thing in the world. In fact, the fun part is trying to figure out all the different ways we can do that. It really is amazing. The best part is, it is also good for business. We do really well. We have beautiful offices, you should stop by sometime to see. We work with some of the biggest companies. I’m sure you’ve seen our ads. We’re actually doing pretty well.”

Again, a WHY is just a belief, HOWs are the actions we take to realize that belief, and WHATs are the results of those actions.

We’re friends with people who see the world the way we see it, who share our views and our belief set.

“You don’t hire for skills, you hire for attitude. You can always teach skills.”

Great companies don’t hire skilled people and motivate them, they hire already motivated people and inspire them.

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.

This is the paradigm in which someone is motivated by self-gain regardless of the consequences or the benefits to the organization for which he or she works.

They need to hold everyone in the company accountable to the values and guiding principles. It’s not enough to just write them on the wall—that’s passive. Bonuses and incentives must revolve around them. The company must serve those whom they wish to serve it.

The cone represents a company or an organization—an inherently hierarchical and organized system. Sitting at the top of the system, representing the WHY, is a leader; in the case of a company, that’s usually the CEO (or at least we hope it is). The next level down, the HOW level, typically includes the senior executives who are inspired by the leader’s vision and know HOW to bring it to life. Don’t forget that a WHY is just a belief, HOWs are the actions we take to realize that belief and WHATs are the results of those actions. No matter how charismatic or inspiring the leader is, if there are not people in the organization inspired to bring that vision to reality, to build an infrastructure with systems and processes, then at best, inefficiency reigns, and at worst, failure results.

Good analogy

The leader sitting at the top of the organization is the inspiration, the symbol of the reason we do what we do. They represent the emotional limbic brain. WHAT the company says and does represents the rational thought and language of the neocortex.

Because most companies are bad at communicating what they believe, so it follows that most logos are devoid of any meaning. At best they serve as icons to identify a company and its products.

People don’t buy WHAT you do, they buy WHY you do it, and Apple says and does only the things they believe. 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;

It’s a simple metaphor called the Celery Test. Imagine you go to a dinner party and somebody comes up to you and says, “You know what you need in your organization? M&M’s. If you’re not using M&M’s in your business, you’re leaving money on the table.” Somebody else comes up to you and says, “You know what you need? Rice milk. The data shows that all the people are buying rice milk these days. You should be selling rice milk in this economy.” While you’re standing over the punch bowl, yet another person offers some sage advice. “Oreo cookies,” he says. “We made millions from implementing Oreo cookies in our organization. You’ve got to do it.” Still somebody else comes up to you and says, “Celery. You’ve got to get into celery.”

What you do is supposed to serve as the tangible proof of what you believe, and you bought everything.

But here’s the best part. As soon as I told you the WHY, you knew that we were going to buy only celery and rice milk even before you read it. As soon as I gave you the filter, as soon as I said the WHY, you knew exactly what decisions to make before I said so. That’s called scale.

If they cannot recapture their WHY and reinspire those inside and outside their organization, every one of them will end up looking more like AOL than the companies they were.

That’s what Dwayne Honoré figured out how to do. Because he figured out how to measure a value he holds dear, that value is embraced. Most importantly, because Honoré’s actions pass the Celery Test, others can clearly see what he believes.

But technology and range aren’t what give an arrow its power. By itself, an arrow is a flimsy stick of wood with a sharpened tip and some feathers. By itself, an arrow cannot stand up to a sword or penetrate armor. What gives an arrow the ability to take on experience, training, numbers and armor is momentum. That flimsy stick of wood, when hurtling through the air, becomes a force only when it is moving fast in one direction. But what does the battle of Agincourt have to do with finding your WHY?

If it was important to start with WHY, then I would start with WHY in everything I did. There is not a single concept in this book that I don’t practice. I stand at the mouth of my megaphone and I talk about the WHY to anyone who will listen. Those early adopters who hear my cause see me as a tool in their arsenal to achieve their own WHY. And they introduced me to others whom they believed I could inspire. And so the Law of Diffusion started to do its job.