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

by Simon Sinek

That’s what we do when we find something of value, we share it with the people we love.

Although these “natural-born leaders” may have come into the world with a predisposition to inspire, the ability is not reserved for them exclusively. We can all learn this pattern. With a little discipline, any leader or organization can inspire others, both inside and outside their organization, to help advance their ideas and their vision. We can all learn to lead.

How did the Wright brothers succeed where a better-equipped, better-funded and better-educated team could not?

Only the Wright brothers started with Why.

What has made Apple special is that they’ve been able to repeat the pattern over and over and over.

Apple starts with Why.

Martin Luther King started with Why.

There are leaders and there are those who lead.

Just about every person or organization needs to motivate others to act for some reason or another.

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.

Those who are inspired are willing to pay a premium or endure inconvenience, even personal suffering.

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.

Harley-Davidson, Disney and Southwest Airlines are three more. John F. Kennedy and Ronald Reagan were also able to inspire.

This is important because our behavior is affected by our assumptions or our perceived truths. We make decisions based on what we think we know.

The correction of a simple false assumption moved the human race forward.

More data, however, doesn’t always help, especially if a flawed assumption set the whole process in motion in the first place.

Every instruction we give, every course of action we set, every result we desire, starts with the same thing: a decision.

There are only two ways to influence human behavior: you can manipulate it or you can inspire it.

From business to politics, manipulations run rampant in all forms of sales and marketing. Typical manipulations include: dropping the price; running a promotion; using fear, peer pressure or aspirational messages; and promising innovation to influence behavior—be it a purchase, a vote or support. 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.

Price always costs something. The question is, how much are you willing to pay for the money you make?

Given the relative parity of the features and benefits, that little something extra is sometimes all it takes to tip the scale. In the business-to-business world, promotions are called “value added.” But the principles are the same—give something away for free to reduce the risk so that someone will do business with you. And like price, promotions work.

Fear, real or perceived, is arguably the most powerful manipulation of the lot.

When fear is employed, facts are incidental.

Deeply seated in our biological drive to survive, that emotion cannot be quickly wiped away with facts and figures. This is how terrorism works. It’s not the statistical probability that one could get hurt by a terrorist, but it’s the fear that it might happen that cripples a population.

If anyone has ever sold you anything with a warning to fear the consequences if you don’t buy it, they are using a proverbial gun to your head to help you see the “value” of choosing them over their competitor. Or perhaps it’s just a banana. But it works.

“Quitting smoking is the easiest thing I’ve ever done,” said Mark Twain. “I’ve done it hundreds of times.”

If fear motivates us to move away from something horrible, aspirational messages tempt us toward something desirable.

I always joke that you can get someone to buy a gym membership with an aspirational message, but to get them to go three days a week requires a bit of inspiration.

A management consultant friend of mine was hired by a billion-dollar company to help it fulfill its goals and aspirations. The problem was, she explained, no matter the issue, the company’s managers were always drawn to the quicker, cheaper option over the better long-term solution. Just like the habitual dieter, “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.”

Motorola was once again rendered just another mobile phone manufacturer fighting for its piece of the pie. Like so many before it, the company confused innovation with novelty.

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.

They are added in an attempt to differentiate, but not reinvent.

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.

Leadership requires people to stick with you through thick and thin. Leadership is the ability to rally people not for a single event, but for years.

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.

Manipulations are a perfectly valid strategy for driving a transaction, or for any behavior that is only required once or on rare occasions.

It’s in the tough times that loyal customers matter most.

Knowing you have a loyal customer and employee base not only reduces costs, it provides massive peace of mind. Like loyal friends, you know your customers and employees will be there for you when you need them most. It is the feeling of “we’re in this together,” shared between customer and company, voter and candidate, boss and employee, that defines great leaders.

Deciding what law firm to hire, college to attend, car to buy, company to work for, candidate to elect—there are just too many choices.

The danger of manipulations is that they work. And because manipulations work, they have become the norm, practiced by the vast majority of companies and organizations, regardless of size or industry. That fact alone creates a systemic peer pressure.

The reality is, in today’s world, manipulations are the norm. But there is an alternative.

WHAT: Every single company and organization on the planet knows WHAT they do. This is true no matter how big or small, no matter what industry.

HOW: Some companies and people know HOW they do WHAT they do. Whether you call them a “differentiating value proposition,” “proprietary process” or “unique selling proposition,” HOWs are often given to explain how something is different or better.

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.

While the music industry was still busy trying to sell us albums, a model that no longer suited consumer behavior, Apple introduced their iPod by offering us “1,000 songs in your pocket.” With the iPod and iTunes, Apple did a much better job of communicating the value of both the mp3 and the mp3 player relative to how we lived our lives.

The problem was, they advertised their product as a “5GB mp3 player.” It is exactly the same message as Apple’s “1,000 songs in your pocket.”

Creative told us WHAT their product was and Apple told us WHY we needed it.

Unless Dell, like so many others, can rediscover their founding purpose, cause or belief and start with WHY in all they say and do, all they will ever do is sell computers. They will be stuck in their “core business.”