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

by Simon Sinek

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.

Cult vibes

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 reality is, most businesses today are making decisions based on a set of incomplete or, worse, completely flawed assumptions about what’s driving their business.

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

A powerful manipulator, fear is often used with far less nefarious motivations. We use fear to raise our kids. We use fear to motivate people to obey a code of ethics. Fear is regularly used in public service ads, say to promote child safety or AIDS awareness, or the need to wear seat belts. Anyone who was watching television in the 1980s got a heavy dose of antidrug advertising, including one often-mimicked public service ad from a federal program to combat drug abuse among teenagers: “This is your brain,” the man’s voice said as he held up a pristine white egg. Then he cracked the egg into a frying pan of spattering hot oil. “This is your brain on drugs. . . . Any questions?” And another ad intended to scare the hell out of any brash teenager: “Cocaine doesn’t make you sexy . . . it makes you dead.” Likewise, when politicians say that their opponent will raise taxes or cut spending on law enforcement, or the evening news alerts you that your health or security are at risk unless you tune in at eleven, both are attempting to seed fear among voters and viewers, respectively. Businesses also use fear to agitate the insecurity we all have in order to sell products. The idea is that if you don’t buy the product or service, something bad could happen to you.

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

Though positive in nature, aspirational messages are most effective with those who lack discipline or have a nagging fear or insecurity that they don’t have the ability to achieve their dreams on their own

The peer pressure works because we believe that the majority or the experts might know more than we do. Peer pressure works not because the majority or the experts are always right, but because we fear that we may be wrong.

All of these tactics feed on insecurity... this is when it started feeling like a textbook

Apple is not only leading how mobile phones are designed, but, in typical Apple fashion, also how the industry functions. In the mobile phone industry, it is the service provider, not the phone manufacturer, that determines all the features and benefits the phone can offer. T-Mobile, Verizon Wireless, Sprint, AT&T all dictate to Motorola, Nokia, Ericsson, LG and others what the phones will do. Then Apple showed up. They announced that they would tell the service provider what the phone would do, not the other way around. AT&T was the only one that agreed, thus earning the company the exclusive deal to offer the new technology. That’s the kind of shift that will impact the industry for many years and will extend far beyond a few years of stock boost for the shiny new product. Novel, huh?

This is really interesting!!

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.

After September 11, there were customers who sent checks to Southwest Airlines to show their support. One note that accompanied a check for $1,000 read, “You’ve been so good to me over the years, in these hard times I wanted to say thank you by helping you out.” The checks that Southwest Airlines received were certainly not enough to make any significant impact on the company’s bottom line, but they were symbolic of the feeling customers had for the brand. They had a sense of partnership. The loyal behavior of those who didn’t send money is almost impossible to measure, but its impact has been invaluable over the long term, helping Southwest to maintain its position as the most profitable airline in history.

This is an interesting story

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. Everyone is easily able to describe the products or services a company sells or the job function they have within that system. WHATs are easy to identify. 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. Not as obvious as WHATs, many think these are the differentiating or motivating factors in a decision. It would be false to assume that’s all that is required. There is one missing detail: 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?

When most organizations or people think, act or communicate they do so from the outside in, from WHAT to WHY. And for good reason—they go from clearest thing to the fuzziest thing. We say WHAT we do, we sometimes say HOW we do it, but we rarely say WHY we do WHAT we do.

It’s worth repeating: people don’t buy WHAT you do, they buy WHY you do it.

Creative was more qualified than Apple to introduce a digital music product. 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.” The difference is Creative told us WHAT their product was and Apple told us WHY we needed it.

Knowing your WHY is not the only way to be successful, but it is the only way to maintain a lasting success and have a greater blend of innovation and flexibility. When a WHY goes fuzzy, it becomes much more difficult to maintain the growth, loyalty and inspiration that helped drive the original success. By difficult, I mean that manipulation rather than inspiration fast becomes the strategy of choice to motivate behavior. This is effective in the short term but comes at a high cost in the long term.

But when a company clearly communicates their WHY, what they believe, and we believe what they believe, then we will sometimes go to extraordinary lengths to include those products or brands in our lives.