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

by Simon Sinek

We do better in cultures in which we are good fits.

A company is a culture. A group of people brought together around a common set of values and beliefs. It’s not products or services that bind a company together. It’s not size and might that make a company strong, it’s the culture—the strong sense of beliefs and values that everyone, from the CEO to the receptionist, all share. So the logic follows, the goal is not to hire people who simply have a skill set you need, the goal is to hire people who believe what you believe.

What makes the story of the Endurance so remarkable, however, is not the expedition, it’s that throughout the whole ordeal no one died. There were no stories of people eating others and no mutiny. This was not luck. This was because Shackleton hired good fits. He found the right men for the job. When you fill an organization with good fits, those who believe what you believe, success just happens.

Rather, Shackleton was looking for those with something more. He was looking for a crew that belonged on such an expedition. His actual ad ran like this: “Men wanted for Hazardous journey. Small wages, bitter cold, long months of complete darkness, constant danger, safe return doubtful. Honour and recognition in case of success.” The only people who applied for the job were those who read the ad and thought it sounded great. They loved insurmountable odds. The only people who applied for the job were survivors. Shackleton hired only people who believed what he believed. Their ability to survive was guaranteed. When employees belong, they will guarantee your success. And they won’t be working hard and looking for innovative solutions for you, they will be doing it for themselves.

What all great leaders have in common is the ability to find good fits to join their organizations—those who believe what they believe. Southwest Airlines is a great example of a company with a knack for hiring good fits. Their ability to find people who embody their cause makes it much easier for them to provide great service. As Herb Kelleher famously said, “You don’t hire for skills, you hire for attitude. You can always teach skills.” This is all fine and good; the problem is, which attitude? What if their attitude is not one that fits your culture?

The goal is to hire those who are passionate for your WHY, your purpose, cause or belief, and who have the attitude that fits your culture. Once that is established, only then should their skill set and experience be evaluated. Shackleton could have had the most experienced crew money could buy, but if they weren’t able to connect on a level much deeper than their ability, their survival would not have been a foregone conclusion.

Their genius came from figuring out why some people were such good fits and then developing systems to find more of them.

Great companies don’t hire skilled people and motivate them, they hire already motivated people and inspire them. People are either motivated or they are not. Unless you give motivated people something to believe in, something bigger than their job to work toward, they will motivate themselves to find a new job and you’ll be stuck with whoever’s left.

WHAT these two stonemasons are doing is exactly the same; the difference is, one has a sense of purpose. He feels like he belongs. He comes to work to be a part of something bigger than the job he’s doing. Simply having a sense of WHY changes his entire view of his job.

Companies with a strong sense of WHY are able to inspire their employees. Those employees are more productive and innovative, and the feeling they bring to work attracts other people eager to work there as well. It’s not such a stretch to see why the companies that we love to do business with are also the best employers. When people inside the company know WHY they come to work, people outside the company are vastly more likely to understand WHY the company is special. In these organizations, from the management on down, no one sees themselves as any more or any less than anyone else. They all need each other.

Langley had a bold goal, but he didn’t have a clear sense of WHY. His purpose for wanting to build the plane was defined in terms of WHAT he was doing and WHAT he could get.

What the Wright brothers were doing wasn’t any different from Langley or all the others trying to build a flying machine. But the Wright brothers did have something very special. They had a dream. They knew WHY it was important to build this thing. They believed that if they could figure out this flying machine, it would change the world. They imagined the benefits to everyone else if they were successful.

Langley, Tobin said, “did not have the Wrights’ passion for flight, but rather was looking for achievement.”

What the Wright brothers’ team had that Langley did wasn’t luck. It was inspiration.

He wasn’t first, so he simply quit.

Dream teams are not always so dreamy. When a team of experts comes together they often work for themselves and not for the good of the whole. This is what happens when companies feel the need to pay mega-salaries to “get the best talent.” Those people are not necessarily showing up because they believe in your WHY, they are showing up for the money.

Average companies give their people something to work on. In contrast, the most innovative organizations give their people something to work toward.

The role of a leader is not to come up with all the great ideas. The role of a leader is to create an environment in which great ideas can happen. It is the people inside the company, those on the front lines, who are best qualified to find new ways of doing things.

Apple’s employees simply look for ways to bring their cause to life in as many places as they can. And it works.

But great companies give their people a purpose or challenge around which to develop ideas rather than simply instruct them to make a better mousetrap.

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.

People who come to work with a clear sense of WHY are less prone to giving up after a few failures because they understand the higher cause. Thomas Edison, a man definitely driven by a higher cause, said, “I didn’t find a way to make a lightbulb, I found a thousand ways how not to make one.”

They had two choices: they could scale back their operations, or they could figure out how to turn their planes around in ten minutes. And thus was born the ten-minute turnaround.

And gambling is very different from calculated risk. Calculated risk accepts that there can be great losses, but steps are taken to either guard against or respond to an unlikely but possible outcome.

What is more interesting is the culture at the bank that could allow these conditions to exist in the first place. Barings had lost its WHY.

The culture at Barings was no longer one in which people came to work inspired. Motivated, yes, but not inspired.

The lack of a clear set of values and beliefs, along with the weak culture that resulted, created the conditions for an every-man-for-himself environment, the long-term impact of which could yield little else than disaster. This is caveman stuff. If the people aren’t looking out for the community, then the benefits of a community erode. Many companies have star employees and star salesmen and so on, but few have a culture that produces great people as a rule and not an exception.

If there were no trust, then no one would take risks. No risks would mean no exploration, no experimentation and no advancement of the society as a whole. That’s a remarkable concept: only when individuals can trust the culture or organization will they take personal risks in order to advance that culture or organization as a whole. For no other reason than, in the end, it’s good for their own personal health and survival.

Developing trust to encourage people other than those with a predilection for risk, like Nick Leeson, is a better long-term strategy.

Great organizations become great because the people inside the organization feel protected. The strong sense of culture creates a sense of belonging and acts like a net. People come to work knowing that their bosses, colleagues and the organization as a whole will look out for them. This results in reciprocal behavior. Individual decisions, efforts and behaviors that support, benefit and protect the long-term interest of the organization as a whole.

It’s a subtle irony that one of the best customer service companies in the country focuses on its employees before its customers.

“Sir, it was not my fault,” Captain Robinson replied calmly. “Check the video. You’ll see.” General Jumper, then the 57th Wing commander, a graduate of the USAF Fighter Weapons School, and a former instructor at Nellis, routinely evaluated every detail of every training mission he flew. Pilots often relied on the video to learn from their exercises. The video didn’t lie. And it didn’t on that day either. It revealed that the error was indeed his, not Captain Robinson’s. It was a classic blunder. He had forgotten he was part of a team. He had forgotten that what made him so good at his job was not just his ability. Jumper was one of the best because there were others who were looking out for him. A massive infrastructure of people he couldn’t see.

General Jumper forgot WHY he was so good and made a split-second decision that cost him his life.

“If enough of us do this,” she goes on, referring to WHY she does what she does, “then we leave this military and this country in better shape than we found it. And isn’t that the point?” And it is that sense of purpose, a clear idea of WHY she comes to work, that has been the cornerstone of General Robinson’s success. And that, incidentally, has been remarkable.

Great leadership is not about flexing and intimidation; great leaders, as General Robinson proves, lead with WHY. They embody a sense of purpose that inspires those around them.

She’s a great leader because she understands that earning the trust of an organization doesn’t come from setting out to impress everyone, it comes from setting out to serve those who serve her. It is the invisible trust that gives a leader the following they need to get things done. And in Lori Robinson’s case, things get done.

Trust matters. Trust comes from being a part of a culture or organization with a common set of values and beliefs. Trust is maintained when the values and beliefs are actively managed. If companies do not actively work to keep their Golden Circle in balance—clarity, discipline and consistency—then trust starts to break down. A company, indeed any organization, must work actively to remind everyone WHY the company exists. WHY it was founded in the first place. What it believes. 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.

Passion comes from feeling like you are a part of something that you believe in, something bigger than yourself. If people do not trust that a company is organized to advance the WHY, then the passion is diluted. Without managed trust, people will show up to do their jobs and they will worry primarily about themselves.

For it to work, the celebrity needs to represent some clear cause or belief.

A trusted recommendation is powerful enough to trump facts and figures and even multimillion-dollar marketing budgets.

TiVo’s flop defied conventional wisdom. Their struggles, however, are easily understood if you consider that they thought WHAT they did mattered more than WHY.

And 99.9 percent of all businesses in America have fewer than 500 employees. In other words, mass-market success is really hard to achieve.

The best does not always win.

That’s what a manipulation is. They may buy, but they won’t be loyal.

The ability to get the system to tip is the point at which the growth of a business or the spreading of an idea starts to move at an extraordinary pace. It is also at this point that a product gains mass-market acceptance. The point at which an idea becomes a movement. When that happens, the growth is not only exponential, it is automatic. It just goes.

The goal of business then should not be to simply sell to anyone who wants what you have—the majority—but rather to find people who believe what you believe, the left side of the bell curve. They perceive greater value in what you do and will happily pay a premium or suffer some sort of inconvenience to be a part of your cause. They are the ones who, on their own volition, will tell others about you.

If you apply the principles of the Golden Circle, the answer is clear—people don’t buy WHAT you do, they buy WHY you do it, and TiVo attempted to convince consumers to buy by telling them only WHAT the product did. Features and rational benefits. The practical-minded, technophobic mass market’s response was predictable. “I don’t understand it. I don’t need it. I don’t like it. You’re scaring me.” There were a small number of TiVo loyalists, probably about 10 percent, those who just “got it,” who didn’t need an explicit articulation of WHY. They exist to this day, but there were not enough of them to create the tipping point that TiVo needed and predicted.

it was TiVo’s failure to properly communicate and rally the left side of the bell curve to educate and encourage the adoption that was the reason so few people “got their hands on it.” TiVo did not start with WHY. They ignored the left side of the curve and completely failed to find the tipping point. And for those reasons, “people didn’t get their hands on it,” and the mass market didn’t buy it.

Absent a WHY, new ideas and technologies quickly find themselves playing the price-and-feature game—a sure sign of an absence of WHY and a slide into commodity status.

They may have been able to pass legislation, but they needed more than that, they needed to change a country. Only