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

by Simon Sinek

Walton believed in people. He believed that if he looked after people, people would look after him. The more Wal-Mart could give to employees, customers and the community, the more that employees, customers and the community would give back to Wal-Mart. “We’re all working together; that’s the secret,” said Walton.

Wal-Mart was WHAT Walton built to serve his fellow human beings. To serve the community, to serve employees and to serve customers. Service was a higher cause.

“A computer can tell you down to the dime what you’ve sold, but it can never tell you how much you could have sold,” said Walton.

The greatest challenge Wal-Mart has faced over the years comes from one place: itself.

What has changed is that their WHY went fuzzy. And we all know it.

It is not destiny or some mystical business cycle that transforms successful companies into impersonal goliaths. It’s people.

A WHY without the HOWs, passion without structure, has a very high probability of failure.

The single greatest challenge any organization will face is . . . success.

But it is the ability to inspire, to maintain clarity of WHY, that gives only a few people and organizations the ability to lead. The moment at which the clarity of WHY starts to go fuzzy is the split. At this point organizations may be loud, but they are no longer clear.

The School Bus Test is a simple metaphor. If a founder or leader of an organization were to be hit by a school bus, would the organization continue to thrive at the same pace without them at the helm? So many organizations are built on the force of a single personality that their departure can cause significant disruption. The question isn’t if it happens—all founders eventually leave or die—it’s just a question of when and how prepared the organization is for the inevitable departure. The challenge isn’t to cling to the leader, it’s to find effective ways to keep the founding vision alive forever.

Future leaders and employees alike must be inspired by something bigger than the force of personality of the founder and must see beyond profit and shareholder value alone.

In 1993, Harbridge moved to San Francisco and started her own collections firm, Bridgeport Financial, steeped in the belief that agents would have more success treating people with respect than badgering them. Harbridge built her company on her WHY—that everyone has a story and everyone deserves to be listened to.

She found a way to measure WHY.

At Bridgeport Financial, bonuses were not given for the amount of money that was collected; they were given based on how many “thank you” cards her agents sent out.

Bridgeport Financial collected 300 percent more than the industry average.

Harbridge’s business succeeded not just because she knew WHY she was doing what she was doing, but because she found a way to measure the WHY. The company’s growth was loud and her cause was clear. She started with WHY and the rest followed.

Because he figured out how to measure a value he holds dear, that value is embraced.

Just because somebody makes a lot of money does not mean that he necessarily provides a lot of value.

Value is a feeling, not a calculation. It is perception.

was people Walton valued above all else. People.

Look after people and people will look after you was his belief, and everything Walton and Wal-Mart did proved it.

Since Sam Walton’s death, Wal-Mart has been battered by scandals of mistreating employees and customers all in the name of shareholder value.