WHY START WITH WHY?
The goal of this book is not simply to try to fix the things that aren’t working. Rather, take this book as a guide to focus on and amplify the things that do work.
This book is about the naturally occurring thinking pattern, a way of thinking, acting and communicating that gives some leaders the ability to inspire those around them. Here the author is not trying to questing the methods suggested by other leaders but is asking the readers to know their WHY before following the HOW from others.
PART-1: A WORLD THAT DOESN’T START WITH WHY
Assume you know
We make assumptions about the world around us based on sometimes incomplete or false information. Our behavior is affected by our assumptions or our perceived truths. We make decisions based on what we think we know. It wasn’t too long ago that the majority of the people believed that the world was flat.
We all want to make educated decisions. More importantly, we all want to make right decisions. However, not all decisions are right decisions and sometimes the impact of the wrong decisions cab be catastrophic. So, how can we ensure that all our decisions will yield the best results. Logic dictates that more information and data are key. And that’s exactly we do. We collect mountains of data, good advice by read books, attend conferences, listen to podcasts and ask friends and colleagues.
More data, however, doesn’t help, especially if a flawed assumption set the whole process in motion in the first place.
Carrots and Sticks
Manipulation vs. inspiration: There are two ways to influence human behavior: you can manipulate it of you can inspire it. From business to politics, manipulations run rampant in all forms of sales and marketing. Some typical examples of manipulations include:
- Price: Many companies are reluctant to play the price game, but they do so because they know it is effective. Price always costs something. The question is, how much are you willing to pay for the money you make?
- Promotions: Promotions are such common manipulations that we often forget that we’re being manipulated in the first place. 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. In the manipulative nature of promotions there are 2 terminologies used:
- Breakage: Breakage measures the percentage of customers who fail to take advantage of a promotion and end up paying full price for a product instead.
- Slippage: Slippage is the number of customers who just don’t bother to apply for the rebate, or who never cash the rebate check they receive.
- Fear: 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. When fear is employed, facts are incidental.
- Aspiration: If fear motivates us to move away from something horrible, aspirational messages tempt us toward something desirable. 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.
- Peer pressure: 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. Celebrity endorsements are sometimes used to add peer pressure to the sales pitch. “If he uses it,” we’re supposed to think, “it must be good.”
- Novelty (a.k.a. innovation): Real innovation changes the course of industries or even society. There is a difference slight difference between innovation and novelty. 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. Adding a camera to a mobile phone, for example, is not an innovation—a great feature, for sure, but not industry-altering. That’s what we call adding novelty in the market. Novelty can drive sales but the impact does not last.
The price you pay for the money you make
One cannot dispute that manipulations work. Every one of them can indeed help influence behaviour 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. 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 Lead to Transactions, Not Loyalty
Manipulations are a perfectly valid strategy for driving a transaction, or for any behaviour that is only required once or on rare occasions. In any circumstance in which a person or organization wants more than a single transaction, however, if there is a hope for a loyal, lasting relationship, manipulations do not help. 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.
Just Because It Works Doesn’t Make It Right
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 organization, regardless of size or industry.
The reality is, in today’s world, manipulations are the norm. But there is an alternative.
PART-2: AN ALTERNATIVE PERSPECTIVE
The Golden Circle
There are a few leaders who choose to inspire rather than manipulate in order to motivate people. Whether individuals or organizations, every single one of these inspiring leaders thinks, acts and communicates exactly the same way. And it’s the complete opposite of the rest of us. Consciously or not, how they do it is by following a naturally occurring pattern that I call The Golden Circle.
The Golden Circle provides compelling evidence of how much more we can achieve if we remind ourselves to start everything we do by first asking why.
WHAT: What are easy to identify. Every single company or organization know what they do.
HOW: Some companies and people know HOW they do WHAT they do.
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?
People don’t buy WHAT you do, they buy WHY you do it.
Not the Only Way, Just One Way
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.
THIS IS NOT OPINION, THIS IS BIOLOGY
Sometimes our feeling of belonging is incidental. Our desire to feel like we belong is so powerful that we will go to great lengths, do irrational things and often spend money to get that feeling. We want to be around people and organisations who are like us and share our beliefs. That’s the reason why we travel across and meet someone from our hometown and we instantly have a connection with them although we were not friends when we were in the same town earlier.
That’s the reason why we are drawn to leaders and organisations that are good at communicating what they believe. Their ability to make us feel like we belong, to make us feel special, and safe and not alone is part of what gives them the ability to inspire us.
Gut Decisions Don’t Happen in Your Stomach
The power of WHY is not opinion, it’s biology. If you look at a cross section of the human brain, from the TOP down, you see that the levels of The Golden Circle correspond precisely with the three major levels of brain.
Neocortex is responsible for rational and analytical thought and language. The middle two sections comprise the limbic brain which is responsible for all our feelings, such as trust and loyalty. It is also responsible for all human behaviour and all our decision-making, but it has no capacity for language. It is this disconnection that makes putting our feelings into words so hard. That’s the reason when a decision feels right, we have a hard time explaining why we did what we did. This is where ‘Gut-Decisions” come from. They just feel right.
Our limbic brain is powerful, powerful enough to drive behaviour that sometimes contradicts our rational and analytical understanding of a situation. We often trust our gut even if the decision flies in the face of all the facts and figures. Richard Restak, a well-known neuroscientist, talks about this in his book The Naked Brain.
This is what we mean when we talk about winning hearts and minds. The heart represents the limbic, feeling part of the brain, and the mind is the rational, language center. The ability to win hearts before minds is not easy. It’s a delicate balance of art and science—another coincidental grammatical construction. Why is it that things are not a balance of science and art, but always art before science? Perhaps it is a subtle clue our language-impaired limbic brain is sending us to help us see that the art of leading is about following your heart. Perhaps our brains are trying to tell us that WHY must come first.
Great leaders are those who trust their gut. They are those who understand the art before the science. They win hearts before minds. They are the ones who start with WHY.
People don’t buy WHAT you do, they buy WHY you do it. A failure to communicate WHY creates nothing but stress or doubt.
It’s What You Can’t See That Matters
The power of the limbic brain is astounding. It not only controls our gut decisions, but it can influence us to do things that seem illogical or irrational. If we were all rational, there would be no small businesses, there would be no exploration, there would be very little innovation and there would be no great leaders to inspire all those things. It is the undying belief in something bigger and better that drives that kind of behaviour.
Products with a clear sense of WHY give people a way to tell the outside world who they are and what they believe. Remember, people don’t buy WHAT you do, they buy WHY you do it.
CLARITY, DISCIPLINE AND CONSISTENCY
When the why is absent, imbalance is produced and manipulations thrive. And when manipulations thrive, uncertainty increases for buyers, instability increases for sellers and stress increases for all.
Clarity of Why
It all starts with Clarity. You have to know WHY you do WHAT you do. If you don’t know WHY you do WHAT you do, then how will anyone else? And if people don’t buy WHAT you do, they buy WHY you do it.
Discipline of HOW
Once you know WHY you do what you do, the question is HOW will you do it? HOWs are your values of principles that guide HOW to bring your cause to life. Ironically, WHY you do WHAT you do is quiet simple and efficient to discover. It’s the discipline to never veer from your cause, to hold yourself accountable HOW you do things is the hardest part.
Consistency of WHAT
Everything you say and everything you do has to prove what you believe. A WHY is just a belief. That’s all it is. HOWs are the actions you take to realize that belief. And WHATs are the results of those actions. The only way people will know what you believe is by the things that you say and do, and if you’re not consistent in the things you say and do, no one will now what you believe. What authenticity means is that your Golden Circle is in balance.
The Right Order
WHY must come first as the WHY provides the context for everything else. Starting with WHY is what inspires people to act.
If You Don’t Know WHY, You Can’t Know HOW
It is a false assumption that differentiation happens in HOW and WHAT you do. Simply offering a high-quality product with more features or better service or a better price does not create difference. Doing so guarantees no success. Differentiation happens in WHY and HOW you do it. Only when the WHY is clear and when people believe what you believe can a true loyal relationship develop.
Only when the WHY is clear and when people believe what you believe can a true loyal relationship develop.
Manipulation and Inspiration Are Similar, but Not the Same
Manipulation and inspiration both tickle the limbic brain.When we are inspired, the decisions we make have more to do with who we are and less to do with the companies or the products we’re buying. When our decisions feel right, we’re willing to pay a premium or suffer an inconvenience for those products or services.
When WHY, HOW, and WHAT are in balance, authenticity is achieved and the buyer feels fulfilled. When they are out of balance, stress or uncertainty exists. When that happens, the decisions we make will also be out of balance. Without WHY, the buyer is easily motivated by aspiration or fear. At that point, it is the buyer who is at the greatest risk of ending up being inauthentic.
The Golden Circle; it provides a way to communicate consistent with how individuals receive information. For this reason an organization must be clear about its purpose, cause or belief and make sure that everything they say and do is consistent with and authentic to that belief.
Doing Business is Like Dating
The way we communicate and the way we behave is all a matter of biology. That means we can make some comparisons between the things we do in our social lives and the things we do in our professional lives. In both circumstances, you sit across a table from someone and hope to say enough of the right things to close the deal. In business, like a bad date, many companies work so hard to prove their value without saying WHY they exist in the first place. People are people and the biology of decision-making is the same no matter whether it is a personal decision or a business decision.
Three Degrees of Certainty
For an individual or a small organization Gut decision can work, like when you say that ‘this decision feels right‘, however, when it comes to decision making by a group of people, this thing may not work. That’s when the power of WHY can be fully realized. The ability to put a WHY into words provides the emotional context for decisions. It offers greater confidence than “I think it’s right.” It’s more scalable than “I feel it’s right.” When you know your WHY, the highest level of confidence you can offer is, “I know it’s right.” When you know the decision is right, not only does it feel right, but you can also rationalize it and easily put it into words. The decision is fully balanced.
PART-3: LEADERS NEED A FOLLOWING
THE EMERGENCE OF TRUST
You can’t have a good product without people who like coming to work. It is a company’s responsibility to look after the employees first. Happy employees ensure happy customers. Trust is a feeling, not a rational experience. Trust begins to emerge when we have a sense that another person or organization is driven by things other than their own self-gain. With trust comes a sense of value—real value, not just value equated with money. Value, by definition, is the transference of trust. You can’t convince someone you have value, just as you can’t convince someone to trust you. You have to earn trust by communicating and demonstrating that you share the same values and beliefs. You have to talk about your WHY and prove it with WHAT you do.
The Only Difference Between You and a Caveman Is the Car You Drive
We trust people with common values and beliefs. We’re friends with people who see the world the way we see it, who share our views and our belief set. 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.
Finding the People Who Believe What You Believe
When you fill an organization with good fits, those who believe what you believe, success just happens. 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 organisations—those who believe what they believe. don’t hire for skills, hire for attitude and hire only passionate people. Starting with WHY when hiring dramatically increases your ability to attract those who are passionate for what you believe. 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. 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.
Innovation Happens at the Edges
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. If the people inside a company are told to come to work and just do their job, that’s all they will do. If they are constantly reminded WHY the company was founded and told to always look for ways to bring that cause to life while performing their job, however, then they will do more than their job. When people come to work with a higher sense of purpose, they find it easier to weather hard times or even to find opportunity in those hard times. 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.“
The Definition of Trust
Trust is a remarkable thing. Trust allows us to rely on others. We rely on those we trust for advice to help us make decisions. Trust is the bedrock for the advancement of our own lives, our families, our companies, our societies and our species. No risks would mean no exploration, no experimentation and no advancement of the society as a whole. 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.
Real Trust Comes from the Things You Can’t See
Great leadership is not about flexing and intimidation; great leaders lead with WHY. They embody a sense of purpose that inspires those around them. A great leader 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. Trust is maintained when the values and beliefs are actively managed. Passion comes from feeling like you are a part of something that you believe in, something bigger than yourself.
The Influence of Others
Whom do you trust more, someone you know or someone you don’t know? What do you trust more, a claim made in a piece of advertising or a recommendation from a friend?
We are more likely to trust those who share our values and beliefs. A trusted recommendation is powerful enough to trump facts and figures and even multimillion-dollar marketing budgets.
HOW A TIPPING POINT TIPS
In his aptly named book The Tipping Point, Gladwell identifies groups of necessary populations he calls connectors and influencers.
The first 2.5 percent of the population are the innovators who pursue new products or ideas aggressively and are intrigued by any fundamental advance; and the next 13.5 percent are early adopters.
Early adopters are similar to innovators in that they appreciate the advantages brought by new ideas or technologies. They are early to recognise the value of new ideas and are quite willing to put up with imperfection because they can see the potential. The next 34 percent of the population are the early majority, followed by the late majority, and finally the laggards on the far right side of the spectrum. Laggards are the ones who buy touchtone phones only because they don’t make rotary phones anymore. The early and late majority are more practical-minded.
The farther right you go on the curve, the more you will encounter the clients and customers who may need what you have, but don’t necessarily believe what you believe. According to the Law of Diffusion, mass-market success can only be achieved after you penetrate between 15 percent and 18 percent of the market. loyalty is when people are willing to suffer some inconvenience or pay a premium to do business with you. It is the percentage of people who share your beliefs and want to incorporate your ideas, your products and your services into their own lives as WHATs to their own WHYs. They look to WHAT you do as a tangible element that demonstrates their own purpose, cause or belief to the outside world.
We all sit at different places on this spectrum depending on the product or idea. When we sit on one side of the spectrum, we often have a hard time understanding those on the other side because their behaviour doesn’t make sense to us.
According to the Law of Diffusion, mass-market success can only be achieved after you penetrate between 15 percent and 18 percent of the market. That’s because the early majority won’t try something new until someone else has tried it first. This is why we have to drop our price or offer value-added services.
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.
If you have the discipline to focus on the early adopters, the majority will come along eventually. But it must start with WHY. When you start with WHY, those who believe what you believe are drawn to you for very personal reasons.
PART-4: HOW TO RALLY THOSE WHO BELIEVE
START WITH WHY, BUT KNOW HOW
Energy motivates but charisma inspires. Energy is easy to see, easy to measure and easy to copy. Charisma is hard to define, near impossible to measure and too elusive to copy. All great leaders have charisma because all great leaders have clarity of WHY; an undying belief in a purpose or cause bigger than themselves. Charisma has nothing to do with energy; it comes from a clarity of WHY. It comes from absolute conviction in an ideal bigger than oneself. Energy, in contrast, comes from a good night’s sleep or lots of caffeine. Energy can excite. But only charisma can inspire. Charisma commands loyalty. Energy does not.
The Chosen Path
Regardless of WHAT we do in our lives, our WHY—our driving purpose, cause or belief—never changes. It takes more than inspiration to become great. Inspiration only starts the process; you need something more to drive a movement.
Amplify the Source of Inspiration
The Golden Circle is not just a communication tool; it also provides some insight into how great organizations are organized. Turn on the sides of the golden circle to see its full value.
The cone represents a company or an organization. CEO sits at the top representing its WHY. 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 realise that belief and WHATs are the results of those actions.
The leader sits at the top of the cone—at the start, the point of WHY—while the HOW-types sit below and are responsible for actually making things happen. The leader imagines the destination and the HOW-types find the route to get there.
Those Who Know WHY Need Those Who Know HOW
WHY-types are the visionaries, the ones with the overactive imaginations. They tend to be optimists who believe that all the things they imagine can actually be accomplished. HOW-types live more in the here and now. They are the realists and have a clearer sense of all things practical. One is not better than the other, they are just different ways people naturally see and experience the world.
Most people in the world are HOW-types. Most people are quite functional in the real world and can do their jobs and do very well. Some may be very successful and even make millions of dollars, but they will never build billion-dollar businesses or change the world. HOW-types don’t need WHY-types to do well. But WHY-guys, for all their vision and imagination, often get the short end of the stick. Without someone inspired by their vision and the knowledge to make it a reality, most WHY-types end up as starving visionaries, people with all the answers but never accomplishing much themselves. It is the partnership of a vision of the future and the talent to get it done that makes an organization great. It requires more than a set of skills, it requires trust.
Say It Only If You Believe It
Great organisations don’t just drive profits, they lead people, and they change the course of industries and sometimes our lives in the process. A clear sense of WHY sets expectations. When we don’t know an organization’s WHY, we don’t know what to expect, so we expect the minimum—price, quality, service, features.
KNOW WHY. KNOW HOW. THEN WHAT?
WHY never changes. WHAT you do can change with the times, but WHY you do it never does.
Speak Clearly and Ye Shall Be Clearly Understood
An organization is represented by the cone in the three-dimensional view of The Golden Circle. Everything an organization says and does communicates the leader’s vision to the outside world. If people don’t buy WHAT you do, they buy WHY you do it, and if all the things happening at the WHAT level do not clearly represent WHY the company exists, then the ability to inspire is severely complicated.
the CEO’s job, the leader’s responsibility, is not to focus on the outside market—it’s to focus on the layer directly beneath: HOW. The leader must ensure that there are people on the team who believe what they believe and know HOW to build it. The HOW-types are responsible for understanding WHY and must come to work every day to develop the systems and hire the people who are ultimately responsible for bringing the WHY to life.
Remember, the part of the brain that controls feelings and the part that controls language are not the same.
PART-5: The Biggest Challenge is Success
WHEN WHY GOES FUZZY
There are 27.7 million registered businesses in the United States today and only a thousand of them get to be FORTUNE 1000 companies, which these days require about $1.5 billion in annual revenues. That means that less than .004 percent of all companies make it to the illustrious list. To have such an impact, to build a company to a size where it can drive markets, requires something more.
A company once started with a clear WHY when loses its perspective and when it’s WHY gets fuzzy it does not get the same love anymore from the people working for it and even from the people the company is working for. If the WHY is not clear from inside, it will never be clear on the outside.
Being Successful vs. Feeling Successful
It is important to have a deep personal connection between WHAT you do and WHY you are doing it. If you lose your sense of WHY you are doing it what you are doing it, then you may be Successful in what you are doing it but you will not feel Successful in what you are doing it.
Achievement vs. Success
For some people, there is an irony to success. Many people who achieve great success don’t always feel it. Some who achieve fame talk about the loneliness that often goes with it. That’s because success and achievement are not the same thing, yet too often we mistake one for the other.
Achievement is something you reach or attain, like a goal. It is something tangible, clearly defined and measurable. Success, in contrast, is a feeling or a state of being. Achievement comes when you pursue and attain WHAT you want. Success comes when you are clear in pursuit of WHY you want it. The former is motivated by tangible factors while the latter by something deeper in the brain. Success comes when we wake up every day in that never-ending pursuit of WHY we do WHAT we do.
In the course of building a business or a career, we become more confident in WHAT we do. We become greater experts in HOW to do it. However, for most of us, somewhere in the journey we forget WHY we set out on the journey in the first place.
SPLIT HAPPENS
The reason so many small businesses fail, however, is because passion alone can’t cut it. For passion to survive, it needs structure. 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. When the company is small, the founder will rely on his gut to make all the major decisions. But as the organization grows, as it becomes more successful, it becomes physically impossible for one person to make every major decision. Not only must others be trusted and relied upon to make big decisions, but those people will also start making hiring choices. And slowly but surely, the clarity of WHY starts to dilute.
In such cases the goal should be to ensure that as the measurement of WHAT grows, the clarity of the WHY stays closely aligned.
Good Successions Keep the WHY Alive
When the person who personifies the WHY departs without clearly articulating WHY the company was founded in the first place, they leave no clear cause for their successor to lead. The new CEO will come aboard to run the company and will focus attention on the growth of WHAT with little attention to WHY. Worse, they may try to implement their own vision without considering the cause that originally inspired most people to show up in the first place. In these cases, the leader can work against the culture of the company instead of leading or building upon it. The result is diminished morale, mass exodus, poor performance and a slow and steady transition to a culture of mistrust and every-man-for-himself.
Successful succession is more than selecting someone with an appropriate skill set—it’s about finding someone who is in lockstep with the original cause around which the company was founded.
When the WHY Goes, WHAT Is All You’ll Have Left
When we are unclear about our WHY, WHAT we do has no context. Even though the things we do or decisions we make may be good, they won’t make sense to others without a clear understanding of WHY.
Part-6: DISCOVER WHY
THE ORIGINS OF A WHY
The WHY Comes from Looking Back
The WHY does not come from looking ahead at what you want to achieve and figuring out an appropriate strategy to get there. It is not born out of any market research. It does not come from extensive interviews with customers or even employees. It comes from looking in the completely opposite direction from where you are now. Finding WHY is a process of discovery, not invention.
To Inspire People to Do the Things That Inspire Them
Henry Ford said, “If you think you can or you think you can’t, you’re right.”
Do things that inspire people, and to be authentic to that cause there is only one way to do it – to give it away, to talk about it, to share it. The vision should be to have every person and every organization know their WHY and use it to benefit all they do.
If You Follow Your WHY, Then Others Will Follow You
All organisations start with WHY, but only the great ones keep their WHY clear year after year.
Imagine if every organization started with WHY. Decisions would be simpler. Loyalties would be greater. Trust would be a common currency. If our leaders were diligent about starting with WHY, optimism would reign and innovation would thrive. As this book illustrates, there is precedence for this standard. No matter the size of the organization, no matter the industry, no matter the product or the service, if we all take some responsibility to start with WHY and inspire others to do the same, then, together, we can change the world. And that’s pretty inspiring.