Episode 13: Start With Why

Hello and welcome to Episode 13 of Metamorphosis, featuring the global bestseller, Start With Why, by the Ted Talk sensationalist, described as a “visionary thinker with a rare intellect,” Simon Sinek.

Start With Why has connotations to a way of thinking, acting and communicating that gives some leaders the ability to inspire those around them. Empirically, the book is etched with examples of Apple, Southwest Airlines, the Wright brothers and Martin Luther King, as Simon writes, “they all had one thing in common: they Started With Why.” This discerning statement, “People don’t buy what you do, they buy why you do it,” is proven through the lens of human biology. Simon uses the business canvas to expound on that.

The truth however is that “Most businesses don’t know why their customers are their customers, and they don't understand why their employees are their employees either. Today, most businesses make decisions based on a set of incomplete or, worse, completely flawed assumptions about what’s driving their business ad nauseum.”

Interestingly, there are two ways to influence human behaviour: you can manipulate or inspire it, and the book outlines why nearly every decision we make is like choosing toothpaste. In other words, it goes on to show how manipulation is the strategy of choice to motivate behaviour when faced with the difficulty of choosing the right option.

To dissociate leaders and organisations with a monumental degree of influence, Simon introduces the ‘Golden Circle’ concept as 3 concentric circles. The innermost is WHY then WHAT and finally HOW. Put simply, it helps us understand why we do what we do, and how much more we can achieve if we remind ourselves to start everything we do by first asking why. Furthermore, he points out that virtually every business knows WHAT they do, it’s easy to identify that, and some know HOW they do what they do, often under the guise of a “Unique Selling Proposition.” But very few can articulate WHY they do what they do and why should anyone care?

This is explained by the cross-section of the human brain, into the middle two, the neocortex and the limbic brain, wherein lies my first takeaway: “Gut decisions don’t happen in the Stomach.”

There is no part of the stomach that controls decision-making, it all happens in the limbic brain. ****The Neocortex is responsible for rational and analytical thought. At a neocortical level, we can verbalise our thoughts. The limbic brain is responsible for all our feelings of trust and loyalty, but it has no capacity for language. The over-arching theme here is, that decision-making and the ability to explain those decisions exist in different parts of the brain.

Consider the areas as you go through life, where you just ‘feel’ right. It is how our loved ones make us feel, but those feelings are really hard to put into words. It is how job applications question, the proverbial, “Why do you want to work here?” and we find it extremely difficult to explain, so we rationalise it. The bottom line is, that our limbic brain is extremely powerful to drive behaviour and the genius of great leadership lies in unearthing that.

Henry Ford said it best, “If I had asked people what they wanted, they would have said a faster horse.” Ask the most successful entrepreneurs and leaders what their secret is and invariably they all say the same thing: “I trust my gut.”

My next takeaway is that “Doing business is like dating”. Since the biology of decision making is the same whether it’s a personal decision or a business decision.

“In both circumstances, you sit across a table from someone and hope to say the right things to close the deal.” If you ramble on about what you’ve done, and who you know without saying WHY first, a second date is most unlikely.

Our WHAT only offers tangible proof of why we do it, but most people/businesses work so hard to prove their value without saying WHY they exist in the first place.

Most of us, go on about our achievements, showcasing our laurels, the places we have been to, the people we know, hoping someone finds us appealing, without even realising that the ability to put a WHY into words can provide the emotional context needed to get decisions made in our favour.

This speaks to the power of WHY, which can exert the full potential from feeling it’s right to ultimately knowing it’s right, where lies the greatest level of confidence.

My final takeaway is, “Start with Why but Know How.”

Put another way, in order to offer authenticity and consistency to your WHY, the HOW is immensely important to conquer. The truth about great organisations and leaders with monomaniacal successes is that they are able to surround themselves with the ones who know HOW.

In every case that goes on to inspire people and do great things, there exists a special partnership between WHY and HOW. Take the example of Steve Jobs and Steve Wozniak, Walt Disney and his brother Roy, Bill Gates and Paul Allen. Steve Jobs was this business savant, but Steve Wozniak is the one who made Apple work. This part of the book extols the partnership between the Why-type and the How-type.

When the roles for both types are certain, both work with a clarity of purpose and a plan to get there. For it to work, it requires more than a set of skills, it requires trust.

This brings us to the end of this episode and like always, leaves us with some words to live by:

“Leadership requires two things: a vision of the world that does not yet exist and the ability to communicate it.”