Name: Start With Why (New Version)
Rating: 4.7 (838 reviews)
Author: Simon Sinek

What’s in it for me? Learn to inspire others by leveraging the power of why.

Have you ever heard of Puget Sound? If you’re not from the Pacific Northwest or a distinguished connoisseur of naval shipyards, the answer is likely no. So when the TEDx conference happened there in 2009, in an inconspicuous room that seated slightly more than a hundred people, it wasn’t a big deal. The first speaker of the night was a no-name, a law school dropout who’d gone into marketing. And his microphone didn’t even work properly until it was suddenly switched on mid-speech.

But listeners soon realized that there was something captivating about the guy. The room was so silent you could’ve heard a pin drop – the audience was that captivated. At one point, he drew three concentric circles on a whiteboard. In the middle, in big, fat letters, he wrote a single word: “why?” Then he uttered a sentence that he would go on to repeat endlessly throughout not only the talk but also the rest of his life: “People don’t buy what you do; they buy why you do it.” No one realized it at the time, but this would become the third most clicked-on TED talk of all time. The title: “Start with Why – How Great Leaders Inspire Action.” And the name of the speaker? Simon Sinek.

In the chapters that follow, we’ll be walking you through the book that followed Sinek’s famous TED Talk and which has the same name. At this point, the book is just in its teenage years, but it’s already a classic; if you want to start a business or become a leader, there’s no way around it. In this Blink, you’ll learn two things: first, how to come up with an inspiring vision; second, how to communicate it. In his talk and his book, Sinek often used Apple as an example, and we’ll do the same. Here’s what to expect: we’ll lay some groundwork, explaining how inspiring leadership works according to Sinek and what the three concentric circles – also known as the Golden Circle – have to do with it. Then we’ll get practical, and you’ll get some tips on how to apply it in your everyday business practices – that is, how you can find your “why” and put it into practice. So without further ado, let’s get right into it.

How to inspire . . . and how not to

All right! The goal here is to turn you into an inspirational leader – if you aren’t one already. Before that can happen, though, you need to understand what inspiration actually is and how it works. And to understand inspiration, it’s best to first understand its opposite.

Sinek identifies two main ways to influence the behavior of others, whether they’re your employees or customers: inspiration and manipulation. And while companies want to be inspirational, many of them are actually manipulative.

Mind you, “manipulation” here doesn’t mean brainwashing people into buying products or anything; it refers to a strategy of laying out incentives. Basically, it means the carrot and the stick. Just think of the plethora of marketing messages you’re bombarded with every day. Half off, for a limited time only! Supplies limited! Buy two, get one free! These are anything that pushes consumers to buy – think clearance sales, advertising hype, and appeals to authority with claims like “Four out of five dentists prefer Trident.” Manipulation is a popular strategy – and it’s effective, too. The only problem is that it doesn’t work over the long haul.

That’s because manipulation doesn’t breed loyal customers. When you manipulate your customers, they come to you for the good deals, not because they like you. This becomes painfully visible in tough economic times; when you have to raise your prices, your customers will desert you for a better offer, because they never cared about you or your product in the first place. And why would they? You didn’t inspire them. You just incentivized them.

Okay, now let’s shift to the other side of the spectrum and talk about an inspirational company – let’s talk about Apple.

Apple presents us with a very interesting example – almost a mind-boggling one. Because, on the face of it, there’s really nothing special about the company. Apple is a corporate structure like any other. It makes computers, just like Dell and Toshiba do. It also makes phones, but so does Samsung. Sure, its products are beautifully designed and work seamlessly, but so do products that other companies make. Sometimes Apple does well, sometimes not so much, and when it comes to its products or business operations, there’s plenty of criticism out there. Maybe the most noteworthy knock on Apple is that it doesn’t really offer any good deals on its products. For $1000, you could get the new iPhone . . . or you could have two brand-new Samsungs that do almost exactly the same things – or even more. But look closely. Apple doesn’t pull any carrot-and-stick trickery. It doesn’t offer any incentives. But when a new iPhone is released, what happens? People go crazy for it. They don’t do that for Samsung’s phones.

It’s fair to say that Apple’s customers are so committed to their brand that they behave irrationally. So the big question here is: How does Apple pull that off?

The short answer is that Apple is inspirational. And here’s the somewhat longer one: customers deeply care about Apple because Apple starts with why. Or, as Sinek put it in his now-famous TED Talk, “People don’t buy what you do; they buy why you do it.” Let’s dig a little deeper.

Apple and the Golden Circle

Northern California at the end of the sixties. There’s a spirit of protest and uprising making its way throughout the state – throughout the whole country, frankly – and revolution is in the air. Young people with flowers in their hair and the occasional joint in their mouth are radically questioning those in power. They don’t like the conformist, individuality-crushing ways that government and big corporations are run. In the crowd are two nerdy-looking young men, Steve Wozniak and Steve Jobs, both of them filled with an anti-establishment spirit. They’re sucking up the energy and the values around them, and it’s in this historical context that Apple’s spiritual core takes shape.

While hippies are roaming the streets of San Francisco, another upheaval, quieter and less drug-fueled, is also taking place: the computer revolution. Technology is developing in leaps and bounds; gone are the days of computational devices that run on punch cards and take up entire rooms, and the arrival of the personal computer is drawing near. Suddenly, it seems realistic that every American will have their own personal device in their living room.

How to start with why

Now, this all sounds pretty good, you might be thinking, and it wouldn’t actually be that hard to implement. After all, how hard can it be to know why you’re doing something? Well, it’s a bit more complicated than you might think.

Here’s the catch: Even though the why should be at the very center of any company, most founders and leaders actually don’t have a clue what their why is. They can tell you exactly what they do and how they do it, sure. But if you ask them why their company exists, a lot of them struggle to answer. They might mumble something about how they always wanted to start a company, or just admit they’re in for the money. Or maybe they’ll offer up something abstract about “making the world a better place.”

Worum geht es in Start With Why (New Version)?

Start With Why (2009) tackles a fundamental question: What makes some organizations and people more innovative, influential, and profitable than others? Based on best-selling author Simon Sinek’s hugely influential lecture of the same name, the third most-watched TED talk of all time, these blinks unpack the answer to that conundrum. As Sinek’s examples show, it’s all about asking why rather than what.

Über den Autor

Simon Sinek is a self-professed optimist determined to create a better and brighter future for humanity. An influential speaker and coach, Sinek has helped organizations around the world, such as Microsoft, American Express, the United Nations, and the Pentagon, inspire their employees. He is also the author of Leaders Eat Last and Together is Better.