We all know the nagging feeling of something missing in our lives, despite having a wonderful job, great pay, and a wonderful family. The feeling of falling out of love with our work! The sudden loss of enjoyment for work, and so on. This Book, ‘Start with WHY’ by Simon Sinek is going to help us identify and rekindle the passion we had, by reminding us of the real reasons as to why we do what we do.

In a way, it helps us understand ‘WHY’ we work for some company, or provide certain services.

It also makes us realize the importance of keeping in touch with the WHY of our work or business.

A world that doesn’t start with ‘WHY’

In this hyper-competitive world, it is very easy to get carried away by superficial metrics such as profits and funding and forget the real reasons and motivations for being in business. We forget why people buy from us.

“People don’t buy what you do; they buy why you do it. And what you do simply proves what you believe”

With a few successes in the bag we assume we know why we succeeded, we know how to replicate that success, but that is far from reality. Hence a lot of startups that are off to a glorious start often get a tepid response later on because their WHY is not clear.

And, when their WHY is muddled, they tend to come up with these short-term tactics to get the desired results, the efficacy of which is questionable in the long run.

“There’s barely a product or service on the market today that customers can’t buy from someone else for about the same price, about the same quality, about the same level of service, and about the same features. If you truly have a first-mover’s advantage, it’s probably lost in a matter of months. If you offer something truly novel, someone else will soon come up with something similar and maybe even better.”

And when this is the case, how do business people ensure loyalty?

There are two ways of influencing Human Behaviour:

• Manipulation
• Inspiration

Manipulation has been the go-to tactic for such a long time now, so much that it has become pretty mainstream. Price cuts, rebates, fear, promotions are some of the manipulation tactics employed. But these manipulations never result in loyalty, instead, customers become addicted to the discounts

What companies really should be doing instead is inspiring people by reinventing the way we think about individual products in particular and the entire industry in general. Like, Apple did with the Mobile Industry.

Differentiations and novelty work, but only for a while, if you seek loyalty you need to be able to inspire your customers to come to you.

The shift in perspective

Very few people or companies can clearly articulate WHY they do WHAT they do. By WHY I mean your purpose, cause or belief – WHY does your company exist? WHY do you get out of bed every morning? And WHY should anyone care?

Almost every company knows ‘What’ they do, what is their product, their service, what is it that they are offering, and it is pretty easy to figure that out.

Next, is ‘how do they do what they do. This is slightly more complicated and is not common knowledge. It includes the value proposition, the USP of the product\service and the proprietary processes.

The deepest and the most important layer is the ‘why’, and nobody talks about why, and for good reason. It is very difficult to understand the WHY, as it can’t be something shallow like ‘making money, that is just a metric. When we say ‘why’ we mean the greater purpose of the existence of the business, why should people care about us, why do we wake up every day from bed.

When a company clearly communicates their WHY, what they believe, and we believe what they believe, then we will sometimes go to extraordinary lengths to include those products or brands in our lives. This is not because they are better, but because they become markers or symbols of the values and beliefs we hold dear.

The area of the brain that is responsible for feelings such as trust and responsibility has no capacity for Language, and hence it is not possible to put in words why we feel in a certain way about a brand, or why my customers come to me and not go to my competitor.

Decision-making and the ability to explain those decisions exist in different parts of the brain.

So, basically, we are biologically screwed in expressing our feelings! (So run, when your girlfriend asks, ‘why do you love me?’)

Henry Ford rightfully said “If I had asked people what they wanted”, “they would have said a faster horse.”

Clarity, Consistency and Discipline

Our job does not end at understanding our why’s and how’s, we also need to keep the golden circle in balance, meaning everything we say and do should correspond with our why. We should be authentic.

An imbalanced Golden circle would result in you falling back to the manipulative tactics of rebates and other short-term schemes.

Leaders need a following!

It is not possible for a large company to sustain, by having one inspired person such as the CEO or the founder. A company need a bunch of inspired people who share the same set of beliefs and culture of the organization

Great companies don’t hire skilled people and motivate them, they hire already motivated people and inspire them

Parting words

For great leaders, The Golden Circle is in balance. They are in pursuit of WHY, they hold themselves accountable to HOW they do it and WHAT they do serves as the tangible proof of what they believe.

In the ‘new competition’, people only follow those who follow their why’, and hence keep pursuing your ‘why’ and don’t try to outdo someone else, instead outdo yourself.

Write in the comments below, about your ‘WHY’

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