The following is a high level summary of this amazing book.
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High Level Summary
Preface – The Power of Why
- When we find something, we value we look to share it with the people we love.
Introduction – Why Start with Why
Big Ideas:
- What basis are we using to inform our questions?
- Great leaders inspire.
Part 1 – A World That Doesn’t Start with Why
1. Assume you Know
Big Ideas:
- Our decisions are made on assumptions, which are our perceived truths, which in turn may not be true.
- There is rational decision making (based on data and information), and intuitive decision making (based on “gut feel”).
- Our aim should be to develop a decision-making system that creates repeatable outcomes.
2. Carrot and Sticks
Big Ideas:
- Manipulations will work but will not create trust or loyalty.
- Over time manipulations cost more and more to achieve the same short term advantage.
- In today’s world manipulations are the norm.
Part 2 – An Alternative Perceptive
3. The Golden Circle
Big Ideas:
- The Golden Circle is inspired by the Golden Ratio that creates repeatable and predictable results.
- People don’t buy WHAT you do they buy WHY you do it.
- If a customer feels inspired to buy your product rather than manipulated, they will be able to verbalise the reasons why they think what they brought was better.
- It is the cause that the organisation, brand, person represents that inspires loyalty.
4. This is not Opinion, This is Biology
Big Ideas:
- The Golden Circle is grounded in the evolution of human behaviour – it’s biology.
- The levels of the Golden Circle correspond precisely with the three major levels in the human brain when viewed from the top down.
- Our biology complicates our ability to verbalise the real reasons why we make the decisions we do, we rationalise based on more tangible factors, like design, services, features, price to rationalise our decision.
- These things matter as they provide tangible things we can point to so we can rationalise our decision making, but they don’t inspire behaviour.
- The power of the limbic brain can influence us to do things that seem illogical or irrational like crossing oceans to see what’s on the other side.
5. Clarity, Discipline and Consistency
Big Ideas
- The Golden Circle obeys the natural principle of balance.
- The only way people will know what you believe is by the things you say and do and if you’re not consistent in the things you say and do, no one will know what you believe or believe you actually believe what you say you do.
- You must have congruency throughout all aspects of the Golden Circle to have authenticity.
- Authenticity cannot be achieved without clarity of WHY.
- Once you know your WHY, are disciplined and accountable to your own values and guiding principles, are consistent in all you say and do then all you need to do is keep it all in the right order.
- WHATs don’t drive decision making. WHATs should be used as proof of your WHY.
- A goal of business should not be to do business with everyone; it should be to do business with people who believe what you believe.
- When we are selective about only doing business with those who believe what we believe then trust and loyalty emerges.
Part 3 – Leaders Need A Following
6. The Emergence of Trust
Big Ideas:
- WHY is just a belief, HOWs are the actions we take to realise that belief and WHATs are the results of those actions.
- When all three are in balance, trust is built and value is perceived.
- Trust is a feeling not a rational experience.
- Leading is not the same as being the leader.
- Those who lead are able to do so because those who follow trust that the decisions made have the best interests of the group at heart. In turn, those who thrust work hard because they feel like they are working for something bigger than themselves.
- That we trust people with common values and beliefs is not, in itself, a profound assertion. There is a reason we’re not friends with everyone we meet. We’re friends with people who see the world the way we see it, who share our views and out beliefs.
- That’s what a WHY does. When it is clearly understood, it attracts people who believe the same thing.
- Average organisations give their people something to work on. In contrast, in the most innovative organisations give people something to work towards.
- Only when a person can trust the culture or organisation will they personal risk in order to advance that culture or organisation as a whole.
- It is a prerequisite then for someone to trust the culture in which they work to share the values and beliefs of that culture, to “go the extra mile”, to explore, to invent, to innovate, to advance and, more importantly, to do so again and again and again.
- Personal recommendations go a long way. We trust the judgement of others.
- However, we don’t trust the judgement of just anyone. We are more likely to trust those who share our values and beliefs.
- The feelings of trust are lodged squarely in the same place as WHY – the limbic brain – and it’s often powerful enough to trump empirical research, or at least seed doubt.
- This is the reason why so many manipulations are so effective, we believe that, for better or worse, others know more than we do.
- The fact is, none of us is immune to the effect of someone we know or feel like we trust influencing our decisions.
7. How a Tipping Point Tips
Big Ideas:
- Our population is broken into five segments that fall across a bell-curve:
- Innovators – first 2.5%
- Early adopters – next 13.5%
- Early majority – next 34%
- Late majority – next 34%
- Laggards – last 16%
- According to the Law of Diffusion, mass-market success can only be achieved after you penetrate between 15 and 18% of the market.
- The entire majority need recommendation of someone else what has already sampled the product or service.
- The goal of any business should be to find the people who believe what you believe – the left side of the bell curve – the innovators.
- They are the ones who, on their own volition, will tell others about you.
- Get enough of these people from the left hand side of the curve on your side and the rest will follow.
- When you start with WHY, those who believe what you believe are drawn to you for very personal reasons.
- Give people something to believe in.
- Dr King delivered the “I have a dream speech”; not the “I have a plan” speech and like all great leaders he became the symbol of that belief.
Part 4 – How To Rally Those Who Believe
8. Start with Why, But Know How
Big Ideas:
- Our driving purpose, cause or belief never changes, even if our WHATs do.
- A vision is the public statement of the founder’s intent, WHY the organisation exists.
- It is a vision of a future that does not yet exist.
- The mission statement is a description of the route, the guiding principles, HOW the organisation intends to create that future.
- A leader with a cause, whether it be an individual or an organisation, must have a megaphone through which to deliver his message. And it must be clear and loud to work.
- Clarity of purpose, cause or belief is important, but it is equally important that people hear you.
- For a WHY to have the power to move people it must not only be clear, it must be amplified to reach enough people to tip the scale.
- A clear sense of WHY sets expectations.
- When you tell people WHY you are doing what you’re doing, remarkable things happen.
- It is those who believe that effect the real change and keep the movement going.
9. Know Why, Know How, Then What?
Big Ideas:
- A WHY never changes. WHAT you do can change with the times, but WHY you do it never does.
- Everything an organisation does has to support and represent the WHY, and if the things happening at the WHAT level do not clearly represent WHY the organisation exists, then the ability to inspire is severely complicated.
10. Communication Is Not About Speaking, It’s About Listening
Big Ideas:
- Great societies understand the importance of symbols as a way of reinforcing their values, or capturing their beliefs.
- Only when the purpose, cause or belief is clear can a symbol command great power.
- Most organisations have logos, but few have been able to convert those logos into meaningful symbols, because most organisations are bad at communicating what they believe, so it follows that most logos are devoid of any meaning.
- It is not the organisation that decides what a symbol means, it is the group outside the megaphone in the chaotic marketplace who decide.
- When we say, “something speaks to me”, what we’re really saying is through all this clutter and noise I can hear that.
- Celery test – a simple metaphor to find out exactly WHAT and HOW is right for you.
- Filter your decisions through your WHY. What is the best decision to support my WHY.
- A WHY provides the clear filter for decision-making.
Part 5 – The Biggest Challenge Is Success
11. When Why Goes Fuzzy
Big Ideas:
- There is an irony to success. Many who achieve great success don’t always feel 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 measureable.
- Success, in contrast, is a feeling or a state of being.
- Achievement occurs when you pursue and attain WHAT you want.
- Success comes when you are clear in pursuit of WHY you want it.
- The false assumption we sometimes make is that if we simply achieve more, the feeling of success will follow. But it rarely does.
- Achievement is the WHAT; the artefacts of our success.
- Success is the WHY; the feeling we have of achieving our purpose.
- The two must be congruent.
12. Split Happens
Big Ideas:
- For passion to survive it needs structure.
- A WHY without a HOW; passion without structure; has a high probability of failure.
- Passion may need structure to survive, but for structure to grow, it needs passion.
- The school bus test is a simple metaphor. If a founder or leader was hit by a school bus would the organisation continue to thrive at the same pace without them at the helm?
- The challenge isn’t to cling to the leader, it’s to find effective ways to keep the founding vision alive forever.
- To pass the school bus test the founder’s WHY must be extracted and integrated into the culture of the organisation.
- Without a more compelling purpose, cause or belief, the organisation is simply a collection of stuff.
- Most organisations today use very clear metrics to track the progress and growth of WHAT they do. Unfortunately, there is very poor measurements to ensure that the WHY stays clear.
- When the person who personifies the WHY departs without clearly articulating WHY the organisation was founded in the first place, they leave no clear cause for their successor to lead.
- The new leader has no option but to focus on WHAT with little attention to WHY.
- The only succession plan that will work is to find a CEO who believes in and wants to continue to lead that movement, not replace it with their own vision of the future.
- 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 organisation was founded.
- Succession – not replacement. The WHY must inspire and the new CEO must be 100% aligned.
Part 6 – Discover Why
13. The Origins of Why
Big Ideas:
- The Law of Diffusion says that only 2.5% of the population has an innovator mentality – these are people what are willing to trust their instincts and take greater risks than others.
- Your WHY comes from looking back.
- Every single person has a WHY and every single organisation has one as well.
- Henry Ford said, “if you think you can or you think you can’t, you’re right.”
14. The New Competition
Big Ideas:
- If you follow your WHY, then others will follow you.
- When you compete against everyone else, no one wants to help you. But when you compete against yourself, everyone wants to help you.
- Imagine if every organisation 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.
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Thrive; don’t just Survive with Janette