Start with Why

Meaning as such

Talk of meaning in organisations is a little bit of window dressing. The meaning of an organisation as such is to secure its own survival: the continuity of its identity, its structure and its memberships. In that, organisations resemble us human beings. From the absence of a generally accepted meaning of life there follows for us both a freedom and a duty — to give our own life a meaning ourselves.

It is no different for organisations. It comes more easily to those whose activity concerns what is believed to be good: non-governmental organisations fighting hunger, landmines, pollution. In the public sector it would theoretically be easy too, since its purpose is the common good. In practice, though, precisely what Simon Sinek recommends is not done there: communicating from the why, not from the what.

Values are more attractive than factual arguments

Sinek’s basic idea: people make decisions on emotional criteria. They buy a product because the value it carries matches their own. Values here are prioritisations — preferring the familiar or the unfamiliar, for instance. A successful marketing strategy carries a value, not a product.

We rarely make decisions using lists of pros and cons; after enough information we let the gut decide. The what level of logic is therefore less suited to generating enthusiasm than the level of values. That can be transferred to organisations: an organisation built on a value appears more attractive than one that puts the factual level of daily work in the foreground.

Purpose as a marketing instrument

Companies committed to shareholder value or to the founding family have a harder time. What is the meaning here, if not the continuity of the organisation in order to increase profit? Nor does Sinek build his model on the communication of Greenpeace, but on Steve Jobs’ speech to staff at the roll-out of the Think Different campaign in 1997. That makes clear what purpose is about: marketing, internal and external. Internally for retention, externally for recruiting staff or raising sales.

People do not buy what you do, they buy why you do it.

The model is two things. First, the reminder that reflecting on your core value is worthwhile. Think different, doing things differently from everyone else, is said to be Apple’s core value. Values decide on direction and orientation: when the next product strategy is due, the decisions have to be measured against that value. Tim Cook is often criticised for exactly this, that he does not announce the next great different but tinkers with processor power and appearance.

Second, the Golden Circle is an instrument of communication and thus a tool for leadership work at every level. Management decisions should be explained through the why first. That changes nothing about the decision itself. Communicated properly, however, it becomes what marks out good leadership work: robust.

An example

Suppose you are a goldsmith. Your jewellery sells well, you take on five members of staff. You launch a festival for craft, with jugglers and musicians; a whole village comes, marvels and buys. A few years later you move into online business. Ten years later you employ more than forty people and turn over ten million euros. After a bad year you introduce a time-recording system. How do you communicate that?

Wrong: “From tomorrow we are introducing time recording. We have to control our resources better in order to arrive at a more optimal deployment of staff.” Here only the what is communicated. Nor does every why help: “We are doing this because we ran into difficulty last year” is an explanation — of the wrong why.

The organisational tree

To find the right why, the tree metaphor helps. An organisation consists of roots, trunk and crown. The roots are the finances. Only they ensure that the organisation can fulfil its core purpose: surviving. Since that holds for all organisations, a why taken from the root system is not very attractive.

The trunk describes the everyday business, shot through with routines and rarely connected to the actual purpose. Greenpeace staff do not climb a cooling tower every day. In the crown, though, the fruit grows.

A better explanation for the time recording would therefore be: “You know that everything we do is directed at putting on the craft festival once a year. We pack every parcel with the thought of how we can shape those three days for ourselves and for others. Part of the truth is that we have to finance the festival, among other things out of the profits of the mail-order business. No mail order, no festival. That is why it matters that we run it efficiently. And that is why we are introducing time recording.”

Literature: Simon Sinek (2011), Start with Why. How Great Leaders Inspire Everyone to Take Action, New York: Penguin · Rob Siltanen (2011), The Real Story Behind Apple’s “Think Different” Campaign, Forbes.