Leadership Book Club: Start with Why by Simon Sinek

What makes some organizations inspire fierce loyalty while others just seem to exist? In this episode, Kristen and Mike dive into Simon Sinek's groundbreaking book "Start With Why," exploring how truly great leaders and companies create lasting success by focusing on their purpose rather than just their products. Through compelling examples from Apple to Martin Luther King Jr., they break down why people don't buy what you do - they buy why you do it. Whether you're building a business, leading a team, or trying to make a bigger impact, this episode reveals how starting with your "why" can transform your approach to leadership and create genuine, lasting connections with both customers and employees.

Highlights:

• The Golden Circle concept: Understanding the critical difference between what you do, how you do it, and why you do it
• Why manipulation tactics like price cuts and promotions might work short-term but won't build lasting loyalty
• The fascinating neuroscience behind decision-making and how the limbic brain influences our choices
• The Law of Diffusion of Innovation and why you need to reach 15-18% market penetration before achieving mass success
• How great organizations maintain consistency between their why, how, and what across all aspects of their business
• The importance of finding and developing leaders who share your organization's core why
• The "Celery Test" - a practical framework for making decisions that align with your organization's purpose
• Why success can actually be the biggest challenge for maintaining your organizational why
• The difference between achievement (getting what you want) and success (knowing why you want it)
• The power of finding and articulating your personal why as a leader\

Links & Resources Mentioned:

• Start with Why by Simon Sinek 
• Simon Sinek's 2009 TED Talk: "How Great Leaders Inspire Action"
• Leaders Eat Last by Simon Sinek
• Influence by Robert Cialdini
• Kitchen Confidential by Anthony Bourdain
• Never Split the Difference by Chris Voss 

Podcast Website: www.loveandleadershippod.com
Instagram: @loveleaderpod

Follow us on LinkedIn!
Kristen: https://www.linkedin.com/in/kristenbsharkey/
Mike: https://www.linkedin.com/in/michael-s-364970111/

Learn more about Kristen's leadership coaching and facilitation services: http://www.emboldify.com

Transcript

Kristen: Welcome to Love and Leadership, the podcast that helps you lead with both your head and your heart, plus a bit of humor. I'm Kristen Brun Sharkey, a leadership coach and facilitator.

Mike: And I'm Mike Sharkey, a senior living and hospitality executive. We're a couple of leadership nerds who also happen to be a couple.

Kristen: Join us each week as we share our unfiltered opinions, break down influential books, and interview inspiring guests.

Mike: Whether you're a seasoned executive or a rising star, we're here to help you level up your leadership game and amplify your impact.

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Kristen: Hello and welcome back to Love and Leadership. I'm Kristen

Mike: And I'm Mike.

Kristen: and we've recorded this a few times.

Mike: Ugh. It's one of

Kristen: of, one of those days, guys.

Mike: at the end

Kristen: it's almost at the end of the year. And this is our final Leadership Book Club of the

Mike: still doing two more episodes? Because we don't take a break.

No, we're actually doing one more episode and then we're gonna re air one for New Year's Day. Huh.

Kristen: yeah.

Mike: Yeah. Huh. All right,

Kristen: We take some breaks, you know.

Mike: Okay, sounds goodpower through.

Kristen: Nobody wants to listen to a leadership podcast on New Year's Day.

Mike: I do. I would. It's like a free day. Start the year off.

Right?

Kristen: We'll have one, one encore in there, but

Mike: Is it going to be? Extreme ownership.

Kristen: no,

Mike: Navy sales

Kristen: Oh, without fail,

Mike: Without. I figured I'd get it outta the way. Okay,

Kristen: let's see if that's the only time you mention Jocko and Extreme Ownership in this episode. I'm guessing it won't be. Okay.

Mike: We'll see challenge, eh, probably not accepted. 

So today we are doing Start with Why How Great Leaders Inspire Everyone To Take Action by Simon Sinek. A last name that I mispronounce a lot of the time I'm sure so get ready. I don't

He probably doesn't care. He seems very easy going.

Kristen: Yeah, I don't know what it is it's like I can't I just can't remember the print like where the emphasis is for some reason. But anyway, struggle through with us. It's not that hard of a last name, but for some reason it's harder for me than some other last names. So anyway, so talking all about Simon Sinek.

Sinek? See? What is it?

Mike: it? It's an unusual grouping of sounds. I don't know. 

And he talks about this in there and he's going to go into this, right? The way we communicate the language part of our brain is a different part of the brain than the one that deals with feelings.

So anyway, he's got an unusual background. He studied ethno, eth ethno,

Kristen: What is

Mike: ethnograph. What is that? And started his career in advertising agency.

Kristen: to

Mike: Similar to anthropology, okay. Was he a lawyer also? Did he say he started a law school?

Kristen: He went to law school, but then he decided he

Mike: hated it, right? Yeah.

Kristen: Yeah. So yeah. So Simon Sinek.Yeah, we're going to move on

Mike: We're going to move on.

Kristen: name.

gonna call him Simon

I'm sorry. I'm sorry, Mr. Sinek. I really like your

Mike: think he's pretty used to it.

Kristen: Yeah, I'm sure. I'm sure he is. But anyway, so he was originally born in the UK, but he lived all over in his childhood. South Africa, Hong Kong, and in the U. S. for I think the majority of it. 

Mike: He definitely is one of, one of those voices it's like American, but like not, if there's a mix of stuff in

Like Cape Cod, very Northeast coast.

Kristen: I just thought it was funny you said Boston cause I'm pretty sure his family actually lived in New Jersey. 

Mike: Jersey. Uh, that's 

Kristen: Well,

Mike: I can tell you that's not a New Jersey accent.. Yeah.

Kristen: Take it up with Simon.

Mike: Yeah.

Very well spoken. However, not all authors can read their own book.

Kristen: He's a fantastic

Mike: He's a fantastic speaker,

Kristen: so that is definitely clear. But yeah, as you said, he studied ethnography in college. He started his career in advertising, which I I relate to, that's my trajectory as well, and before going on to starting his own leadership development firm. He is probably most known for his 2009 TED Talk called How Great Leaders Inspire Action. It is the core of this book in TED Talk form, basically, and that TED Talk has been viewed over 60 million times.

It's definitely one of the top ones. And he's written five books. Start With Why was the first, originally published in 2009. And it's definitely his biggest hit, but Leaders Eat Last came next, and that one also is extremely popular. We'll probably do that one eventually.

I'll read that next. Yeah, so that, that's the background.

So this book is about 250 pages. There's definitely, there's a lot of examples. He talks a lot about Apple, especially.

Mike: Apple. He loves Apple.. Well, I don't know if he loves Apple, but he

Kristen: I don't know if he loves Apple as a product, but he loves them as an

Mike: He loves them as an example because Apple very much communicates who they are with everything they do, with their products, with their branding, with their commercials, with their attitude, with how they hire people.

And, I'm not an Apple person, but with his example, I totally get it now. Yeah.

Kristen: Yeah, I mean, it's definitely a great example for the stuff he's talking about. So the book starts out with Part One, A World That Does Not Start With Why. Chapter one is Assume You Know. And he starts off with this brief description of a, young leader with Roman Catholic origin, getting sworn in, and until he adds the date, which was in 1933, because everybody assumes with this example that he's talking about JFK.

Mike: He, he elaborates a little more than that. He's I don't remember exactly what he says, but he's he's a progressive leader. Yeah,

Kristen: It's a specific

Mike: It's a very specific, and even I'm like, okay, and he adds Catholic, and you're thinking,JFK.

And then he adds the year, and it's like, nope.

Kristen: Actually it's Adolf

Mike: actually. It's Adolf Hitler. Yeah. So we assume a lot of facts, your brain is designed to fill in and make up information, Yeah. That's how you get cognitive distortions, right? Like your brain will add information to try and assume something that you're wrong about.

Yeah. Yeah.

Kristen: And that's his point in this chapter, basically, is we make decisions based on what we think we know, which may not actually be accurate. And this applies to good decisions as well as bad ones. I think this is actually a very true point.

Mike: He talks about a friend who, does a lot of investing and when his investments are well, doing really well, it's because he's so good at picking stocks. And when he loses, it's the market's fault. And you see this play out in the corporate world over and over again. It's like when things are going well, it was, yeah, Evil markets.

Kristen: the market. It's always a market when things are going poorly. Right.But, and he says that, but it's also like more data and information doesn't always help us make good decisions either. 

Mike: That is true.

Kristen: Which is also definitely true. And he uses this example of the story of American auto manufacturers who went to a factory in Japan and they asked why because there's a critical role in the U. S. factories was there's this guy who before the doors are placed, actually placed on the vehicle, he uses a rubber mallet to like, to pound it down and make sure it fits perfectly. And he asked the Japanese manufacturers why they don't have somebody doing that job. And they said, they make it fit perfectly when it's at the design stage. And that's a metaphor for how you can go about this stuff, right? It's like you can build it at the design stage, or you can try to come up with a lot of ways to modify after the fact, but you're still not incorporating it into that initial stage. So chapter two, Carrot and Sticks. There's only two ways to influence human behavior. You can manipulate it, or you can inspire it.

Mike: Yeah, he goes, he's going to break down all these manipulations, but it's pretty interesting to think of all these, 

like price discounting is just one of them, it's to, to engender a certain type of behavior. Where Apple, he's going to get into Apple deeply. Like they don't do a lot of that. Right. And he talks about, I don't know if this is the right place, but he gets into like value, right?

Value is subjective, right? Quality is not necessarily subjective, but value is subjective. And if you don't inspire people with your why, and if you're selling a product and your why is not clear, all you have is your how and what, and he's going to break that down, you basically become a commodity.

Kristen: Mhm.

Mike: And the commodity, wouldn't be it like wheat and corn and things like that.

They're not differentiated by their why. They're just something you need. Yeah.

Kristen: And that is a concept that will get hammered throughout this book. But basically what he's saying with these like manipulations versus inspiration is when companies don't know why their customers are their customers, they use

a disproportionate number of manipulations to get what they need. And these manipulations include price, which, dropping a price results in short term gains, but there's definitely long term costs to it. Promotions, which he's mostly talking about like rebates with

Mike: with this.

The rebate game. I don't know if it's as much a game anymore, but I remember you always have to like cut out the UPC code and mail six box tops and, they bank on a certain number of them just not doing it.

Kristen: yeah, a huge percentage.

Mike: And then there was a, like a class action suit where only one address or one person per address could apply for a rebate.

Maybe it was cell phones. I can't remember. And it turned out that people in apartment buildings were getting denied because there's 50 apartments and only the first one was getting it and there's like a class action suit to force, the company to pay for these rebates.

So there's a lot of, there's a lot of gaming in, in, in this manipulations that, Yeah. You know. So

Kristen: So you have like the price and promotional incentives, and then you have like the emotional manipulations, which are fear,using people's biological urges of fear to get them to make a decision, which really makes facts go out the window.

Aspirations. Which is, he said, is especially effective with people who have like a nagging fear or insecurity that they can't achieve their dreams on their own. And he talks about likethis can spur behavior, like people signing up for the gym, but it's not going to actually get them to keep consistently going to the gym after they sign up on January 2nd.

Mike: Not real behavior change.

Kristen: Yep.

Mike: And not loyalty. I know we'll get into, Apple, but Apple inspires loyalty because their message is so clear. Yep. Even if it's not, spoken in such clear terms, everything about them, And they have actually a very open mind. Very small percentage of the, like the actual computer market out there, but the people that buy their stuff, don't just buy their stuff once they buy their stuff forever. nobody goes, I'm going to get rid of my Mac and get a Chromebook. And they don't do that. Nobody does that.

Kristen: I'm an example,

Mike: She's in it. My wife is an example. Well, and I, I do want to go into it cause I'm not an Apple guy. I'm a Chromebook guy, but yeah, but we'll,

Kristen: I forced you to buy an iPhone though.

Mike: iPhone though.

Well, that's, you know, sure. You know, we need to be on the same, but, And anyway, so we'll get into that. Yeah.

Kristen: And then peer pressure, which is like the four out of five dentists prefer Trident. This also aligns with Robert Cialdini and his book Influence. Like one of his principles is social proof. I would actually love to do that book at some point. It's very meaty. It's definitely a two parter. But it's a great, at least a reading, great read of summary if you want to understand how to influence people more and like more of the psychology of this stuff.

Mike: But basically this works because we believe that the majority or experts specifically know better than we do. Or celebrities, yeah. And the other one, and this is I think actually really interesting, he differentiates between innovation and novelty.

Yeah. Novelty is like feature based. So like, Apple, one of the big things they did was change the way we consume music. They changed the entire industry.

Going from being, when I was a kid, if you wanted,to buy, Depeche Mode's, the song that you like, you had to buy the CD with the other 15 tracks that you didn't care about and Apple changed that. That's innovation. Novelty is like a new feature on

the iPod. Yeah, I remember my cousin, he had like one of the original iPods, I remember sitting in New York as he's showing me this and he had a thousand songs on it and it blew my mind. Right? You know, that's innovation. A new button on it is is novelty, or like also does your laundry.

Okay. that's a novelty, but it doesn't change the way you live. It doesn't change culture and society, but Apple actually legitimately changed,culture and society with these incredibly innovative new ways of doing things.

Kristen: Yep.. Yeah. And like with all of these, novelty might drive short-term sales as people are like, oh look, I have this cool new thing, but it's not gonna build long-term loyalty.

No, because you're always, it's feature benefit, selling as opposed to the

Mike: the why selling.

Kristen: Yeah. Innovation is actually transformative.

Mike: Innovation is transformative,

There's a good quote.

He had him there from Henry Ford. He's like, if I asked everybody what they wanted, they would have said a faster horse.

Kristen: Yeah, that's a great quote.

Mike: great quote. And that's, what's that quote is like, talent hits a target no one else can, but genius hits a target. No one else can see. Yeah. Yeah. Yep.

Kristen: And that's the thing with all of these is that, like, these manipulations work, but they work in the short term, and they're trade offs. And he says, leadership is the ability to rally people for years, not for a single event. It requires people to stick with you through thick and thin. And he also kind of differentiates between repeat business and loyalty because repeat business does not necessarily mean that people are loyal to you. So repeat business is just people doing business with you multiple times, while loyalty is when people are willing to turn down a better product or price to continue doing business with you.

Mike: I'm going to go back to how he talks about value being a feeling, right? It's quality and efficacy are things that can be actually measured.

The, I'm going to talk about watches for a minute because you can, to some degree, not to some degree, but a lot of degrees, you can measure the quality of a watch movement, a mechanical movement. And, it's these mechanical watches are not necessary by any means in modern, the modern world.

We all have iPhones or Androids and we all have the time available to us at any moment. So why do people buy a Rolex, right? It makes them feel a certain way or, the brands position themselves differently. And this book really got me thinking about that and why I have no interest in actually owning a Rolex because Their why doesn't align with my why and it's funny.

My why aligns with like Tudor and

Kristen: Which is a Rolex owned brand

Mike: Rolex own brand for sure, but that's like the difference between owning a Lexus and owning a Toyota. Right, and I also have the same, you know feeling about a Chromebook. Chromebook aligns with my why. My why is something of extremely high quality, but simplicity.

No bells and whistles needed, I'm reading Kitchen Confidential, Anthony Bourdain's book, and it's really interesting He has a whole diatribe about as a cook as a real cook as a chef you only really need one maybe two knives. And I've seen this in my wife's kitchen and my cousin's kitchen the amateur cook has 10 times as much equipment as the professional chef.

A Chinese chef needs a wok, a pair of chopsticks, and a cleaver, maybe a ladle, and that's it. And you can do almost the bulk of all Chinese cuisine with that and maybe a small rolling pin to do dim sum and that's it. It was 

Kristen: is This was surprising to me when we first started dating.

Mike: I started throwing things.

Kristen: Wow, your kitchen is bare bones.

Mike: My kitchen is bare bones. I don't need those things, right? So I don't need the Rolex, but I do like quality, which is why I like Tudor. It's the movements are as good or maybe even better. The stainless steel work is just as good, but the brand positions themselves very well with people who are maybe a little bit more rugged.

And a little less flashy. And at the doctor the other day we met a lawyer who was wearing a very nice Rolex, uh, Batgirl, it's a GMT watch and I complimented him on it and he's like, yeah, I'm a lawyer. It's part of the, it's part of the uniform. And if he didn't have that, there's something kind of missing, but.

Chromebooks, the same, Apple, We'll get into it, right? But Chromebook is, it's very, a very lean operating system. It's a very high battery life. Generally they're very low cost. They're solid state. They don't break, there's no drive, there's no moving parts to really break.

And it is a 15 hour battery life and I don't do the things that you would need a Mac for, like all the graphics or producing music or things like that. That's different thing. But for me, it's about like economy of force and scale, same thing as the kitchen. So I kind of like hit on my who is selling to me and who I'm buying from and why after reading this book.

So

I know we have to,he preps the Golden Circle, which we're doing next. So

Kristen: Yes, yeah, so let's jump into the Golden Circle. This is, the second part is an alternative perspective, and chapter three breaks down the Golden Circle.

if you've watched his TED Talk, you saw his visual of this. So, the Golden Circle is, three concentric circles. So, the outer circle is what.

This is the products and services or like your job function within an organization. The middle circle is how. Which is how you do what you do. And the middle of it, like the center of it is why, which is why you do what you do. And he actually uses capitalization throughout the book to differentiate these, which I kind of like, I feel like some people found it annoying probably, but I liked how he did it to emphasize like, this is the concept he's talking about of of why, what, and how.

Mike: I like a good visual change.

I didn't really, I listened to the book, but I like

Kristen: Oh yeah.

Mike: He'll probably verbally emphasize the why, I have no problem with people using language in the way that they feel is best to communicate the meaning behind what they're saying. Yeah,

Kristen: I like it. So it's very clear, these are obviously common words in the English language, but these are the three concepts he's talking about throughout this whole book.

And he says, why is your purpose, cause, or belief. This is like, why does your company exist? Why do you get out of bed every morning and go to work? Like, why should anybody care about what you're doing? And I would say the central thesis of this is people don't buy what you do, they buy why you do it. 

Mike: I love this. It's so powerful. In the great learning of Confucius, he talks about the root and the branches, the root is the why, the branches is the how,and if you're true to yourself, if you're true to your root, uh, the, you know, the leaves will, right.

Like when you water a plant, you don't water the leaves, you water the root and we're all on the branches. So let's get back to our root, to our core values. And he says many times people don't buy what you do. They buy why you do it. And Apple, their why is challenging the status quo.

And empowering the individual. And they are

Kristen: I will say I, there's many things I don't love about them. And Steve, you can say that doesn't matter. What matters is the principle behind it and everything they do, even in their advertising you brought up, they never have groups in their ads, it's always one, one person, and one person who is a little bit of a rebel.

Mike: He's challenging the status quo, he's doing his own thing,And even though they make up a tiny, actual tiny percentage of the, definitely the business, computer market and the, individual one is probably higher, but their, fan base, is so radically loyal.

Nobody goes from a Mac back to a PC willingly.

Kristen: Yep.

Also that, and it's not just, it's not just the operating system, it is,Well, it's an ecosystem. I mean, there's a lot of reasons for it, right? But I think

Mike: Now it's an ecosystem, but it didn't used to be an ecosystem.

It just used to be like your desktop com, the Macintosh and the, now it's an ecosystem and it's a language and your phone com, we're talking back in like 82, there were no phones connecting to your, and as opposed to like PCs, what they're selling is functionality. Like there's no appreciable, ethos difference between Dell and Hewlett Packard and IBM. They're all the same. They all just sell you a computer that uses the same operating system and has a few different features. And, and features and benefits, but they're not iconoclasts, they're not changing the world, they're, they were in the beginning, he uses Microsoft, Microsoft wanted to, democratize computing power and give a computer to everyone and they succeeded in that.

Kristen: And then somewhere along the road, they lost their why, which, yeah.

Mike: He went, they went through the split as he talks about extensively.

Kristen: Yeah, the Apple stuff felt very familiar to me, I think, especially, he's an advertising guy. I have a marketing background. I studied marketing in college. We study like Apple's advertising very extensively. But, I think one of his points that is really true is that like Apple's why has stayed consistent since the 70s.

Mike: Yeah, they, and even after Mr. Jobs passed away, they've maintained that why they've made and he talks about that a lot in there's so many companies that go through what he calls the split, which is they have a very powerful why for sometimes for a long time, but for whatever reason, a lot of times the founder doesn't create a succession plan based off of finding someone who shares the why. They find someone who shares a how or a what you know and someone who's great at operations like they use walmart as an example, you know, but not necessarily shares the the main value of the founding ceo.

Kristen: Yeah, he says, like, a true why will stay consistent. And knowing your why is not the only way to be successful, but it's the only way to maintain a lasting success and have a greater blend of innovation and flexibility.

Absolutely.

So the next chapter gets into the neuroscience of this. Like he says, this is not opinion, this is biology. And we all have this like strong need to belong. Where we feel like we belong, like we feel connected and safe.

And this desire is so powerful that we'll go to great lengths, do irrational things and often spend money to get that feeling. Again, if we had, there were any doubts about this, I feel like the pandemic really wiped them out. Right? We all have that, that deep need to belong. And when a company clearly communicates their why, like what they believe, when we believe what they believe we will, go to extraordinary lengths to include those products or brands in our lives, because they represent what we believe, right? And we're naturally drawn to leaders and organizations that are good at communicating what they believe and make us feel like we belong. What I thought was interesting is he then points out that the human brain corresponds with the Golden Circle. So , there's two parts of it, right? So the what corresponds with the neocortex, this is the newest part of the brain. And this is part of the brain responsible for like rational and analytical thought and language. And then the how and the why sections are made up of the limbic brain, which is responsible for all our feelings, human behavior and decision making, but notably, the limbic brain has no capacity for language. I think we've gone into elements of this in past, some of our past episodes. But, this is why it's so difficult to express your emotions, right? It's because that part of the brain does not naturally have capacity for language.

Mike: Yeah, that's, why do you, why do you love your spouse? Oh, I don't know, she's great. There's a real, like, disconnect. And even, describing your feelings, or what are you feeling?You're feeling something, but now you have to connect different parts of your brain that are evolutionary probably millions of years apart actually.

And that's, we haven't gotten past that synthesis yet. Yeah.

Kristen: Yeah, and he talks about the fact that gut decisions, or like what we call gut decisions, come from the limbic brain. Because, and they feel right, because the part of the brain that controls them is also controlling our feelings. So, that like feeling of rightness.

Whereas if we're making decisions purely based on the rational part of the brain, it often just leads to overthinking. And so often our limbic brains know the right thing to do, but we might doubt them because we don't have the language that goes along with it. So then we'll end up rationalizing our decisions with tangible factors.

I know I do this all the time. I've made a decision and then I'm like, spent like an hour rationalizing it to myself and to Mike, but

Mike: Yeah.

Kristen: Yeah. Yeah. But it, it makes a lot of

Mike: More than an hour. Wow. Sometimes days. No. No, not mean. It's, I don't know, there's so much there, not just with you, but like learning

I'm 

Kristen: clearly not the only person that does that.

Mike: No trusting that gut reaction is a lot of the reason, that the founders of companies are successful and that the companies will be very successful during their lifetime because they're the ones at the helm. They know their why they're making these gut decisions.

And I'm a very analytical guy, I've had to move to the other end of the spectrum to be a better leader. That gut decision is usually more right than your, your spreadsheet of data, There's just so many, I don't know why I just, I knew to go right and I went that way and now we have Apple, right?

Yeah.

Kristen: Yep. 

Mike: You can't see around corners, but you can feel around corners. And in fact, the limbic brain, it also like warns of threats and things like that. It, you will feel things like when you're being followed, even at a distance that is past what you can perceive with your eyes or even your ears.

There's a part of the brain. That's like, something's wrong. Right. And that's, um,

Kristen: Oh

Mike: It's a very ancient part of the brain.

Kristen: As, as all women have felt that sensation before, I'm sure. Yes. Yeah. And 

Mike: Chris Voss talks about that a lot, in in Never Split the Difference in negotiate, yeah, in negotiations.

So we'll get into that. Yeah. It's neuroscience. It works. Go figure.

Kristen: Yeah, where this really comes into play is when companies don't communicate a why, it doesn't allow us to like make that buying decision with our limbic brain and it forces us to make decisions with empirical evidence.

So that's when we get into things like price and quality and specific features and all of this stuff, right? But often if we had the why, we would just go off the feeling part of it.

Mike: Yeah, that's the commoditization. As opposed to the,the connection.

Kristen: Yeah, yep. And this kind of going back to what you were when we were talking about Apple like great leaders and great organizations are good at seeing what most of us can't see and giving us things that we never would have thought to ask for if we were just going based on empirical evidence.

Mike: Faster horse. He uses Harley Davidson a lot too. He's like I wanted to figure out why people would sometimes non-owners that would tattoo Harley Davidson on their body. What is it about this company that engenders such loyalty and passion. And I don't have to even discuss it. When we say Harley Davidson, you already know what they stand for. You can, I don't know that I'm going to say it correct.

But you know the type of person that has a Harley and that's who they're selling to, and you don't have to even, they don't have to say anything. There's like, here's this bad ass bike. And you're a rebel who's an individual, you do your own thing. Take notes for anybody, right?

Kristen: Very American.

Mike: Very American, you know, and that's their brand has not changed. Their message has not changed and they're very expensive. And probably some bike guy will tell me that I'm, they're perhaps not appreciable, appreciably better in terms of quality than a BMW bike or a Yama. I don't know anything about, they're different.

But it's like the Mac is not necessarily better than some PCs, right, like gaming

Kristen: mean it, well, okay, for some purposes, yeah.

Mike: Like

Kristen: If you're doing gaming, it's different.

Mike: All purpose driven, but they're, it's not like a different category of efficacy from Apple to PCs.

They're different. They do different things well, but to say that they're.

Kristen: better,

Mike: That's a little bit subjective, right? And same thing with Harley. Are they better than a BMW Motorcycle? Oh, thanks, BMW are pretty good. But, their, what they're selling is not a commodity.it's a,

It's a lifestyle, it's a viewpoint, it's a worldview, it's, and people who identify with that will literally tattoo it on their own body.

And I bet there's a lot of people with Apple tattoos out there.

Kristen: Oh, for sure. Yeah. Yeah. So, chapter 5, he gets into this concept of like, the things that you need to make the Golden Circle work are clarity, discipline, and consistency. And he definitely consistently carries this throughout the book as well. But, so it's clarity of why. Like, why should people come to work?

The discipline of the how, because the hows are ultimately your values or your principles that guide how you bring your cause to life. So that manifests in systems and processes like hiring, finding partners, et cetera. The discipline of hows that relate back to the why, and then the consistency of the what.

And he notes that like, this isn't just about your products and services. That's where people put the vast majority of focus on, right? But it's the results of all of the actions you take, everything you say and do. So it's not just your products and services. It's also your marketing, your PR, your culture, who you hire.

Like all of that has to be consistent with your why. So clarity, discipline, and consistency. And I thought it was interesting, he says that authenticity happens at the what level. The authenticity basically means your Golden Circle is in balance. So you're, it means that you actually believe the things that you're saying and doing.

And if you don't have that clarity of why, then you can't be authentic. And then this is where he gets into Southwest initially. And I thought this was a really interesting example because so in, in the 1970s, only 15 percent of the population that travels was actually traveling by air and Southwest launched caring about the other 85 percent right. And their why is like being the champion for the common man, so they're how became

I think the things people identify with them became like cheap, fun, and simple. And they were super consistent in not only the product, but also the people they hired and their values and their culture and their marketing. But it ultimately all came back to that why.

Mike: They still kind of are.

I don't, you know, they still kind of are.

Kristen: They've held up very

very consistently. They've held up very consistently. They're, But he talks about that later too. It's because they've done actually done a good job of having successors who exemplify that same why.

Mike: Too often they, the second, the person to take over is chosen for their how and how good they are at operations or and they lose the, you might eek some better performance out of your portfolio or something like that, but you lose the spirit of why we started doing this in the first place.

And then it just becomes a commodity. You know, air travel is another commodity. Like why is Southwest different? Delta, United, they're all the same, but then there's Southwest. They're a rebel, right? They're different. Yeah.

Kristen: Yep. And

Mike: And people that love them adore them. Yeah.

Kristen: Yeah, the differentiation happens in the why and how you do it.

Mike: Yeah.

Kristen: Not in the how and what. People tend to focus on the differentiation of the what, usually.but yeah, we talked about when our decisions feel right, we're willing to pay a premium or suffer an inconvenience for those products or services and the ability to put a why into words provides the emotional context for those decisions.

So it helps us actually rationalize the decisions that we know are right for us deep down. So if you articulate that why for your customers, they feel better about going with their gut decision, which is based on feeling. Yep. Yep.

Mike: Yeah, we want to be around, buy, and follow people who mirror us in some ways, you know?

Kristen: Yep. Absolutely. So, from here, we get into part three, Leaders Need a Following, and chapter six, which is about the emergence of trust. And what he really says here is like trust is not the result of a checklist. Like trust is a feeling.

Mike: It's a feeling.

Kristen: It's not a rational experience. And it begins to emerge when we have a sense that like another person or organization is driven by things other than their own self gain.

And he then gets into like we've succeeded as a species because of our ability to form cultures. It's groups of people who come together around a common set of values and beliefs. And there's so many stories in this book. I didn't include all of them, but one, so the ones I choose I think are particularly interesting.

But, the example of Shackleton, I think you've actually

Mike: Oh, I love Edward. I've used Edward. Edward Shackleton is a very famous,British captain who was sailing to the Antarctic, who's going to traverse the continent right around the beginning of World war One.But I you know, I didn't know that so he talks, okay. So he uses the example of how Shackleton advertised for his crew None of whom died in this like 18 or two year excursion that you know so. To give a little context, so they sail to the Antarctic, where they are almost immediately trapped in pack ice, which renders their boat, immobile.

They can neither go forward, they cannot go back, they cannot escape. They have to abandon the boat, and they spend, I think, the better part of a year on the ice, just trying to survive the winter. I don't remember the whole story. And then they cross the Antarctic continent. And then Shackleton and a small group sail across the South Sea to,South Georgia .

And then climb a mountain naked, basically, in the dead, and over a mountain to find, to reach the whaling outpost. That can then go back and rescue their guys. In that time not a single one died. And some of that is because Mr. Shackleton was a great leader. He's very foolhardy but also when he advertised in the paper looking for people he said something like he didn't say like

Kristen: has I have

Mike: Oh, you have it in there.

Okay, perfect. He said men wanted for hazardous journey small wages. Bitter cold, long months of complete darkness, constant danger, safe return doubtful. Honor and recognition in case of success. The only people that applied for that job were survivors. They were survivors and they were like, that sounds great.

And they all survived. Tell him what you're about and why you're doing it. And he got the right crew. And again, I'm listening to Kitchen Confidential and it's exactly like that. You could advertise for these cooks for Tony's kitchen and be like, long hours, low wages, constant cuts, burns, danger, little appreciation, you know, but, you will be surrounded by great food and teammates who love and adore you and you'll get the right guys to apply for that or people who apply for that job.

Kristen: I, I didn't know that. I'm sure I read that one. I've read his biography, but that

I loved that.

Mike: The newspaper article is amazing. Likeget the people that believe what you believe. And he did that. That's the army when they advertise, like, you know, an army of one, I don't know what the Marines are advertising.

Kristen: Right. But it's it's the kind of reverse. It's like Semper Fi. We're all one. Do you want to be part of a unit that is bigger than you and it's incredibly faithful to each other and you know their why, Yep.

Mike: Yeah.

Kristen: This is how he gets into, start with why in hiring. So not just hiring for skill set and experience. He makes the point that if you look at a job description, like the vast majority of it is focused on the what, it may be the how, but there's not usually much about the why in there.

And yeah. I like one thing he said is like a lot of people say they want to hire somebody passionate. He's like stop trying to just hire passionate people. Everybody is passionate about something. Like you can have the most like low key person imaginable and you get them on the right topic they'll be passionate.

The key is that they need to be passionate about the same why.

Mike: I thought I, I didn't, he just breaks it down in such like clear terms.

Kristen: Yep.

Mike: I also hire a passionate person. Passionate about what? Yeah. Yeah, that's genius. Everyone's passionate about something. Yeah. Yeah. Video games. I don't know. I'm something,formula one racing, not necessarily going to align with the corporate why that you need for somebody to be part of your team.

Yep. 

Kristen: Yeah. There's so many good quotes in here. Great companies don't hire skilled people and motivate them. They hire already motivated people and they inspire them. And also just talks about, like, there's so many companies go with the strategy of, paying somebody a lot of money and asking them to come up with great ideas. And that results in very little, versus pulling together a team of like minded people and giving them a cause to pursue.

That's what ultimately leads to this great sense of, teamwork and camaraderie and true innovation. 

Mike: Yeah,

Kristen: Yeah 

Mike: That's why the Yankees, despite having the biggest payroll every year, don't always win the World Series.

Kristen: Yeah, there you go.

Mike: you go. And then you get the money ball, like Oakland A's, who at under 50 million can still compete with them sometimes. Yeah.

Kristen: Yep. I mean, not that I know that, but

Mike: But well,

Kristen: I'll, I'll nod

Mike: You know, it's kind of, you know, the Yankees and their

Kristen: Yeah, I do know, like the ba

Mike: Yeah, they're in the zeitgeist enough to know that they, they, poach players from every team and pay them the most that you can get.

And all their teams do this. They're just the poster boy for it. But, yeah, you can't always buy a world championship. Sometimes you can, but sometimes you can't. And more money doesn't, It's a manipulation in a way, right? We all want to get paid a lot, I'm sure, but, we also want to belong to something that we're passionate about and believe in and shares our values.

And if you're very clear about your why, your own why, and you'll align with the, why do people join the Peace Corps? Why do people join non profits? Some non profit executives, I'm sure they make a lot of money. But in general, that is not as lucrative a way to go as, as,a for profit corporation sometimes, but not always.

Kristen: Why do people do that? Well, because those organizations share their passion and their why, Yep. Because the role of a leader is not to come up with all the great ideas, is to create an environment in which great ideas can happen. 

Yeah, I also thought it was really interesting where he gets into this a couple times in the book about like competition.

It's like people are so obsessed about competition, like what's the competition doing, right? He says that companies with a clear sense of why tend to ignore their competition because you know where, you know why you're doing what you're doing and you know who it appeals to and you're trying to be the best as possible for those people.

You're not like obsessed with what your competitors are doing.

Mike: He had a good example with the Wright brothers who I was just listening to a history podcast on. Their closest competitor was way more funded, had way more resources. The government was backing him, and he, his, but his why was he wanted to be famous.

The Wright brothers wanted to like,figure out flight for all of mankind. And they had a very devoted following of people that like supported them in their, in this weird, passionate, and the, the other dude, I don't remember his name, but despite all the money and all the better tools and the better resources and the better mechanics, the Wright brothers are the ones that pulled it off because it was their, It was their life's work and they weren't after the personal fame and glory. They were after the goal.

Kristen: were after One of these days we can visit my family in Dayton, Ohio and go to the their museum.

Mike: Oh was it in Ohio?. I mean they flew in Kitty Hawk

Kristen: Yeah they did, but they were from Dayton, Ohio.

Mike: Yeah, that's, they had their bicycle shop there.

Their family was there, but they kept going to Kitty Hawk because that was where the breeze was.

Kristen: breeze was. 

So yeah, so only when individuals can trust the culture of the organization will they take risks in order to advance that culture or organization as a whole. And great organizations become great because the people inside feel protected. That like, strong sense of culture creates a sense of belonging, it acts like a safety net.

And when people come to work knowing that their bosses, colleagues in the organization will look out for them, the results are reciprocal behavior that benefits the long term interests of the organization as a whole.

Mike: I do like that we're ignoring all whys are not created equal. And that, you know, just because you have a why, it doesn't necessarily mean it's a positive one. You know, tyrants throughout history also had some whys that attracted, you know, cult followings of passionate people to do very evil things. Yeah. Yeah.

I mean, that is an interesting

Kristen: Yeah, we're looking at this in a neutral format, as a kung fu or technique, Yeah. I mean, this can certainly be used for evil.

Mike: evil. Yeah, you know, it definitely is. It definitely is. When your why is oh, my group is better than everybody else.

You'll get people that believe that. Well, like,

Kristen: Well, like how many cults were founded with whys that were actually started out very compelling and meaningful to people.

And

Mike: the calls to like governments and countries, who favor nationalism and things like that. You will get a response for that.

Kristen: So yes, you could use this as a playbook for evil as well. But you know, since you're listening to our podcast, we're going to assume that

Mike: that's the original. Please do not use any of this for evil.

You are disallowed from using this for nefarious purposes.

Kristen: Yeah, that'll totally work. Right.

So yeah, that kind of wraps up most of that chapter.

He kinda gets more into like trust lives in the limbic brain and is why it's also important to note like if you're going to use like celebrity endorsements, they only really work other than like just having the recognition factor. If you choose somebody who also represents the why of your company. And so many people just choose celebrities for endorsements just because they're famous and maybe it will give you a short term gain with recognition, but it's not actually going to contribute

Mike: to Unless you find the celebrity that embodies your why.

Kristen: Well that's unless it's a, yes, unless it's a celebrity who actually is representative of your why. I don't

Mike: You know, I'll go back to watches. Omega loves to advertise with Daniel Craig, who is James Bond. They're the James Bond watch. I don't think their why is quite as clear as like, you know, Tudors.

Got, David Beckham. And, that message is a little bit clearer. It's like, we're a little bit counterculture, you know. We're rough and ready. We're an everyman kind of thing.

Kristen: All right, so chapter seven, this is he gets into tipping points and the law of diffusion of innovations. I don't think I wrote down who actually created this model, might've been a couple of people.

But this is basically the bell curve you've probably seen before.

Mike: I hadn't heard of this. I thought this was, no, not like this. I come from a different world,

Kristen: That's good. That's good to know, right?

Mike: I love this..

Kristen: It's great. It's very true and I think insightful. So the bell curve is broken down into like five populations. So you have the first two and a half percent who are the innovators.

So these are people who pursue new products or ideas aggressively. They're intrigued by like any fundamental advance. And this is part of their identity, right? So those are the first two and a half percent. And then the next 13 and a half percent are the early adopters.

These are people who are early to recognize the value of new ideas. They're willing to put up with some imperfection because they can see the potential. These are people waiting in line for hours for the new iPhone, right? Like those are generally fall into the early adopters.

Mike: Yeah, they'll incur difficulty and distress to try and get in first. Yep. Yep.

Kristen: And then you have the early majority, which is the next 34%, the late majority, which is the next 34%. And then finally the laggards,

Mike: Who only have a cell phone because they don't make rotary phones

Kristen: Right, exactly.

Mike: It's interesting when you talked about that, like. We're not all, you're not just one of these, like you're different ones for different things.

For instance, like I loved Twitter when it came out because it was simple. It was straightforward, it was text based only, and it was bounded at 140 characters. And I'm, it goes to like my love of Tudor and Chromebook. I had not much interest in Facebook or MySpace or any of those, like more elaborate.

I just, and I early adopted Twitter. And, but I don't care about whatever's going on and what is going on now. Tick tock, no interest in that whatsoever.

Kristen: Yeah, we all have things that we're more likely to be early adopters versus laggards on for sure. Yeah, and he says the further right you go down this curve, so like with the far left being the innovators and the far right being the laggards, the further right you go, you're going to encounter more customers who might need what you have, but they don't necessarily believe what you believe.

And with the law of diffusion, it's said that like mass market can only be achieved once you've penetrated like 15 to 18 percent of the market. Because the early majority is not going to try something new until somebody they know has tried it first, right? So that's like the tipping point, right?

And that 15 to 18 percent are not just people who are willing to buy your product. Like these are people who share your beliefs. They want to incorporate your ideas,

products, and services into their lives as what's to their own whys, right?

So like those first 15 to 18 percent are really going to value the why and that's why they're willing to put up with some inconveniences, some imperfections, et cetera, to be a part of it.

Mike: Yeah, I remember my friend had the first iPhone and he could barely get online with it. I remember sitting in a bar in Brooklyn

Kristen: I was

Mike: he was like, Oh my God, look at my phone.

And I was like, show me. And we're just sitting there waiting for it to load. But he didn't care. Oh, so this was popularized, this concept, by Everett M. Rogers in his 1962 book, Diffusion of Innovation. So this has been around, for the computer revolution.

But it makes sense.

Kristen: Yep, for sure.

He also talks about TiVo as I found an interesting example of a company that like should have been successful based on the timing, like the product that they brought to the market with the timing that they did, they should have been successful, but the problem was like all of the marketing was based on the features, the, and there was no like why behind it and they, yeah.

They, I don't know what they're doing now. They fell off, right?

Mike: Well, their technology was appropriated and copied and they did not have a cohesive enough why to make people care about them, right? iPod has been copied, there was the Zune, right? A lot of people copied it and we still, no, we don't have iPods, we have iPhones.

But they remained dominant in the market and continue to do so because their why is so clear. Just making another widget that has slightly better features is not enough to,maintain your market share over, over a long period of time.

Kristen: Yeah, this is also the chapter where he brings in Dr. Martin Luther King, who he also uses a lot as an example and

Mike: Well his why was. I love his use, so, Dr. King had a dream he didn't have a plan and he uses this to break down the difference between the visionaries who are not necessarily the same as the how guy who knows the operation like Dr. King didn't come and said I have a 12 point plan to address, racism in America. He said, I have a dream where we're all created equal.

The how is so much less important than the why. If you have the why, the how will I don't want to say it'll happen, but it will happen naturally and the bright people who are good at the how will attach themselves to you and do the how. It's the why guys that are, the why people that are hard to find.

I have a dream. Not I have a plan. Right?

Kristen: I think that is a subheading somewhere is it was, I have a dream, not the, I have a plan speech. Yeah,

Mike: For sure. That's not inspiring. It's not. Think about it. Nobody wants to hear your 12 point plan of how you, oh God, okay, we'll put it on C SPAN. You know.

Kristen: But, and this kind of gets into the next part which is how to rally those who believe and the next chapter. Which gets more into this like breaking down into the why types versus the how types and how they need each other but like Dr. King had Ralph Abernathy who at the end of the Dr. King speech where everybody was all like riled up and super excited and there was like so much energy in the air, then he would tell people what to actually do. So he was the one who was like, don't ride the buses. Right.So he, you needed both of those and this kind of gets into like, how do you actually like what actually inspires people?

And he talks about the difference between energy and charisma. He says energy motivates, but charisma inspires. And energy's easy to see, charisma is hard to define, energy is easy to measure, whereas charisma is near impossible to measure, and energy is easy to copy, but charisma is too elusive to copy.

And he says that all great leaders have charisma ultimately because of their clarity of why. Like this undying belief in a purpose or a cause bigger than themselves. Which is an interesting take. I think there's probably some arguments that could go into that, but around like maybe there's more to charisma, but that's ultimately what is inspiring to people is this clarity of why.

Mike: I'll save my take on that for the end.

Kristen: Okay. He also, in this chapter, he gets into the other way to view this circle, right? So far it's been presented as these three concentric circles. So, in this chapter, he's like, actually, think about this as you're looking at a cone from the top. So if this is an organization, the organization is a cone.

So you have the leader at the top, like they're the source of why. Their senior executives are the ones who are the how, like how is this actually getting executed? And the vast majority of the organization is in the what. But that's where that consistency is so important, right? And he talks about there are people who are naturally why types and the majority of people are how types,but the why types are the visionaries there tend to be optimists.

They believe that all the things they can imagine can be accomplished and how types are much more in the here and the now. They're realists, they have a clear sense of all things practical, and they tend to be better at building structures and processes and actually getting things done. And this is why types need how types to actually achieve their vision, and you can look at all these pairings of leaders.

So, like, Dr. King and Ralph Abernathy was one, but also, like, Steve Jobs and Steve Wozniak, Bill Gates and Paul Allen, like, all of these examples of, the why and the how. And he also relates this to like, the vision statement is the why, and the mission statement is the how, like the route and the guiding principles, the values, which I think was a good way to look at it. And then finally, great organizations require discipline to constantly talk about and remind everybody why the organization exists in the first place, everyone in the organization to be held accountable to how you do things and your guiding principles, and the time and effort to ensure that everything you say and do is consistent with your why.



Mike: I am inspired by this book. 

Kristen: And in this part where he's constantly talking about why it's true. Like he talks about a lot of times the founder, his presence is enough and his mentality is enough to keep companies on track during their lifetime.

Mike: And because they keep reminding you of the why that's their personal values. And he uses Sam Walton a lot. We created Walmart for the every man, And they got away from that at some point. Much to the chagrin of their clients and employees alike.

Kristen: Especially their employees.

Mike: Yeah.

Kristen: But, so yeah. So the next chapter nine is really short. This is basically talking about the fact that this cone of your organization also sits on top of another system, which is the marketplace. So this is your customers, potential customers, press, shareholders, competition, suppliers, money, basically like everybody who interacts with your company.

And he's noting that the base of the cone, the what are the people who are actually interacting directly with the marketplace. So again, consistency, is everything and making sure the why level is represented. And since the what is driven by a different part of the brain, it's really challenging to communicate at that level, like what makes a company different, right?

So this is when he gets into chapter 10 is all about like communication. So he talks about like symbols have meaning because we infuse them with meaning. Only when the purpose, cause, or belief is clear can a symbol actually command great power. This is why most companies have logos, like their logos are not actually symbols, they're just logos.

And for a logo to become a symbol, people need to be inspired to use that logo to say something about who they are. So this is Harley Davidson. It's also, I think a lot of people have felt that way about Nike and various, there's so many brands that serve an example of this, right? But something where it's part of their identity.

Mike: I'm also thinking about people who tattoo, like The Star Wars, like the rebels there. I see both now. I see the rebel emblem and I see the empire's emblem tattooed on people, enough that these fictional, very fictional, organizations are saying enough to people about who they are and what they believe that they're going to put the rebel hawk or whatever.

It's like a, it looks like some type of, Phoenix or bird on their body. Yeah. 

Kristen: So the rest of this chapter gets into this idea that, which I really like that, whenever you're in business, there's going to be so many people who tell you what worked for them, right? And we tend to have this bias of looking at what other organizations are doing, what other people have done.

And, his whole point with this is that, what works for one organization is not necessarily going to work for another. The key is,the what and the how have to be consistent with the why. He gives, putting ping pong tables in the office an example of this, and this really reminds me of, especially, the biggest,peaks of tech, everything was just all about, like, how many different perks can we put in this office?

Like, what is the most creative perk that we can come up that we can advertise for like, why working here is so great. But in the meantime, there's all these values that are up on the wall that aren't actually being lived out in the behavior of the company and the, what they're promoting, what they're recognizing, what they're tolerating, what they're allowing, right?

So I think that's. It really really rang true for so many companies that are like, Oh, well, this worked well for this company. Let me do this for me. Like, no. Like, how does it relate back to your why?

Mike: And he talks about, the Celery Test, right? So he's okay, you have a business and somebody comes over to you and says, somebody very successful and says, Hey, you got to do M and M's.

Kristen: Everybody's doing M and M's now that'll guarantee your success. And then somebody else comes over and he's it's all about Oreos. Like we're all doing Oreos. Oreos are the ticket. And then somebody else is Rice

Mike: You gotta, rice milk man, it's all rice milk. And then somebody else is really the market just wants celery.

So you go to the store and you get Oreos, M& M's, rice milk, and celery. And somebody looking at you, so this is what's been successful for four different people, right, and you're standing in the checkout line. And somebody looking at you with your weird group of products can not tell what you're about, right?

But if you just have rice milk, and celery. They know, or they intuit a little bit. They start to think, well, this guy's about health, or something related to like, this guy's about taking care of the body and optimizing health. And so just cause Oreos worked for one guy does not mean they're going to work for you.

Kristen: Yeah, I mean it's all about like what is your why,

Mike: is your why? Yeah. Your why

Kristen: could be about indulgence. Like for your company, like it could be, you're all about providing people with indulgences. Well, that's very different than maybe the chocolate cake is going to very much line up to your why.

But if your why is about like being healthy, then you know if you're, if you and then he talks about like throughout the rest of the book, like celery testing business decisions and using that to decide like whether something is actually lining up with that core why or not.

Mike: Yeah, it uses the example of Volkswagen. When you translate Volkswagen, it literally means the people's car or something like that, car for the people and we'll ignore the origin of Volkswagen for the moment.

Kristen: time being. Yeah,

Mike: But at some point they started, they launched, and they, and some of their cars they had built in, vases for like fresh flowers.

my, my parents had a Volkswagen. I was a kid, the cute little bugs, right? it's.

Kristen: Yeah, it's like

Mike: Hippie and cool, right? And then at some point they came out with the 70, 000 luxury model that was in many ways better than Mercedes and BMW and nobody bought it because it did not line up with their why.

And then he talks about like Toyota and Honda when they wanted to, come out with luxury models, they created a new company. Nobody's buying an 80, buying trucks and things, but an 80, 000 Toyota, right? But, so they created a Lexus. Same machines, same value, in terms of the mechanics of it, but they needed a new brand with a new why. And Rolex did the reverse when they created Hans Wilsdorf created Tudor. He wanted a, like a more budget friendly, in the reverse, right? They weren't luxury items back then. But he wanted a more accessible brand. That had a different why.

Kristen: Yep. So, yeah, I love this. It's, and I think it is, it's a good thing that you can take away as to the Celery Test idea.

Mike: Oh, it's genius. Yeah, if I see somebody with rice, milk, and celery, and like hummus, I know what they're about. I'm like, you're my people. You know, right? And if I see somebody with craft slices and white bread and, I don't know, like, I'm talking

He's 

Kristen: just staring at the Cheezits,

Mike: Yeah, we're hungry, but I'm a little hungry, I judge you in line based on what you're getting. And it's not just oh, are you a vegetarian? Like it's the quality of what you're buying the vibe of what you're buying I know what you're about and I'll see like these single guys in line and they're buying like a lot of frozen dinners and one package of sushi that was made at the safeway counter and i'm like, I know you're single

Kristen: To be clear, your grocery cart mix does not actually mean anything. Please feel free to buy Oreos and celery

Mike: Well, I love, I buy Oreos and celery at the same time, but there's a consistency that

Kristen: It's a good

Mike: good metaphor, The metaphor really, you have to have consistency in what you're showing to the world if you want them to understand your why.

Kristen: And the less you have to say about it, and the more you can just like, go to that limbic part of the brain where people are looking at the celery and the rice milk. You don't have to give them a diatribe on health. They get it, Yeah. Making sure all of the tiny decisions you're making throughout the day as a business are consistent. Yep. So part five, the challenge of success gets into like where this goes astray, right?

So like this is especially companies that did do a really good job with the why, and it like got them to a point of success, and then things taper off, right? So this is where he, he brings in Walmart a lot as an example of a company that, while its founder was alive, was like very clear, like

and the why grew very much in lockstep and it was very much aligned.

And then over time, not so much. After he died, not so much. They've had a not great track record of a lot of issues that have plagued them as a company. Right.

Then he talks about like when why goes fuzzy. So there's this gathering of very high performing entrepreneurs at MIT every year and at one of these gatherings, they asked who in the room felt like they had achieved their financial goals and 80 percent of the hands went up.

Right. This is a very you know, financially successful group of entrepreneurs. And then they asked how many of them feel successful. And like, all the hands went back down.

Mike: Yeah. It's back to gap and gain back.

Kristen: Yes. Yeah, definitely. And he talks about the difference between achievement and success and relating that back to his model, which I thought was really interesting.

He says that achievement comes from when you pursue and attain what you want, while success comes when you're clear in pursuit of why you want it. And says most people are going to reach a place where even if at one point they did feel very aligned with their why where they are no longer aligned and they split and then chapter 12 is Split Happens. It's a little play on words there. Yeah.

Mike: So clever, Mr. Sinek, so clever now, it's

Kristen: But yeah, then this goes back to the heading of this part, is the single greatest challenge any organization will face is success. Because when a company's small, the founder relies on their gut to make all the major decisions, but that becomes impossible over time. As that cone of the organization grows, the clarity of why starts to dilute.

And while early on the filter for decisions was the gut, it just becomes rational empirical data over time. And people get to a point where like, they're no longer inspired by a cause greater than themselves. They just show up to work, they manage their systems and work to reach certain preset goals and they go home.

And he has that kind of a chart where as the, what is growing over time,being in alignment with money and growth, right? At some point, like for a while, the why will be growing in lockstep with it, and at some point it gets fuzzy, and then it splits off to the right, and they just get further and further apart over time. And then he also mentions his other test in here is the School Bus Test. Which is if a founder or leader of an organization were hit by a school bus would the organization continue to thrive at the same pace without them as the at the helm. And to pass this test the founders why needs to be extracted and integrated into the culture of the Company and a clear success plan must find future leaders who are inspired by the founding cause and ready to lead it in the next generation Which then gets into succession planning.

And this is just, does not happen

Mike: It doesn't happen.

Kristen: many

Mike: It's so hard to find somebody that shares your why and your vision. I don't know. It doesn't really happen.

Kristen: When he gives a lot of examples of this, I mean, he does, he gives Southwest as an example where this happens successfully, where they have had successors who have really carried through that same why, but then it gives a lot of other examples of cases where even especially where like Steve Jobs, Bill Gates, Michael Dell, Howard Schultz, all leaving the companies and the why leaving with them

Mike: and then

Kristen: having to come back and

Mike: Yeah. Jobs came back early. That was like in the early eighties, right? I think now they still have their why kinda is on point, where Microsoft is not, you know. 

Kristen: And then lastly, I also liked, he had the quote in here, which was from like a well known sales coach, but what gets measured gets done. So I think I'm also always a fan of putting measurements in place for what you actually want to be incentivizing, right? So he has a couple examples of here in cases where, giving bonuses based on thank you cards that were sent out 

Mike: Oh,that was the collections agency.. And this woman, started at a collections firm and noticed that all these very nice and honest people became horrible people on the phone as they were trying to collect debts from people.

They would threaten them, they would intimidate them, they would bully them. And she's like, this is terrible,I don't want to be that person. So she created a company where,they took a very different tact and tried to learn as much as possible about the, the, debtor and find out their circumstances, their story, all that stuff.

And, the industry decried her and said, there's no way you'll be successful. And it turns out that she's actually collecting 40 percent more than they are, by, being kind and the way she bonuses her team.These collection agents instead of bullying you like they're getting bonus by how many thank you cards they send out. What okay, so she aligns her financial renumeration with her why you know.

Kristen: Yep.

And then you have another example of doing this where a business owner who really valued work life balance and he wanted that to be

Mike: Oh yeah. I love that. I'm doing that.

Kristen: Everybody had to clock in between 8 and 8:30 clock out between 5 and 5:30. And if you clocked out late, you were out of the

Mike: You're out of the bonus pool. Wow. Wow.

Kristen: Their work done within the hours.

Yeah. Super smart.

Mike: Yeah.

Kristen: You don't mess around. You're like, I have nine hour, eight hours.

Mike: I got it. Okay. I gotta get it done and I'm, and I have to leave, that's genius. Yes. I love that. That's great. Yeah. Let's all do that. so yeah,

Kristen: So getting into the final part, chapter 13, the origins of why, and what he's basically saying in this chapter is that figuring out why is a process of discovery, not invention. It's not about doing all the market research and talking to all the customers. Like it really starts with you.

Mike: That's the introspection. Who are you really? What is at the core of who you are? And if you're going to be honest about that is not something you're creating. If it is, it's going to be inauthentic.

You won't be aligned.

Kristen: This is where he actually puts his personal story. I thought it was actually interesting because up until this point in the book, he has not, this is kind of the opposite of It's Your Ship in some ways, where he spends the entire book talking about himself.

Sorry. It's, I mean,

Mike: Sure.

Kristen: Was, it's a valid criticism of it.

Mike: it, sure, 

Kristen: It's a great book.

I don't think he'll dispute that he has an ego about it. He's a naval commander. You're supposed to have an ego about it, But anyway, so, Simon Sinek does not really talk about himself at all in this book until the end.

He gives his personal story. And he talks about hitting rock bottom like three and a half years after starting his business, which had modest success, but he just hit a point where it wasn't getting where he wanted to, and he was consumed by depression, paranoia, and this, sense that he was a failure, and he started doing research on what ultimately made companies successful, and he actually, interestingly said, fortunately, there's, not that many great examples of companies who have sustained it over a long period of time.

So that's when he started studying Apple and others. He came up with the Golden Circle. And he had some influence with neuroscience research and psychology. And he concludedthat he had basically lost his why. And his new why became

inspiring people to believe that they could do whatever they wanted to do.

So that became his new why he became obsessed with it. He talked about it to anybody who would listen. And he said over time,

Mike: The Law of Diffusion did its job. He became very successful, started doing all these public speaking gigs and became like who he is now.

Kristen: And he talks about using the celery test along the way, like he decided not to paywall or patent like any of this knowledge. Like he wanted to make it accessible

Mike: He still charges for the book.

Kristen: He does still charge, I mean, he still charges for the book, but compared to

Mike: for sure.

Kristen: You have to spend 20, 000 on a mastermind in order to get this knowledge, which a lot of people do.

So because that fit with his why of helping to inspire as many people and organizations as possible, right?

Mike: I think it probably works out better for you in the end to he's crazy famous, many New York Times, bestselling books, but not everybody needs to do that. Like Dan Sullivan, maybe we'll do at some point Gap and Gain, right?

Like he, his books are really good. very small books, they're not New York times bestsellers until he started working with,his coauthor. And he, it's very expensive to work with him. So he had a different like mindset and different why. But I think the point is being true to your, and just working with him is like you said, it's probably 20, 000.

You have to have a certain level, but no, you can download Simon's book from audible and get this amazing experience for 1299 or one credit for audible, very accessible, but that's who he is,

Kristen: Yep, for sure. And he kind of emphasizes, I like to say at the end where he's like, I'm not better connected than everybody else. I don't have better work ethic. I got average grades at a non Ivy League school, but he learned how to start with why.

And he's like very firmly believes that has been the reason for his success. And he like lives it every day. So yeah,

Mike: Stay on the route and not on the branches. Yeah. You know, In restaurants, it's like, why did I do that?

Why do we do that? Well, it's because I love cooking for people and caring for people. The what of it and the how,how we organize the walk in or what is the stuff on the table,far less important than the why of like nurturing other people. Yeah. And it's easy to lose that in the years of doing the same, to get caught up in the minutiae and the, I'll get caught on the branches.

Kristen: Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Mhmm. So yeah, and then he closes the last chapter is basically if you follow your why, others will follow you.

And if you're focused on competing against other people, they don't want to help you. But if you're focused on competing against yourself, people want to help you. And this kind of goes back to like the business world is just so obsessed with competition. And he provided this like counter where it's like how are you better than your competition?

It's more like, well, you know, it depends on who, who the customer is. Like for the right customer who aligns with us, we are absolutely better. For the wrong customer, nope, we're not. And I love that. It's a different way to look at it versus like, oh, here's like the 25 ways that we're better than our competition.

Mike: Yeah, I think that's I don't know if it's a Western thing. We're very, we have a very zero sum mentality. I see in the, like the UFC there for the last, like five years, people have been obsessed with figuring out who the GOAT was in every division.

Who's the goat greatest of all time. and

Kristen: and,

Mike: oh my God, it's not like that. could be, might be the greatest for a moment, but if you go 10 years from it, you're going to get somebody else yes, Michael Jordan. Okay. He's the goat. But,

Kristen: they

Mike: People are obsessed with that. There has to be, it's like Highlander, there can be only one.

Well, no, you can be successful, I can be successful, we can all be successful in different, in our own way. it. Is not a zero sum game. And Chris Voss talks about that too. He's like, don't split the difference. Good deals should create more value for everybody. That's a different mindset, so I gotta figure

Kristen: mindset. Yes. Never Split the Difference coming in 2025 to Love and Leadership Leadership Book Club

Mike: Love and Leadership and Cats.

Kristen: Love and Leadership and Cats. Excuse me. Yes.

Mike: Kristen, what didn't resonate?

Kristen: So I mean, I think I, I have some of the same criticism I do for like, honestly, like most business books out there where it gets repetitive.

Mike: One third too long.

Kristen: Yeah. Like they're all just, I just, I want to get across this notion of like your business book does not need to be like 250 to 300 pages long to be impactful.

Mike: So yeah, I think there's a lot of filler that could be cut. He has a lot of examples, could've done without some of them, He does my criticisms the same like he does the same examples over and over again. And we look at Apple from 35 different views.

Well, I got it the first 12 times, you know

Kristen: Yeah. I'm also like, okay, if I wanted to like, I could read a book on, just on Apple, if I wanted to like,

Mike: Sure, and we probably should.

Kristen: Maybe at some point. But, but yeah. so you're similar.

Mike: I am and the thing I other than that, I don't love the charisma part. I don't think he's really worked that fully out because I think I know what he's talking about, but charisma and purpose are not the same thing. I think what he's trying to say is people follow leaders with a very powerful why and purpose that doesn't necessarily mean a personal charisma.

I have to think more about this, but I don't think he's really gamed that out fully. Bill Gates is not charismatic at all. There's lots of tech leaders who are not charismatic. There are some that are for sure, like Jobs had a real charisma about him.Probably not in person. I heard he wasn't super great in person to work with.

I could be wrong, that's the public persona.And then there's people who are hard introverts. I can't remember whether it was Hewlett or Packard, but one of them scored through the roof on the introversion scale. And he still managed to build a great company. SoI don't know, I don't fully agree with that.

Kristen: Yeah, that I also flagged him like, I feel like I can make an argument against this, but I

Mike: And it's antithetical to our own purpose in that leadership can be learned,

Kristen: be learned. Yeah. Well, I mean, he's saying it is within your power, right? Because you can have a strong why, but I do, I think there's a little more to charisma than

Mike: He's right though. It is an, it is a, in an indefinable quality.

Kristen: hmm.

Mike: It's like, why do people like you? Yeah. Okay. Kristen, most life changing takeaway.

Kristen: So I actually put, I really liked his story at the end. I actually, like his personal story.

Mike: I knew you would.

Kristen: Which Mike totally was like, oh, you're gonna, which is, and I've read this book before, but I was not an entrepreneur at the time. I read this during my master's program and it was good to do a really deep dive on it.

And yeah, I really liked the story. I think just because I am an early, um, entrepreneur. I think there's, and I have a marketing background and stuff. There's a lot I can relate to, with it, but I feel inspired to like really thoroughly be articulating like my why for my business and be like celery testing the decisions I'm making and what I'm choosing to prioritize based on that.

Mike: I think that's awesome. So for me, It also kind of made me reevaluate my own why, like I'm an executive, why am I doing what I'm doing? I'm very good at a lot of hows, I'm very adroit operationally, but it's not the why of what I'm doing, what I'm doing. So it made me think about that.

And then it really made me just clarify in my mind that the root, the why is by far the most important. There's a line in the Daxue that says, your branches are well ordered, but your root is in chaos. This doesn't happen. So you know, it really reminded me to lead with, especially I'm starting a new job to lead everything with the root of, and my why of why I exist and what I want to provide to others.

And that's super powerful. And then also to align with and hire people, surround myself with people that share my actual why and not look at the skills as much or the experience, but really get the why. And I'm going to, champion that moving forward. 

A very elucidating book. A great sieve to strain your thoughts through.

Kristen: I love it. Yeah. I feel like a good end of year book to start like thinking about, new

Mike: New beginnings.

Kristen: Like how can you really clarify and live out your why? Right. It's

Mike: actually easier, Life is hard. Modern work is hard, but if you can lead with your why and just stay true to that, I think it's going to be easier.

I don't know, but I suspect it will be, you know?Okay. That's our podcast for

Kristen: That's our episode for today. 

Mike: Yeah we both need food and coffee.

Kristen: me tell 

Mike: bit. Let me tell you guys it is not easy to do a podcast every week and we've been true now for over 20 weeks for over almost half a year, but our why I think is really we believe that leadership can be learned and my why is you know caring for others and supporting others to improve themselves and grow themselves.

Kristen: That's why we're doing this, That's why we keep doing

Mike: why we keep doing it.

Kristen: We're very committed to this podcast. It's super important to us. So we really appreciate you guys listening. Please share with your friends and colleagues who you think would benefit from it.

Mike: We really hope it helps you.

You know, we hope in some way you take something away that will help you further your, yourself or your career or whatever you're trying to do. So we're here to, we're here to help you.

Kristen: So on that note, thank you guys so much for listening and we will see you next time.

Mike: Thank you everyone.

Kristen: The Love and Leadership Podcast is produced and co-hosted by me, Kristen Brun Sharkey and co-hosted by Mike Sharkey. Please rate and review us on Apple Podcasts, Spotify, or wherever else you get your podcasts. We can't stress enough just how much these reviews help. You can follow us on LinkedIn under Kristen Brun Sharkey and Michael Sharkey, and on Instagram as loveleaderpod.

You can also find more information on our website, loveandleadershippod.com. Thank you so much for listening, and we'll see you again next week.