Start With Why by Simon Sinek
The game changing approach to inspiring leadership
👋 A good day to you! This week, I’m covering the book ‘Start With Why’ by Simon Sinek. This is of course an all-time classic, that many of you will have heard about before. It is the starting point for every leadership discussion, so let’s see what it’s all about!
To stay on theme, let’s start with why you should start with ‘why’. As a leader, it is your goal to get things done within the organisation, and this can largely be achieved in two ways: By inspiration and by manipulation. In contrast to what some people might think, manipulations are quite effective. They can help influence the behaviour of the organisation, and it can result in quite an effective organisation. That being said, it does not breed loyalty. The gains that we get from it are only short term.
In contrast, when a leader manages to inspire the organisation, the effects that we observe are an order of magnitude better. This is of course easier said than done, which could explain why many leaders opt to be successful at manipulation, rather than fail at inspiration. The leaders that are effective at inspiring their people have something in common: Indeed, you guessed it, they all start with ‘why’.
TL;DR for the Time-Pressured Product Manager
Starting with ‘why’ helps you to inspire your organisation, allowing it to better maintain lasting success, become better at innovation, and have a greater flexibility in what they are doing.
Having a clearly defined ‘why’ helps an organisation in recruiting the right people.
Clearly voicing ‘why’ your product exists over ‘what’ you product does helps you reach early adopters, which will later spark the mass-adoption of your product.
The Golden Circle
The underlying theory of starting with ‘why’ can be described using a phenomenon called ‘The Golden Circle’, which can be see in the diagram below. By default, people explain a plan by starting with ‘what’ we are going to do, followed by ‘how’ we are going to do it, and occasionally (or after someone asks a clever question), they’ll throw in ‘why’ we are going to do it. When looking at The Golden Circle, they are working from the outside in.
The magic starts to happen when we work from the outside inwards. When starting with ‘why’, the organisation shares the reason why it exists: The underlying belief of the organisation. The ‘how’ and the ‘what’ then serve as proof of that belief. The beauty here is that as soon as people understand the ‘why’, the ‘how’ and ‘what’ will appear as natural results of the ‘why’. This means that, given that they are well thought through, the leadership no longer has to explain ‘what’ or ‘how’ the organisation does what it does. Even better: By clearly voicing the ‘why’, the employees can figure out ‘what’ to do, or ‘how’ do to things completely by themselves. This drives empowerment, which is the main thing we’re striving for in developing great products, as we’ve discussed in the previous edition on the book ‘Empowered’ by Marty Cagan.
However, the benefits aren’t limited to just the product and engineering departments, but they will radiate to other departments like marketing, hiring, and sales as well.
Following a Leader
“The goal is not to hire people who simply have a skill set you need, the goal is to hire people who believe what you believe.”
When we centre an organisation around a strong ‘why’, we’ll notice that it becomes the primary driver of our recruitment process. This forms the basis for a strong company culture, and ensures you’ll only hire the strongest fits: The people who believe you ‘why’ is something worth pursuing.
The book shares a great story about polar explorer Ernest Shackleton. In order to recruit men for his exploration of the south pole, he posted the following advertisement in a newspaper:
“Men wanted for hazardous journey. Small wages, bitter cold, long months of complete darkness, constant danger, safe return doubtful. Honour and recognition in case of success.”
The ad is clever in that it does the recruitment process for Ernest: Only the people who believe such a dangerous undertaking is important will apply. They already understood Shackleton’s ‘why’.
It’s a lot easier to hire people that are inspired by your ‘why’, and then train them to competency, rather than hiring purely based on skills, and try to motivate them after they’ve joined your organisation. In addition, these people will be very loyal to your organisation, whereas people that joined because of their skillset will jump at the first opportunity that has slightly better benefits than you do.
Effects on the Outside World
Having a strongly defined ‘why’ doesn’t just have benefits inside the organisation, but will also help drive the adoption of your products. People are a lot more forgiving when the buy a product for your ‘why’, rather than when they buy it for a list of features. Apple is the master at this: They continuously challenge the status quo, and keep innovating in new markets. This became their driving force during their remarkable rise at the start of this century.
For startups, a clearly defined ‘why’ can help convince a series of early adopters, which will later help spreading your product organically. This process of mass-adoption is thoroughly described in the book ‘Crossing the Chasm’ by Geoffrey Moore, which will be the subject of a future edition of the Product Bookshelf.
Closing Remarks
When an organisation defines itself by ‘what’ it does, that’s all it will ever be able to do. When it defines itself by ‘why’ it does what it does, they are better able to maintain lasting success, are better at innovation, and have a greater flexibility in what they are doing.
If you want to be a better leader for your organisation or product teams, it can be a game changer to stop and reflect on your organisations ‘why’, so you can become a megaphone for it in your organisation.
The book also helped me to reflect on ‘why’ I’m writing these articles every week. Building great products is hard, and there are a lot of bad products out there. It is my belief that we can all create better products, if we together study the lessons from the people that know how to do it. I’ll continue to do so next week!
“No matter the size of the organisation, no matter the industry, no matter the product or the service, if we all take some responsibility to start with ‘why’ and inspire others to do the same, then, together, we can change the world. And that’s pretty inspiring.”