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Start with the Why By Simon Sinek

Notes by Jane L. Sigford

Chapter 1: Assume You Know

• Bad decisions are sometimes made on false assumption. [And] sometimes

when things go right, we think we know why, but do we really? • How can we ensure that all our decisions will help the best results for

reasons that are fully within our control? Logic dictates that more information and data are key

• More data, however, doesn’t always help, especially if a flawed assumption set the whole process in motion in the first place.

• Great leaders understand the value in things we cannot see. • Every instruction we give, every course of action we set, every result we

desire, starts with the same thing: a decision. • There are those who decide to manipulate…and there are those who start

from somewhere very different. • Though both courses of action may yield similar short-term results, it is

what we can’t see that makes long-term success more predictable for only one. P. 15

Chapter 2: Carrots and Sticks Manipulation vs. Inspiration

• There are only 2 ways to influence human behavior: you can manipulate it or you can inspire it.

• When companies or organizations do not have a clear sense of why their customers are their customers, they tend to rely on a disproportionate number of manipulations to get what they need.

• And for good reason. Manipulations work. P. 17 Price

• Many companies are reluctant to play the price game, but they do so because they know it is effective. P. 17

• [Wal-Mart] has built a phenomenally successful business playing the price game. But it also came at a high cost.

• Scale helped Wal-Mart avoid the inherent weaknesses of a price strategy but the company’s obsession with price above all else has left it scandal-ridden and hurt its reputation.

• And everyone of the company’s scandals was born from its attempts to keep costs down so it could afford to offer such low prices.

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• Price always costs something. The question is, how much are you willing to pay for the money you make? P. 18

Promotions

• The manipulative nature of promotions is so well established in retail that the industry even named one of the principles. They call it breakage.

• Breakage measures the percentage of customers who fail to take advantage of a promotion and end up paying full price for a product instead.

• This typically happens when buyers don’t bother performing the necessary steps to claim their rebates, a process purposely kept complicated or inconvenient to increase the likelihood of mistakes or inaction to keep that breakage number up.

• Regulators have steeped up their scrutiny of the rebate industry, but with only limited success.

• The rebate process remains cumbersome and that means free money for the seller.

• Manipulation at its best. But at what cost? P. 20 Fear

• When fear is employed, facts are incidental. A powerful manipulator, fear is often used with far less nefarious motivations. P. 21

• If anyone has ever sold you anything with a warning to fear the consequences if you don’t buy it, they are using a proverbial gun to your head to help you see the “value” of choosing them over their competitor.

• But it works. P. 22 Aspirations

• If fear motivates us to move away from something horrible, aspirational messages tempt us toward something desirable. P. 22

• Aspirational messages are most effective with those who lack discipline or have a nagging fear or insecurity that they don’t have the ability to achieve their dreams on their own (which, at various time for various reasons, is everyone).

• Aspirational messages are not only effective in the consumer market, they also work quite well in business-to-business transactions.

• But all too often, the [systems] fail to maintain them. • [What happens is that we are] always drawn to the quicker, cheaper option

over the better long-term solution. • Just like the habitual dieter, “they never have the time or money to do it

right the first time, “ [a consultant said], “but they always have the time and money to do it again.” P. 23 [so true of professional development in schools NOTE MINE]

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Peer Pressure

• Peer pressure works not because the majority or the experts are always right, but because we fear that we may be wrong. P. 24

• [Using peer pressure] is designed to do one thing and one thing only—to pressure you to buy. To make you feel you might be missing out on something or that everyone knows but you. P. 25

Novelty (a.k.a. innovation.

• People often confuse innovation with novelty. • Real innovation changes the course of industries or even society. The light

bulb, the microwave oven, the fax machine, iTunes. Just adding a camera to a phone is not an innovation, it is a novelty. P. 26

• If a company adds too many novel ideas too often, it can increase sales for a while but it doesn’t last. P. 26

The Price you Pay for the Money you Make

• Manipulations work but they do not breed company loyalty. P. 28 • Manipulations may work in politics to help someone get elected, but they

don’t create a foundation for leadership. • Leadership requires people to stick with you through thick and thin.

Leadership is the ability to rally people not for a single event, but for years. • There is a big difference between repeat business and loyalty. P. 28 • Loyalty is when people are willing to turn down a better product or a better

price to continue doing business with you. • Loyal customers often don’t even bother to research the competition or

entertain other options. Loyalty is not easily won. Repeat business, however, is. All it takes is more manipulations. P. 29

• Short-term fixes have a deleterious impact on the long-term health of an organization. [All the “trends that come to public education have a tendency to make senior staff jaded and reluctant to try something different. NOTE MINE] p. 29

Manipulations Lead to Transactions, Not Loyalty • For transactions that occur an average of once, carrots and sticks are the

best way to elicit the desired behavior. • In any circumstance in which a person or organization wants more than a

single transaction, however, if there is a hope for a loyal, lasting relationship, manipulations do not help. [Is this why American voters are so jaded? QUESTION MINE] p. 29

• Manipulations work, but they cost money

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• All the advertising, promotions and pressure employed to tempt us one way or another, each attempting to push harder than the other to court us for our money or our support, ultimately yields one consistent result: stress. [Is this true of all the school choice options? QUESTION MINE] p. 33

Just Because it Works doesn’t make it right

• Danger of manipulations is that they work. And….they have become the norm, practiced by the vast majority of companies and organizations, regardless of size or industry. That fact alone creates a systemic peer pressure.

• The collapse of the housing market and subsequent collapse of the banking industry were due to decisions made inside the banks based on a series of manipulations. Employees were manipulated with bonuses that encouraged shortsighted decision-making.

• The reality is, in today’s world, manipulations are the norm. • But there is an alternative. P. 34

Part 2:An Alternative Perspective Chapter 3: The Golden Circle

This is Sinek’s “Golden Circle” • There are few leaders who choose to inspire rather than manipulate in order to

motivate people.

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• Every single one of these inspiring leaders thinks, acts, and communicates exactly the same way. And it’s the complete opposite of the rest of us.

• Consciously or not, how they do it is by following a naturally occurring pattern that I [Sinek] call The Golden Circle. P. 37

• Golden Circle inspired by the golden ratio that is recognized as a mathematical formula for proportion and even beauty. P. 38

• The Golden Circle provides compelling evidence of how much more we can achieve if we remind ourselves to start everything we do by first asking why. P. 38

• Start from the outside in: the WHATs are easy to identify. It is what every single company and org. on the planet knows that they do. P. 39 WHATs are easy to identify.

• HOW: HOWs are how something is different or better. • WHY: Very few people or companies can clearly articulate WHY they do WHAT

they do. • When most orgs or people think, act, or communicate they do so from the

outside in, from WHAT to WHY. The go from the clearest thing to the fuzziest thing.

• We say WHAT we do, we sometimes say HOW we do it, but we rarely say WHY we do WHAT we do.

• But not the inspired companies. Not the inspired leaders. Every single one of them, regardless of their size or their industry, thinks, acts, and communicates from the inside out. P. 39

• Most companies give their message about WHAT they do, instead of WHY. Apple is an exception.

• Here is an example of a WHAT message for Apple o We make great computers o They’re beautifully designed, simple to use and user-friendly o Wanna buy one?

• Here is the same message but from a WHY perspective. o Everything we do, we believe in challenging the status quo. We believe in

thinking differently. o The way we challenge the status quo is by making our products

beautifully designed, simple to use and user-friendly. o And we happen to make great computers. o Wanna buy one? Pp. 40-41

• It’s a completely different message. It actually feels different from the first one. P. 41

• People don’t buy WHAT you do, they buy WHY you do it. [What is the lesson for us for schools? QUESTION MINE] p. 41

• When communicating from the inside out, however, the WHY is offered as the reason to buy and the WHATs serve as the tangible proof of that belief.

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• It is that clear correlation between WHAT they [Apple] do and WHY they do it that makes Apple stand out. This is the reason we perceive Apple as being authentic. Everything they do works to demonstrate their WHY, to challenge the status quo.

• It is always clear that Apple “thinks different,” p. 43 • When an organization defines itself by WHAT it does, that’s all it will ever be

able to do. P. 45. [Message for schools? QUESTION MINE]p. 45 • Apple even changed its legal name in 2007 from Apple Computer, Inc to Apple

Inc. to reflect the fact that they were more than just a computer company. P. 46 [Message for education when we define ourselves as “school” districts. What if we called ourselves “education” districts so that we are more than a physical building, a place? QUESTIONS MINE]

• Those people who share Apple’s WHY believe what Apple believes…they believe that Apple’s products are objectively better, and any attempt to convince them otherwise is pointless. P. 49 [That’s been my experience. NOTE MINE]

• What if there is more than one right? What if PCs are good for some people and Apple’s for others? P. 49

Not the Only Way, Just One way • When the WHY goes fuzzy, it becomes much more difficult to maintain the

growth, loyalty and inspiration that helped drive the original success. Manipulation rather than inspiration fast becomes the strategy of the choice to motivate behavior

• This is effective in the short term but comes at a high cost in the long term. P. 50

Chapter 4: This is not Opinion, This is biology

• Our need to belong is not rational, but it is a constant that exists across all people, across all people in all cultures. It is a feeling we get when those around us share our values and beliefs. When we feel like we belong we feel connected and we feel safe. P. 53

• But when a company clearly communicates their WHY, what they believe, and we believe what they believe, then we will sometimes go to extraordinary lengths to include those products or brands in our lives. This is not because they are better, but because they become markers or symbols of the values and beliefs we hold dear. P. 54

• We are drawn to leaders and orgs. that are good at communicating what they believe.

• Those whom we consider great leaders all have an ability to draw us close and to command our loyalty. P., 55

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Gut Decisions Don’t Happen in Your Stomach • The power of WHY is not opinion, it’s biology. If you look at a cross section of

the human brain, from the top down, you see that the levels of The Golden Circle correspond precisely with the three major levels of the brain. P. 55

• Newest brain=neocortex—corresponds with WHAT—responsible for rational and analytical thought

• Middle two sections=limbic brain—responsible for feelings, such as trust and loyalty. Has no capacity for language

• When we communicate from inside out we’re talking directly to part of brain that controls decision-making and our language part of the brain allows us to rationalize those decisions. P. 56

• But our feelings don’t have language in limbic brain so we use neo-cortex to explain those decisions. P. 57

• When you force people to make decisions with only the rational part of their brain they almost invariably end up “overthinking.” [See Book notes on Daniel Kahneman Thinking Fast and Slow. NOTE MINE]

• Companies that fail to communicate a sense of WHY force us to make decisions with only empirical evidence. This is why those decisions take more time, feel difficult or leave us uncertain. P. 58

• Think about grammatical construction of winning over “hearts and minds” Hearts are first—it represents limbic system and takes more work.

• Great leaders and great organizations are good at seeing what most of us can’t see.

• Great leaders are those who trust their gut. They are those who understand the art before the science. They win hearts before minds. They are the ones who start with WHY. P. 60

It’s what you Can’t see that Matters • Power of limbic brain is astounding. It can influence us to do things that seem

illogical or irrational • If we were all rational, there would be no small businesses, there would be no

exploration, there would be very little innovation and there would be no great leaders to inspire all those things.

• If people made only rational decisions, and did all the research before making a purchase, no one would ever buy a Mac. They have fewer peripherals, less software available, sometimes slower than comparable PC.

• In reality, purchase decision and loyalty are deeply personal. P. 63 • Products with clear sense of WHY give people a way to tell the outside world

who they are and what they believe. Remember, people don’t buy WHAT you do, they buy WHY you do it. P. 64

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Chapter 5: Clarity, Discipline and Consistency • When manipulations thrive, uncertainty increases for buyers, increases for

sellers and stress increases for all. [Also true in politics NOTE MINE] Clarity of WHY • It all starts with clarity. • If the leader of the organization can’t clearly articulate WHY the org. exits in

terms beyond its products or services, then how does he expect the employees to know WHY to come to work?

Discipline of HOW • Once you know WHY, the question is HOW will you do it? HOWs are your values

or principles that guide HOW to bring our cause to LIFE. • Ironically, the most important question with the most elusive answer—WHY you

do what you do? –is actually quite simple and efficient to discover. • It’s the discipline to never veer from your cause, to hold yourself accountable

to HOW you do things; that’s the hardest part. • Making it even more difficult for ourselves, we remind ourselves of our values

by writing them on the wall… as nouns, e.g. Honesty, integrity • But nouns are not actionable. • For values and guiding principles to be truly effective they have to be verbs. P.

67 Consistency of WHAT • A WHY is a belief. HOWs are actions you take to realize that belief • WHATS are the results of those actions—everything you say and do. P. 67 • It is at the WHAT level that authenticity happens. • You can’t ask others what you have to do to be authentic. • Being authentic means that you already know. • Keeping the Golden Circle in balance means that everything you say and do, you

actually believe. P. 68 • Being authentic is not a requirement for success, but it is if you want that

success to be a lasting success. P. 69 The Right Order • Starting with WHY is what inspires people to act. P. 70 If you don’t know WHY, you can’t know HOW • Simply offering a high-quality product with more features or better service or a

better price does not create difference. • Differentiation happens in WHY and HOW you do it. P. 73

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Manipulation and Inspiration are Similar, but not the same • Manipulation and inspiration both tickle the limbic brain. • When we are inspired, the decisions we make have more to do with who we are

and less to do with the companies or the products we’re buying. P. 74 • When WHY, HOW, WHAT are in balance, authenticity is achieved and the buyer

feels fulfilled. • Without the WHY the buyer is easily motivated by aspiration or fear. P. 74 Doing Business is like Dating • In business, like a bad date, many companies work so hard to prove their value

without saying WHY they exist in the first place. • It is exceedingly difficult to start building a trusting relationship with a

potential customer or client by trying to convince them of all the rational features and benefits. P. 77

Three Degrees of Certainty • The goal of business…should be to focus on the people who believe what you

believe. When we are selective about doing business only with those who believe in our WHY, trust emerges. [How does this manifest in public education?] p. 80

Part 3: Leaders Need a Following

Chapter 6: The Emergence of Trust

• With trust, comes a sense of value—real value, not just value equated with money. Value, be definition, is the transference of trust.

• Leading is not the same as being the leader. • Being the leaders means you hold the highest rank, either by earning it, having

good fortune or navigating internal politics. • Leading, however means that others willingly follow you….because they want to.

P. 85 • The drive to win is not, per se, a bad thing. Problems arise, however, when the

metric becomes the only measure of success, when what you achieve is no longer tied to WHY you set out to achieve it in the first place. P. 86

The Only Difference between you and a Caveman is the Car you Drive • Cultures are groups of people who come together around a common set of values

and beliefs. When we share values and beliefs with others, we form trust. • A company is a culture. • The goal is not to hire people who simply have s skill set you need, the goal is to

hire people who believe what you believe. P. 90

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Finding the People who Believe what you believe. • Herb Kelleher, CEO of Southwest Airlines, “ You don’t hire for skills, you hire

for attitude. You can always teach skills.” P. 93 [Do we hire for attitude with teachers in public education? QUESTION MINE]

• Great companies don’t hire skilled people and motivate them, they hire already motivated people and inspire them. P. 94

Give ‘Em a Cathedral • Companies with a strong sense of WHY are able to inspire their employees. • Those employees are more productive and innovative and the feeling they bring

to work attracts other people eager to work there as well. P. 95 [Schools? QUESTION MINE]

Innovation Happens at the Edge • Dream teams are not always so dreamy. When a team of experts comes

together they often work for themselves and not for the good of the whole. P. 99

• This is what happens when companies feel the need to pay mega-salaries to ‘get the best talent.” [What does this say about ‘national searches’ for school leaders? QUESTION MINE] Those people are not necessarily showing up because they believe in your WHY; they are showing up for the money. P. 99

• Average companies give their people something to work on. In contrast, the most innovative organizations give their people something to work toward. P. 99

• The role of a leader is not to come up with all the great ideas. The role of a leader is to create an environment in which great ideas can happen. P. 99

• Great companies give their people a purpose or challenge around which to develop ideas rather than simply instruct them to make a better mousetrap. P. 100

• The purpose also gives the company the ability to navigate struggle. P. 101 Definition of Trust • Companies become a community. If the people aren’t looking out for the

community, then the benefits of a community erode. • Many companies have star employees and star salesmen and so on, but few have

a culture that produces great people as a rule and not an exception. P. 103 • Historically, trust has played a bigger role in advancing companies and societies

than skill set alone. • For those within a community, or an organization, they must trust that their

leaders provide a net—practical or emotional. • Great organizations become great because the people inside the organization

feel protected.

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• This results in reciprocal behavior. Individual decisions, efforts and behaviors that support, benefit and protect the long-term interest of the organization as a whole. P. 105

• The trust between management and employees, not dogma, is what produces great customer service. P. 106

Real Trust comes from the Things you Can’t See • Great leadership is not about flexing and intimidation; great leaders, lead with

WHY. They embody a sense of purpose that inspires those around them. P. 109 • Some in management positions operate as if they are in a tree of monkeys. They

make sure that everyone at the top of the tree looking down sees only smiles. But all too often, those at the bottom looking up see only asses. [TOO FUNNY NOTE MINE}

• Great leaders are respected by those both above and below. • The Golden Circle has 3 elements and they must be in balance—clarity,

discipline, and consistency. P. 110 • The root of passion comes from feeling like you are a part of something that

you believe in, something bigger than yourself. P. 111 The Influence of Others • Celebrity endorsements [act on the premise that] people will more likely trust

the claims of a recognizable face or name. p. 113 • For it to work, the celebrity needs to represent some clear cause or belief.

[Maybe this is why Brad Pitt doesn’t work for me as a spokesperson for Chanel 5. What cause/belief does he represent? QUESTION MINE]

Chapter 7: How a Tipping Point Tips

• Our population is broken into 5 segments that fall across a bell curve:

innovators, early adopters, early majority, late majority, and laggards.

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• Innovators—1st 2.4 %, next 13.5% are early adopters. • Innovators pursue new products or ideas aggressively and are intrigued by any

fundamental advance. • Early adopters appreciate advantages of new ideas or technologies but they are

not idea generators and are willing to pay a premium to own a product or espouse an idea that feels right. P. 117

• Next 34%--early majority followed by late majority, and finally laggards • Laggards are the ones who buy touchtone phones only because they don’t make

rotary phones anymore. P. 117 • Early and late majority are more practical minded, rational factors matter more.

P. 117 • Those furthest on the right will be the least loyal—it’s about price. P. 118 • Importance of identifying this group is so that you can avoid doing business with

them. [Message for schools? QUESTION MINE] • We all sit at different places on this spectrum depending on the product or

idea. P. 118 • The best idea/product does not always win. P. 119 • Goal of business should not be to sell to anyone but to sell to those who believe

what you believe on the left side of the bell curve. P. 120 [Schools? NOTE MINE]

• A willingness to pay a premium or suffer inconvenience to use your product or service says more about them than it does about you and your products.

• Get enough of the people on the left side of the curve on your side and they encourage the rest to follow. P. 121

Refusing to Consider the Law of Diffusion will cost you • Your role is to be crystal clear about what purpose, cause or belief you exist to

champion, and to show how your products and services help advance that cause. TiVo didn’t pay attention to that and lost out big time in spite of having a good product. P. 126

Give the People something to Believe in • Dr. MLK did. People followed him because they knew WHY they were doing it. P.

127 • It was his ability to communicate it clearly that people followed. P., 129

Part 4: How to Rally those Who Believe Chapter 8 Start with Why, but Know how

Energy Excites, Charisma Inspires • Energy motivates but charisma inspires. Energy is easy to see, easy to measure

and easy to copy.

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• Charisma is hard to define, nearly impossible to measure and too elusive to copy. • All great leaders have charisma because all great leaders have clarity of WHY;

an undying belief in a purpose or cause bigger than themselves. The chosen Path • When a WHY is clear, those who share that belief will be drawn to it and maybe

want to take part in bringing it to life. Amplify the Source of Inspiration • If you look at the Golden Circle from the top down, it is a cone and it is 3

dimensional. • The cone represents a company or an organization—an inherently hierarchical

and organized system. • At the top representing the WHY is a leader. • The next lever—the HOW—typically includes the senior execs who are inspired

by the leader’s vision and know HOW to bring tit to life. • Don’t forget that a WHY is just a belief, HOWs are the actions to realize that

belief, and WHATs are the results of those actions. P. 137 Those who know WHY need those who know HOW) • WHY types are visionaries, the ones with overactive imaginations • They tend to be optimists who believe that all the things they imagine can

actually be accomplished. • HOW types live more in the here and now. They are realists and have a clearer

sense of all things practical • WHY types are focused on the things most people can’t see, like the future. • HOW types are focused on things most people can see and tend to be better at

building structures and processes and getting things done. • Most people in the world are HOW types • HOW types don’t need WHY types to do well. • But WHY guys for all their vision and imagination, often get the short end of

the stick. • Without someone inspired by their vision and knowledge to make it a reality,

most WHY types end up as starving visionaries, people with all the answers but never accomplishing much themselves.

• Although so many of them fancy themselves visionaries, in reality most successful entrepreneurs are HOW types. P. 141.

• In almost every case of a person or an org. that has gone on to inspire people and do great things, there exists this special partnership between WHY and HOW.

• It’s not an accident that these unions of WHY and HOW so often come from families or old friendships.

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Build a Megaphone that Works • For a message to have real impact, to affect behavior and seed loyalty, it needs

more than publicity—it needs to publicize some higher purpose, cause or belief to which those with similar values and beliefs can relate.

• It’s no coincidence that the 3 dimensional Golden Circle is a cone. It is, in practice, a megaphone. P. 146

Say it Only if you Believe it. • A clear sense of WHY sets expectations. It requires that everyone be

accountable to HOW you do things. And it takes time and effort to ensure that everything you say and do is consistent with your WHY. P. 147

Chapter 9: Know WHY, Know HOW, then WHAT?

• Underneath the cone of the organization sits the marketplace which is made up

of all the customers and potential customers, all the press, the shareholders, competition, suppliers and all the money.

• This system is inherently chaotic and disorganized • The only contact that the organized system has with the disorganized system is

at the base—at the WHAT level. p. 156 • Everything an organization says and does communicates the leader’s vision to

the outside world. P. 156 • When a company is small, it revolves around the personality of the founder. P.

157 • As a company grows, the CEO’s job is to personify the WHY. The leader

becomes physically removed. • The leader sitting at the top of the org. is the inspiration, the symbol of the

reason we do what we do. • Absent the proper language to share our deep emotions, [because the limbic

system doesn’t have words], we rely on metaphors, imagery and analogies in an attempt to communicate how we feel. P. 159

• If done properly, that’s what marketing, branding and products and services become; a way for organizations to communicate to the outside world.

• Communicate clearly and you shall be understood. P. 159

Chapter 10: Communication is not about speaking, it’s about listening

• Most companies have logos but few have been able to convert those logos into meaningful symbols. P. 161

• At best logos are icons to identify a company and its products

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• A symbol cannot have any deep meaning until we know WHY it exists in terms bigger than simply to identify the company.

• Without clarity of WHY, a logo is just a logo. P. 161 • For a logo to become a symbol, people must be inspired to use that logo to say

something about who they are. • It’s not just logos that can be symbols. Symbols are any tangible representation

of a clear set of values and beliefs. P. 163 The Celery Test • With a WHY clearly stated in an org, anyone within the org. can make a decision

as clearly and as accurately as the found. • A WHY provides the clear filter for decision-making. P. 168 The More Celery you Use, the More Trust you Earn • The Celery test is one where everyone knows your why (If you buy celery,

people at the check-out counter know you are buying healthy food.) • Southwest Airlines passes the celery test. P. 170 In violation of Celery • Volkswagen introduced a luxury car which was a great car, but it didn’t sell

because people expected the “people’s car” from Volkswagen. A luxury car did not pass the celery test.

• It is at the WHAT level that a company speaks to the outside world and it is then that we can learn what the company believes. P. 171

Part 5: The Biggest Challenge is Success

Chapter 11: When WHY goes Fuzzy

• Wal-Mart—originally Sam Walton believed that a deeper purpose was to look after his people, and they would look out for him.

• After his death, however, that message was not handed down clearly. Wal-Mart slowly started to confuse WHY it existed—to serve people—with HOW it did business—to offer low prices.

• Forgetting their founder’s WHY has come at a very high human cost, ironic, considering the company’s founding cause. P. 177

• Even though it still sells more than six times as much as Target each year, the greatest challenge it has faced comes from one place: itself.

• Their WHY went fuzzy. The negative feelings we have about the corporation are real. P. 179

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Being Successful vs. Feeling Successful • Some of the most successful businessmen, after a period of time even though

financially successful, knew WHAT they did and HOW they did it, but they no longer knew WHY. P. 181

• Feeling successful is not about how much money one makes, where one lives, etc. Achievement vs. Success • For some, there is an irony to success—they don’t always feel it. • Achievement is something you reach or attain, like a goal. It is something

tangible, clearly defined and measurable. • Success, in contrast, is a feeling or state of being. P. 181 • Success comes when we wake up every day in that never-ending pursuit of WHY

we do WHAT we do. • Our achievements, WHAT we do, serve as the milestones to indicate we are on

the right path. • It is not an either/or—we need both. • Along the pursuit of success, people simply mistake WHAT they achieve as the

final destination. P. 182 • As we build a business we become more confident in WHAT we do and become

greater experts in HOW to do it. • Those with an ability to never lose sight of WHY, can inspire us. • For great leaders, The Golden Circle is in balance. P. 182

Chapter 12 : Split Happens • When we start out on career or business, ideas are fueled by passion. P. 183 • Small business fail for many reasons but mostly because passion alone can’t cut

it. • For passion to survive, it needs structure. P. 184 • The single greatest challenge any org. will face is…success. The clarity of WHY

starts to dilute. P. 185 • Whereas gut was filter for early decisions, rational cases and empirical data

often serve as sole basis for later decisions. P. 185 • When orgs. are small, WHAT they do and WHY they do it are in close parallel. • Then success takes them away from the clarity of WHY to focus on the growth

of their WHAT, and the split occurs; they are no longer parallel. P. 189 What gets Measured, Gets Done • Most orgs use very clear metrics to track the progress and growth of WHAT

they do—usually it’s money. [This is where schools struggle—what metric really measures the growth of what we do?? NOTE MINE]

• Unfortunately, we have very poor measurements to ensure that a WHY stays clear. P. 191

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• Money is a perfectly legitimate measurement of goods sold or services rendered. But it is no calculation of value. P. 192

• When people can point to a company and clearly articulate what the company believes and use words unrelated to price, quality, service and features, that is proof the company has successfully navigated the split [the parallelism of WHAT and WHY] p. 193

Good Successions keep the WHY Alive • Make no mistake. Microsoft has done more to change the world than Apple. It

is Microsoft that was responsible for the advancement of the personal computer. P. 194

• When the person who personifies the WHY departs without clearly articulating WHY the company was founded in the first place, they leave no clear cause for their successor to lead.

• The new CEO will come aboard to run the company and will focus attention on the growth of WHAT with little attention to WHY

• Worse yet, they may try to implement their own vision without considering the cause that originally inspired most people to show up in the first place. P. 197

• The result is diminished morale, mass exodus, poor performance and a slow and steady transition to a culture of mistrust and every-man-for-himself.

• It happened at Dell, Microsoft, Starbucks, and Apple. P. 1976 • Gates, Jobs, Schultz all inspire. P. 199 • Successful succession is more than selecting someone with an appropriate skill

set—it’s about finding someone who is in lockstep with the original cause around which the company was founded. P. 201

Part 6: Discover WHY

Chapter 13; The Origins of WHY

• Apple’s WHY is so clear. Yet Microsoft Windows sits on 96% of the world’s computers whereas Apple maintains about 2.5%. Most people don’t want to challenge the status quo. P. 213

• Yet everyone knows the “i”. Apple is a company that champions the creative spirit of the individual, and their products, services and marketing simply prove it. P. 213

The WHY comes from Looking Back • Finding the WHY is a process of discovery, not invention. It comes from looking

in the completely opposite direction from where you are now. P. 214 • Every company, org or group with the ability to inspire starts with a person or

small group of people who were inspired to do something bigger than themselves. • Gaining clarity of WHY, ironically, is not the hard part.

Start of Why

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• It is the discipline to trust one’s gut, to stay true to one’s purpose, cause or beliefs.

• Remaining completely in balance and authentic is the most difficult part. P. 215 To Inspire People to do the Things that Inspire Them • Henry Ford said, “If you think you can or you think you can’t you’re right.” P. 219

Chapter 14: The New Competition

If you Follow your WHY, then others will Follow You • Imagine if every org, stated with WHY. • Decisions would be simpler. • Loyalties would be greater. • Trust would be a common currency. • If our leaders were diligent about starting with WHY, optimism would reign and

innovation would thrive. • There is precedence for this standard. • 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. If this book inspired you, please pass it on to someone you want to inspire. [I am. I am doing book notes to post on the blog. NOTE MINE]