CARROTS AND STICKS
In other words, most companies have no clue why their customers are their customers. This is a fascinating realization. If companies don’t know why their customers are their customers, odds are good that they don’t know why their employees are their employees either.
There are only two ways to influence human behavior: you can manipulate it or you can inspire it.
Fear, real or perceived, is arguably the most powerful manipulation of the lot.
Just like the habitual dieter, “they never have the time or money to do it right the first time,” she said of her client, “but they always have the time and money to do it again.”
And that’s the reason these features are more a novelty than an innovation. They are added in an attempt to differentiate, but not reinvent. It’s not a bad thing, but it can’t be counted on to add any long-term value.
What companies cleverly disguise as “innovation” is in fact novelty. And it’s not only packaged goods that rely on novelty to lure customers; it’s a common practice in other industries, too.
Combined with the long-term effects of years of short-term decisions that have eroded profit margins, this raises stress levels inside organizations as well. When manipulations are the norm, no one wins.
Bankers weren’t the first to be swept up by their own success. American car manufacturers have conducted themselves the same way for decades—manipulation after manipulation, short-term decision built upon short-term decision. Buckling or even collapse is the only logical conclusion when manipulations are the main course of action. The reality is, in today’s world, manipulations are the norm.
THE GOLDEN CIRCLE.
There are a few leaders who choose to inspire rather than manipulate in order to motivate people. Whether individuals or organizations, every single one of these inspiring leaders thinks, acts and communicates exactly the same way.
It also supports the notion that there is more order in nature than we think, as in the symmetry of leaves and the geometric perfection of snowflakes.
It’s worth repeating: people don’t buy WHAT you do, they buy WHY you do it.
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. The things we can point to rationalize or explain the reasons we’re drawn to one product, company or idea over another.
The problem was, they advertised their product as a “5GB mp3 player.” It is exactly the same message as Apple’s “1,000 songs in your pocket.” The difference is Creative told us WHAT their product was and Apple told us WHY we needed it.
Companies and organizations with a clear sense of WHY never worry about it. They don’t think of themselves as being like anyone else and they don’t have to “convince” anyone of their value. They don’t need complex systems of carrots and sticks. They are different, and everyone knows it. They start with WHY in everything they say and do.
THIS IS NOT OPINION, THIS IS BIOLOGY
We are drawn to leaders and organizations that are good at communicating what they believe. Their ability to make us feel like we belong, to make us feel special, safe and not alone is part of what gives them the ability to inspire us. Those whom we consider great leaders all have an ability to draw us close and to command our loyalty. And we feel a strong bond with those who are also drawn to the same leaders and organizations. Apple users feel a bond with each other.
Decision-making and the ability to explain those decisions exist in different parts of the brain.
They are those who understand the art before the science. They win hearts before minds. They are the ones who start with WHY.
But consider the companies with the greatest loyalty—they rarely have all those things. If you wanted to buy a custom Harley-Davidson, you used to wait six months for delivery (to give them credit, they’ve got it down from a year). That’s bad service! Apple’s computers are at least 25 percent more expensive than a comparable PC. There is less software available for their operating system. They have fewer peripherals. The machines themselves are sometimes slower than a comparable PC. If people made only rational decisions, and did all the research before making a purchase, no one would ever buy a Mac.
But deep inside, they all love being a part of something bigger than themselves.
Remember, people don’t buy WHAT you do, they buy WHY you do it. If a company does not have a clear sense of WHY then it is impossible for the outside world to perceive anything more than WHAT the company does.
CLARITY, DISCIPLINE AND CONSISTENCY
If the leader of the organization can’t clearly articulate WHY the organization exists in terms beyond its products or services, then how does he expect the employees to know WHY to come to work?
For values or guiding principles to be truly effective they have to be verbs. It’s not “integrity,” it’s “always do the right thing.” It’s not “innovation,” it’s “look at the problem from a different angle.” Articulating our values as verbs gives us a clear idea
After you have clarity of WHY, are disciplined and accountable to your own values and guiding principles, and are consistent in all you say and do, the final step is to keep it all in the right order.
It was built to champion a cause. They just happened to use an airline to do it.
There are many ways to motivate people to do things, but loyalty comes from the ability to inspire people. Only when the WHY is clear and when people believe what you believe can a true loyal relationship develop.
“You know what I love about our company? Every single one of us comes to work every day to do something we love. We get to inspire people to do the things that inspire them. It’s the most wonderful thing in the world. In fact, the fun part is trying to figure out all the different ways we can do that. It really is amazing. The best part is, it is also good for business. We do really well. We have beautiful offices, you should stop by sometime to see. We work with some of the biggest companies. I’m sure you’ve seen our ads. We’re actually doing pretty well.”
THE EMERGENCE OF TRUST
Trust begins to emerge when we have a sense that another person or organization is driven by things other than their own self-gain.
“You don’t lie to your own doctor,” he says, “and you can’t lie to your own employees.”
For the success to last the employees of Continental had to want to win for themselves.
“We measured things the employees could truly control,” Bethune said. “We made the stakes something the employees would win or lose on together, not separately.”
Everything they did made people feel like they were in it together. And they were.
Now consider what a company is. A company is a culture. A group of people brought together around a common set of values and beliefs. It’s not products or services that bind a company together. It’s not size and might that make a company strong, it’s the culture—the strong sense of beliefs and values that everyone, from the CEO to the receptionist, all share. So the logic follows, 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.
“You don’t hire for skills, you hire for attitude. You can always teach skills.”
Great companies don’t hire skilled people and motivate them, they hire already motivated people and inspire them.
But the Wright brothers did have something very special. They had a dream. They knew WHY it was important to build this thing. They believed that if they could figure out this flying machine, it would change the world. They imagined the benefits to everyone else if they were successful.
Langley, Tobin said, “did not have the Wrights’ passion for flight, but rather was looking for achievement.”
Average companies give their people something to work on. In contrast, the most innovative organizations give their people something to work toward.
Southwest’s remarkable ability to solve problems, Apple’s remarkable knack for innovation and the Wright brothers’ ability to develop a technology with the team they had were all possible for the same reason: they believed they could and they trusted their people to do it.
Great leadership is not about flexing and intimidation; great leaders, as General Robinson proves, lead with WHY. They embody a sense of purpose that inspires those around them.
She’s a great leader because she understands that earning the trust of an organization doesn’t come from setting out to impress everyone, it comes from setting out to serve those who serve her.
A company, indeed any organization, must work actively to remind everyone WHY the company exists. WHY it was founded in the first place. What it believes. They need to hold everyone in the company accountable to the values and guiding principles. It’s not enough to just write them on the wall—that’s passive. Bonuses and incentives must revolve around them. The company must serve those whom they wish to serve.
HOW A TIPPING POINT TIPS
The goal of business then should not be to simply sell to anyone who wants what you have—the majority—but rather to find people who believe what you believe, the left side of the bell curve. They perceive greater value in what you do and will happily pay a premium or suffer some sort of inconvenience to be a part of your cause. They are the ones who, on their own volition, will tell others about you.
Get enough of the people on the left side of the curve on your side and they encourage the rest to follow.
Like our inability to explain why we love our spouses, the best we can muster up to explain what makes them such great clients is, “They just get it.” And though this explanation may feel right, it is completely unactionable. How do you get more people to “get it”? This is what Moore refers to as the “chasm,” the transition between the early adopters and the early majority, and it’s hard to cross. But not if you know WHY.
TiVo did not start with WHY. They ignored the left side of the curve and completely failed to find the tipping point. And for those reasons, “people didn’t get their hands on it,” and the mass market didn’t buy it.
It is those who share your values and beliefs, not the quality of your products, that will cause the system to tip. Your role in the process 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.
He gave the “I Have a Dream” speech, not the “I Have a Plan” speech.
It wasn’t the details of his plans that earned him the right to lead. It was what he believed and his ability to communicate it clearly that people followed. In essence, he, like all great leaders, became the symbol of the belief. Dr. King came to personify the cause.
START WITH WHY, BUT KNOW HOW
It’s not the work we do that inspires us either. It’s the cause we come to work for. We don’t want to come to work to build a wall, we want to come to work to build a cathedral.
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.
Clarity of purpose, cause or belief is important, but it is equally important that people hear you. For a WHY to have the power to move people it must not only be clear, it must be amplified to reach enough people to tip the scale.
Great organizations don’t just drive profits, they lead people, and they change the course of industries and sometimes our lives in the process.
Higher standards are hard to maintain. It requires the discipline to constantly talk about and remind everyone WHY the organization exists in the first place.
Bruder knows that, no matter how good an opportunity looks on paper, no matter how smart he is and no matter his track record, he would never be able to achieve anything unless there were others to help him. He knows that success is a team sport. He has a remarkable ability to attract those who believe what he believes. Talented people are drawn to him with one request: “How can I help?”
But when you tell people WHY you’re doing what you’re doing, remarkable things happen.
COMMUNICATION IS NOT ABOUT SPEAKING, IT’S ABOUT LISTENING
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.
Even if the industries, sizes and market conditions are the same, the notion that “if it’s good for them, it’s good for us” is simply not true.
With a WHY clearly stated in an organization, anyone within the organization can make a decision as clearly and as accurately as the founder. A WHY provides the clear filter for decision-making. Any decisions—hiring, partnerships, strategies and tactics—should all pass the Celery Test.
If a company tries too many times to “seize market opportunities” inconsistent with their WHY over time, their WHY will go fuzzy and their ability to inspire and command loyalty will deteriorate.
WHEN WHY GOES FUZZY
Those with an ability to never lose sight of WHY, no matter how little or how much they achieve, can inspire us. Those with the ability to never lose sight of WHY and also achieve the milestones that keep everyone focused in the right direction are the great leaders. For great leaders, The Golden Circle is in balance. They are in pursuit of WHY, they hold themselves accountable to HOW they do it and WHAT they do serves as the tangible proof of what they believe.
SPLIT HAPPENS
At the beginning, ideas are fueled by passion—that very compelling emotion that causes us to do quite irrational things. That passion drives many people to make sacrifices so that a cause bigger than themselves can be brought to life. Some drop out of school or quit a perfectly good job with a good salary and benefits to try to go it alone. Some work extraordinarily long hours without a second thought, sometimes sacrificing the stability of their relationships or even their personal health. This passion is so intoxicating and exciting that it can affect others as well.
Passion may need structure to survive, but for structure to grow, it needs passion.
The moment at which the clarity of WHY starts to go fuzzy is the split. At this point organizations may be loud, but they are no longer clear.
They do indeed need to return to a time when WHAT they did was in perfect parallel to WHY they did it. If they continue down the path of focusing on their growth of WHAT at the expense of WHY—more volume and less clarity—their ability to thrive and inspire for years to come is dubious at best.
Just because somebody makes a lot of money does not mean that he necessarily provides a lot of value.
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. When people describe the value they perceive with visceral, excited words like “love,” that is a sure sign that a clear sense of WHY exists.
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. Great second or third CEOs don’t take the helm to implement their own vision of the future; they pick up the original banner and lead the company into the next generation.
But as the leader of the company, being the smartest was not her job. Her job was to lead the cause. To personify the values and remind everyone WHY they are there.
THE NEW COMPETITION
What Ben teaches us is special. When you compete against everyone else, no one wants to help you. But when you compete against yourself, everyone wants to help you. Olympic athletes don’t help each other. They’re competitors. Ben starts every race with a very clear sense of WHY he’s running. He’s not there to beat anyone but himself.
What if we showed up to work every day simply to be better than ourselves? What if the goal was to do better work this week than we did the week before? To make this month better than last month? For no other reason than because we want to leave the organization in a better state than we found it?
“Well why should I do business with you then?” we answer with confidence, “Because the work we’re doing now is better than the work we were doing six months ago. And the work we’ll be doing six months from now will be better than the work we’re doing today. Because we wake up every day with a sense of WHY we come to work. We come to work to inspire people to do the things that inspire them.
Our goal is to find customers who believe what we believe and work together so that we can all succeed. We’re looking for people to stand shoulder-to-shoulder with us in pursuit of the same goal.
Imagine if every organization started with WHY. Decisions would be simpler. Loyalties would be greater. Trust would be a common currency. If our leaders were diligent about starting with WHY, optimism would reign and innovation would thrive. As this book illustrates, there is precedence for this standard. No matter the size of the organization, 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.
AFTERWORD
Leadership is always about people. No one leads a company. A company is a legal structure. You can run a company, you can manage an organization, but you can lead only people.
Leadership requires two things: a vision of the world that does not yet exist and the ability to communicate it. The question is, where does vision come from? And this is the power of WHY. Our visions are the world we imagine, the tangible results of what the world would look like if we spent every day in pursuit of our WHY.
Leaders don’t have all the great ideas; they provide support for those who want to contribute. Leaders achieve very little by themselves; they inspire people to come together for the good of the group. Leaders never start with what needs to be done. Leaders start with WHY we need to do things. Leaders inspire action.