Start With Why: Inspire and be Inspired

Can you learn to be more inspiring, both to others, and maybe even to yourself?

Start With Why was recommended to me on the basis of wanting to have an impact on the culture in my workplace. "Culture" is a somewhat nebulous term that gets thrown around a lot nowadays, but I see it as the underlying beliefs and philosophies that drive the day to day at a company. These "pillars" of culture come from leadership, and hopefully trickle down through the company through their actions and by hiring people who align with these pillars.

I can definitely see why Simon Sinek's 2009 book Start With Why was recommended, given this context. I am not an entrepreneur (yet, at least), a business owner or even a manager at the time of writing. But I believe that anyone, in any position, can display leadership qualities and have an impact. Most good companies embrace this, whilst still avoiding complete anarchy with strong but open-minded management. Start With Why is admittedly mostly focussed on being towards the top of the ladder, but he touches on the personal aspects of his ideas as well, and I believe anyone reading the book can transpose his stories and examples into their given situation.

The main idea captured within the book is that of the "Golden Circle", which is in fact three concentric circles with "why", "how" and "what" contained from the inside out. Sinek posits that most people and organisations start from what and work inwards towards why, but that most successful and inspirational people and organisations do the opposite. He says, over and over, "people don't buy WHAT you do, they buy WHY you do it". Companies selling a product are more likely to be successful if they market the why first, and back that up with the what and the how.  At the core of this is the not at all very new idea that people tend to respond to emotions before logic and facts. That's why advertising usually tells a story and doesn't just list the features of a product. It is the reality of human biology that we're programmed in this way, and Sinek ties his Golden Circle into the layers of the human brain. The what is tied to the neocortex, the newest part of the human brain that controls analytical thinking, logic and language. The why and how are the limbic brain, the part that controls feelings. It also, in a stroke of irony that could be considered a defect, controls our behaviour but has no capacity for language. This might explain why we often act irrationally but can't explain why. This also probably explains why often, big philosophical ideas are explained not in logical succession through non-fiction, but via a traditional story with emotional beats. Similarly, advertisements are more often than not stories, and we subconsciously identify emotionally with the characters and their actions. And ideally, from the companies who's ad it is, we want to be like those characters. And how does one do that? Why, by buying the product of course.  

Start With Why, in my opinion, has its issues. It's a short book but still feels overly long, with the same mantra and examples expounded again and again. It could have been condensed into a blog post. Better than a blog post though is hearing the words from Simon Sinek himself, standing before a crowd. And fortunately you can do just that. If you watch Sinek's Ted Talk on this same topic, you get the gist in 20 minutes as opposed to spending a few hours reading the book. The book of course does have more examples but it doesn't, in my opinion, make an larger points. I will, however, as the book suggests, pass it on to someone else. And if you're truly interested in the details it is not a bad read.

I started this post by saying that I wanted to have an impact on company culture, and that maybe this book and Simon Sinek's ideas could help me achieve that. However, as I've been mulling over the text in the days since I finished it, I've found that I made a very different and unexpected connection. You might think, after hearing what Sinek has to say, that if you're not a business owner or entrepreneurially minded, the Golden Circle is of no use to you. I disagree. A while ago I read Atomic Habits by James Clear, a book focussed on making and sustaining good habits, and breaking bad habits for good. In this context, what are good and bad habits? It might differ wildly between individuals, and splitting things into good and bad is maybe not a healthy outlook anyway. Well James Clear broadly associates good habits with ones that reinforce a person's identity and beliefs, and bad habits with the ones that don't, or ones that actively work against one's identity and beliefs. This is exactly the why in Sinek's Golden Circle, and habits are the what. Can we leverage the principles of the Golden Circle to motivate and inspire ourselves more, to do the things we struggle to do more consistently and stop doing things that make us feel worse and less accomplished? We probably mostly wake up in the morning and think about what we're going to do on a given day. Maybe do some exercise, eat breakfast, go to work, play video games. We probably have good reasons to do all these things, or maybe we don't and we should stop doing some things. But if we were to flip it and wake up thinking about why we do things, would that make a difference? I want to be fit and healthy so I exercise and eat a healthy breakfast. I want to make useful contributions at my work and have meaningful interactions with my colleagues, so I go to work. I want to feel relaxed and engaged by a good story and gameplay, so I play a video game. And maybe by thinking more about our own why, our own identity and beliefs, we can find things to do that are more consistent with that, and maybe that will lead us to be more productive, more consistent and more focussed.

If we extend this into our ability to lead, by becoming more aware and in tune with our own why, can we inspire those around us to do the same? We hear the phrase "lead by example" a lot, and I think being an example of someone who acts in tempo with their identity and beliefs is a great example to set. It could inspire people with similar beliefs to do similar actions, and suddenly you have a team of people more dedicated, focussed and productive. That is my theory at least, and one I intend to test in the real world.