Starting with Why?

I found a fun little parallel between Start with Why and How the Mighty Fall.

I’m currently reading Simon Sinek’s Start with Why (full disclosure — I’m only about halfway through), and I’ve been skeptical of the idea of the golden circle.

The core concept of the book is that “People don’t buy WHAT you do, they buy WHY you do it.” Sinek states that by simply reversing the traditional flow of information from What -> How -> Why to Why -> How -> What, we can appeal directly to the limbic brain, which regulates emotions and controls decision-making.

This sounds great in theory, but is it applicable in the real world? Are people and organizations with a stronger sense of Why better suited for success, and can it be more valuable than incremental capital, talent, or connections?

Jim Collins’s How the Mighty Fall outlines 5 general stages of decline for great companies:

Stage 1: Hubris Born of Success

Stage 2: Undisciplined Pursuit of More

Stage 3: Denial of Risk and Peril

Stage 4: Grasping for Salvation

Stage 5: Capitulation to Irrelevance or Death

Collins argues that a marker of Stage 1 is when “What” replaces “Why”. “The rhetoric of success replaces understanding and insight.” Sound familiar? He states, “When institutions fail to distinguish between current practices and the enduring principles of their success, and mistakenly fossilized around their practices, they’ve set themselves up for decline.” In other words, when companies forget their core purpose, their reason for existing and prospering, their Why, they enter the initial stage of decline.

He uses Wal-Mart as a case study — “He [David Glass] learned from Walton that Wal-Mart does not exist for the aggrandizement of its leaders; it exists for its customers. Glass fervently believed in Wal-Mart’s core purpose (to enable people of average means to buy more of the same things previously available only to wealthier people) and in the need to stay true to that purpose.” After quickly googling what “aggrandizement” meant, I realized that this was directly referring to the Why of Wal-Mart. Wal-Mart believes in empowering people of average means, and in turn, people of average means believe in Wal-Mart. This is what Sinek means when he says, “People don’t buy WHAT you do, they buy WHY you do it.” In Wal-Mart’s case, people literally buy both WHY and WHAT Wal-Mart does.

I look forward to reading more of Start with Why.