Overview

Humans are not strictly rational logic following human beings. We are inspired by our emotions, our sense of why we do things. And truly great individuals and companies start with why and then follow it up with how and what.

World View Adjustment

Old Mental Model: When we look to describe an individual or a business, we jump straight to what they do. What goods or services do they provide? What job do they have? It’s all about the tangible things that they do.

New Mental Model: In the new mental model, instead of thinking about what, we need to start with why. Why Does this business exist? Why does this person act this way? We need to think about the emotional and irrational side of people and businesses.

Transition Strategy: Transitioning to the new mindset will require a sustained effort. Well, a good first step is to document your why, whether you’re the individual or the business. Using your why to derive your how and then follow through with all of your what’s. On a day-to-day basis over time requires constantly coming back to remind yourself that you need to remember your why to determine the what.

Real World Example: Examples can often make all the difference in understanding a topic. So, a personal example would be my mission to build awareness to the transition of a new world view. By creating accessible tools that allow people to thrive and not just survive, this transition needs to be reflected in every blog post and article that I put out in the shifting current. In order to uphold my new mental model, I need to think about this why every time I work on a new piece of content to ensure it is upholding the new mental model.

Other tips:

  • As someone with an engineering background, I can understand how this is hard to transition. From thinking that we are all intelligent rational beings that are fact and logic driven, but fundamentally we’re all humans, biological creatures. Creatures that are emotional and irrational.
  • This model scales from small to large; From the individual to the multinational corporation, from the individual decision to national policies.
  • One second-order consequence of starting with why is that you are more likely to attract like-minded individuals. There are innovators and early adopters. In every field and facet of life, and just because you’re motivated on one topic doesn’t mean you’re motivated on another. Sharing why you do what you do will attract those who care about the same why.

Book Notes

Introduction

  • The leaders who inspire have the most loyal employees and customers.
  • The why is a deeply emotional thing. It’s not about how the pen writes or how cheap it is, but the feeling you get as it glides across the paper page or the sense of accomplishment you feel as it runs out of ink, showing that you truly used the product.

A World That Doesn’t Start With Why

Chapter 1:

  • Simon cites that people of old believed the earth was flat, but there is little to no evidence that that was true. Enlightened Greeks and Romans proved the earth was round.
  • Our behavior is impacted by our assumptions and perceived truths.
  • We make decisions based on our current world view. That worldview is guaranteed to be incomplete. No one is all-knowing. We base our decisions of our current worldview, not the most accurate one that we have had. Actions around us can alter our view, breaking it away. That’s a poor way to say something that may make us depressed may also alter our view. Actions like a terror attack may make us forget that most people don’t act that way.

Chapter 2:

  • Manipulations do work in the short term. They are the equivalent of a junkie taking another hit. You can only scare or promise so much. You can only discount your products in the best of times. Eventually you drive to zero.

Chapter 3:

  • Almost all businesses work from the outside in. That is, they start with what they do, then tell you how they do it, and then finally finish with why.
  • On the contrary, some of the greatest companies and individuals like Apple and Martin Luther King Jr, work inside out. They start with why they are doing what they are doing.
  • Apple wanted to challenge the status quo and empower the individual. The iPod was marketed as having 1,000 songs in your pocket and people dancing on the go rather than listing the hard drive size.
  • You need the person to say, I need that. Then they can figure out what kind of options they may want.

Chapter 4:

  • The why isn’t just made up. It’s rooted in biology, the irrational portion of your brain that says, “Yes, I belong to that group”. We like to believe that we are smart, rational people, but we have nearly all of evolution working against us.
  • People also struggle to explain their feelings. You can ask someone why they love their spouse and they might say “Because they are smart and funny.” But I’m smart and funny, and they don’t love me. This is also true with market research.

Chapter 5:

  • To inspire starts with clarity. It’s not enough to just know your why and shout it from the rooftops. You have to back it up with the how and the what. Again, in that order. There is a thing as a bad customer. You want to have customers that believe what you believe.

Leaders Need a Following

Chapter 6:

  • Trust amongst employees creates the top customer service. When there’s trust employees become culture centers or culture, culture amplifiers, rather than culture detractors.

Chapter 7:

  • The law of diffusion at tipping points involves the bell curve of innovators, early adopters, the early majority, the late majority, and the laggards.
  • It can be tempting to market your new product to the majority because that’s where all the people are. However the majority is hesitant and needs to be manipulated to participate.
  • A much better and less costly approach is to find the innovators and the early adopters who believe in what you believe. They will be willing to work with you even if your product has less features and costs more money. Then and only then can you look to capture the majority

How To Rally Those who Believe

Chapter 8:

  • The Golden Circle is more of a golden cone, a 3D version for our 3D world, with Y at the top, how in the middle and what at the bottom. This also represents your corporate structure with the why needing to come from the top, the how coming from your executives in middle management and what happening from the bottom.
  • The how types are responsible for making things happen. There is often a combination of a why type and a how type that make a great founding duo.
  • Being loud and motivating is not enough. In fact, it represents a manipulation. You cannot be there to motivate an employee every time they need it. They must do that on their own.
  • You also cannot be quiet. Martin Luther King Jr.’s I have a dream speech would have been less impactful without a megaphone.
  • You need why, then clarity, and then make it loud!

Chapter 9:

  • Once you have communicated your why and your how, it then must come through in what you do. Your actions need to support your words. Saying you are a rebellious motorcycle company but then you release a family-friendly minivan, it will not resonate with your audience. Saying you make high quality handmade parts because you value the craftsmanship of the individual is great, but it fails if you mass produce parts to sell more product.

The Biggest Challenge is Success

Chapter 11:

  • It is hard to maintain your why through success. When the team is small and decisions can be filtered through the founder, things are good. But when the founder can no longer make all decisions, people slip to tangible whats to drive decision making. This rapidly erodes the why.

Chapter 12:

  • When you look at Walmart versus Costco or Southwest, it is easy to see how passing their why on to future leaders has made the company more successful.
  • Walmart has lost all credibility of its former reputation, while Costco and Southwest have maintained

The Origins of WHY

Chapter 13

  • Even when you clearly communicate your why, not everyone will like it or agree. There will always be people who choose the safe mainstream option over a new superior product.
  • Your why comes from your past. You won’t find it in market research.
  • Simon mentions that after four years of running a business, he was tired and depressed. It took him a while to finally overlap the golden circle with the anatomy of the brain. At this point, he made the realization he had gone through a split.
  • I believe that I went through my split in college and in the several years past it, where I lost my desire to make the world something better.