Start With Why: The Golden Circle (Chapter 3 Summary)

This book summary series is taken from Simon Sinek’s Start With Why: How Great Leaders Inspire Everyone to Take Action (2011). Your curiosity and knowledge is infinite, but your time is not. Read this summary – and you’ll be inspired!

The Golden Circle finds order and predictability in human behaviour. Put simply, it helps us understand why we do what we do.

WHAT: What do you do? [“Every organization on the planet knows WHAT they do. These are products they sell or services they offer.”]

HOW: How do you do what you do? [“Some organization know HOW they do It. these are the things that make them special or set them apart from their competitors.”]

WHY: Why do you do what you do? What’s the purpose? [“Very few organization know WHY they do it. WHY is not about making money. That’s a result. WHY is a purpose, cause or belief. It’s the very reason your organization exists.”]

Simon Sinek explains that most companies communicate on WHAT they do; from the outside to the inside of the golden circle. They know exactly what product or service they offer and what features it has. Some organizations might even know HOW they do it. This might be the Unique Selling Proposition (USP). But very few know WHY they do what they do. “The goal is not to do business with everybody who needs what you have. The goal is to do business with people who believe what you believe.”

By starting with why and communicating from the inside out, organizations can inspire people to take action. For example, Apple Inc. company:

Apple if they were like everyone else:

We make great computers.
They are beautiful designed, simple to use and user-friendly.
Want to buy one?

How Apple actually communicate:

Everything we do, we believe in challenging the status quo. We believe in thinking differently. The way we challenge the status quo is by making our products beautifully designed, simple to use and user-friendly. And we happen to make great computers. Want to buy one?

Apple simply doesn’t reverse the order of information, their message starts with WHY, a purpose, cause or belief that has nothing to do with WHAT they do. What they do – the products that they make, from computers to small electronics – no longer serves as the reason to buy, they serve as the tangible proof of their cause. “People don’t buy what you do, they buy why you do it.”

Most organizations, however, use the tangible features and benefits to build a rational argument for why their company, product or idea is better than another. Companies try to sell us WHAT they do, but we buy WHY they do it. When communicating from the inside and out, the WHY is offered as the reason to buy and the WHAT serve as the tangible proof of that belief. Consumers and investors are completely at ease with Apple offering so many different products in so many categories. It’s not WHAT Apple does that distinguishes them. It is WHY they do it. Their products give life to their cause and everything they do works to demonstrate their WHY.

Apples competitors lost their cause, they turned from companies with a cause into a company that sold products. And when that happens, price, quality, service and features become the primary currency to motivate a purchase decision. At that point a company and its products have become commodities. Simon assured that a company doesn’t have to have to best product, they just need to be good or very good. Better or best is a relative comparison. Sinek argued, “Without first understanding of WHY, the comparison itself is of no value on the decision maker.”

If a customer feels inspired rather than manipulated to buy a product, they will be able to verbalize the reasons why they think what they bought is better. It is the cause that is represented by the company, brand, product or person that inspires loyalty (see previous article). So, instead of asking “WHAT should we do to compete?” the question must be asked is, “WHY did we start doing WHAT we’re doing in the first place, and WHAT can we do to bring our cause to life considering all the technologies and market opportunities available today?”

From Inside Out: Ask WHY, then How, then WHAT. Always Start with WHY.

Essential Thinkers #24 David Hume, Hero of Modern Day Sceptics and and Empiricists

David Hume (1711-1776) is the philosophical hero of modern day sceptics and empiricists, renouncing all knowledge except for that which can be gained from the senses. Alas, as W.V.O. Quine would later famously say, echoing Hume, what can be granted from the senses is, after all, not much.

From John Locke, Hume drew the conclusion that all human knowledge is based on relations amongst ideas, or ‘sense impressions.’ Anything not given in experience is mere invention and must be ruthlessly discarded. As a result he denies the existence of God, the self, the objective existence of logical necessity, causation, and even the validity of inductive knowledge itself. His aim is twofold: at once demolitionnary – to rid science of all falsehoods based on ‘invention rather than experience’ – and constructive, to found a science of human nature.

Much impressed with how Isaac Newton had described the physical world according to simple mechanical laws, Hume had a mind to do something similar for the nature of human understanding. His Treatise on Human Nature is a painstaking study in experiential psychology in search of general principles. In this Hume can be seen as having failed spectacularly, primarily because his whole taxonomy of ‘impressions’ and ‘ideas’ is derived from the much discredited Cartesian model. Nevertheless, Hume’s negative program is a devastating example of the power of logical critique. His sceptical results, especially regarding induction, remain a problem for modern philosophers.

Hume observes that we never experience our own self only the continuous chain of our experiences themselves. This psychological fact leads Hume to the dubious metaphysical conclusion that the self is an illusion, and that in fact personal identity is nothing but the continuous succession of perceptual experience. “I am,” Hume famously says, “nothing but a bundle of perceptions.”

Following a similar line of thought, Hume notices that the force that compels one event to follow another, causation, is also never experienced in sense impressions. All that is given in experience is the regular succession of one kind of event followed by another. But the supposition that the earlier event, the so-called ‘cause,’ must be followed by the succeeding event, the ‘effect,’ is merely human expectation projected onto reality. There is no justification for believing that there is any causal necessity in the ordering of events.

Hume’s scepticism does not stop there. He regards human belief in causation as just a special case of a more general psychological trait: inductive reasoning. Inductive reasoning is the process that leads us to make generalisations from observing a number of similar cases (remember frictional character Sherlock Holmes?). For example, having observed many white swans but no black swans, one might seemingly be justified in the conclusion that “All swans are white.” Equally, being aware that men often die, we conclude “All men are mortal.”

But such generalisations go beyond what is given in experience and are not logically justified. After all, black swans were found in Australia, and there is always the logical possibility of coming across an immortal man.

Hume claimed that inductive reasoning could not be relied upon to lead us to the truth, for observing a regularity does not rule out the possibility that next time something different will occur.

Since all scientific laws are merely generalisations from inductive reasoning, this so-called ‘problem of induction’ has been an urgent one for philosophers of science. Trying to show how induction is justified has taxed them throughout the 20^th century. Karl Popper is notable for offering the most promising solution to Humean scepticism.

[Summarized from Philosophy 100 Essential Thinkers by Philip Stokes, 2012.]

Lord, Give Us Today Our Daily Idea(s)

Essential Thinkers #9 Marcus Aurelius, the Philosopher King

Adopted son of the Emperor Pius, Marcus Aurelius (121-180AD) himself became Roman emperor for almost 20 years until his death in 180 AD. He is known for his only work the Meditations or Writings to Himself, written, according to critics, in the midst of the Parthian war when he might have better used his time directing the army. Still, as a ‘converted’ Stoic, he was greatly concerned with the social problems of the poor, slaves, and the imprisoned. Despite this, he continued, as emperor, to persecute the increasing Christian population, undoubtedly because he saw them as a threat to the Roman religion and way of life, based as this was on conquest, polytheism, and the deification of dead emperors. His own life ended as a result of the plague which broke out whilst he was planning a campaign to increase the domain of the Empire to the north.

The important of his Meditations lies in their practical and aphoristic Stoic message. A loosely-organized set of thoughts relating to stoic philosophy, they nevertheless represent an example of a living ethic, of a teaching closer to religion than to philosophic speculation. For example, the following is typical of Marcus Aurelius: “The happiness of your life depends on the quality of your thoughts: therefore, guard accordingly, and take care that you entertain no notions unsuitable to virtue and reasonable nature.”

Like Seneca before him, Marcus Aurelius believed that a divine providence had placed reason in man, and it was in the power of man to be one with the rational purpose of the universe. The Stoic philosophy was primary concerned with living in accordance with both one’s own nature and universal Nature, perhaps best understood in the sense meant by Taoist philosophers of the East. Simple living and contentment with one’s lot go hand in hand with stoicism, but run the risk of leading to quietism. As a means of social control Stoicism is the ideal ‘religion’, since the more people are willing to accept the things are just they are, the less trouble they are likely to give the Emperor. Though it is unlikely that Marcus Aurelius professed Stoicism for political purposes – the Meditations seem sincere enough – it is a factor of his philosophy that should not be ignored.

The rationale behind the Stoic insistence on living ‘in accordance with nature’ stems from a certain biological outlook. According to the Stoics, all ‘ensouled beings’ (by which they mean to include everything we would now call ‘sentient life’) strive towards self-preservation. Self-preservation leads a being to look for that which is in tune with its nature and appropriate to its own being. Man, being endowed with reason, seeks not just food, warmth and shelter, but also that which is good for the intellect. Ultimately, Reason allows us to choose that which is in tune with our true nature with greater accuracy than if we merely follow our animal instinct.

Central to this Stoic outlook is an understanding of what constitutes the good or most appropriate life for human beings. Whilst many thinkers might suppose health and wealth, the Stoics insist that the ultimate good must be good at all times. It is conceivable that wealth may be sometimes detrimental to me, and so too, even, health, if for example, my strength were put to ill-doing. Hence the Stoic conclusion that the only infallible good is virtue, which includes the usual list of Greco-Roman excellences: wisdom, justice, courage, and moderation.

[Summarized from Philosophy 100 Essential Thinkers by Philip Stokes, 2012. Also watch Philosophers Note TV: Meditations by Marcus Aurelius https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=JFUOTYunYPg]

Lord, Give Us Today Our Daily Idea(s)

Essential Thinkers #6 Aristotle the Philosopher also Scientist, Astronomer and Political Theorist

Aristotle’s achievements in the history and development of western thought are both stunning and unrivaled. More than just a philosopher, Aristotle (384-322 BC) was a scientist, astronomer, political theorist and the inventor of what is now called symbolic or formal logic. He wrote extensively on biology, psychology, ethics, physics, metaphysics and politics and set the terms of debate in all these areas right up to modern times. Indeed, his writings on justice are still required reading for undergraduates reading Law.

After his death his works were lost for some 200 years or so but fortunately rediscovered in Crete. Later translated into Latin by Boethius around 500 AD, Aristotle’s influence spread throughout Syria and Islam whilst Christian Europe ignored him in favour of Plato. Not until Thomas Aquinas reconciled Aristotle’s work with Christian doctrine in the 13^th century did he become influential in Western Europe. Aristotle received his education from age seventeen in Plato’s ‘Academy’, where he stayed for some 20 years until Plato’s death. Later he founded his own institution, ‘The Lyceum’, where he would expound a philosophy altogether different both in method and content from that of his former teacher.

More than any other philosopher before him, Aristotle made much of observation and strict classification of data in his studies. For this reason he is often considered as the father of empirical science and scientific method. Unlike his predecessor Plato, Aristotle always undertook his investigations by considering the regarded opinions of both experts and lay people, before detailing his own arguments, assuming that some grain of truth is likely to be found in commonly held ideas. Aristotle’s method was nothing if not rigorous and lacked the proselytising tone of many of his predecessors.

In contradistinction to both Plato and the Pre-Socratic, Aristotle rejected the idea that the many diverse branches of human inquiry could, in principle, be subsumed under one discipline based on some universal philosophic principle. Different sciences require different axioms and admit of varying degrees of precision according to their subject. Thus Aristotle denied there could be exact law of human nature, whilst maintaining that certain metaphysical categories – such as quantity, quality, substance and relation – were applicable to the description of all phenomena.

If there is one common thread to much of Aristotle’s work it lies in his conception of teleology, or purpose. Perhaps as a result of his preoccupation with biological studies, Aristotle was impressed by the idea that both animate and inanimate behaviour is directed toward some final purpose (‘telos’) or goal. It is common to explain the behaviour of people, institutions and nations in terms of purposes and goals: for example, John is sitting the bar exam to become a barrister; the school is holding a fete to raise funds for the roof; the country is going to war to protect its territory. Similarly, modern evolutionary biology makes use of purposive explanation to account for the behaviour of, for instance, genes and genetic imperatives.

However, Aristotle thought the concept of purpose could be invoked to explain the behaviour of everything in the universe. His reasoning lay in the idea that everything has a natural function and strives towards fulfilling or exhibiting that function, which is its best and more natural state. It is by means of the concept of function that Aristotle then ties his ethics to his physics, claiming that the natural function of man is to reason, and to reason will is to reason in accordance with virtue.

Unlike the opposing ethical theories of Kant and Mill, both of which view actions as the subject of ethical judgements, Aristotle’s ethics focuses on the character of the agent as that which is morally good or morally bad. This is so-called ‘virtue ethics’ was revived with much critical success by Alistair Macintyre in late 20^th century.

[Summarized from Philosophy 100 Essential Thinkers by Philip Stokes, 2012]

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Barriers to Creativity #2: "That's Not Logical"

Creativity, like common sense, is supposed to be common. Creativity is natural and spontaneous. Yet it is not exhibited as frequently as it should. Experts believe that there are several reasons for this. These reasons are called ‘Barriers to Creativity’. ‘Barriers’ are the thing that stop us from thinking creatively and the reason that make us not as creative as we should be.

Barrier #2: “That’s Not Logical”

            Logic commands that things must be consistent and non-contradictory. While this principle must be followed faithfully in science and certain fields, in creative thinking situations, this rule need not necessarily apply. Imagination is required in problem-solving. Overemphasis on logical thinking inhibits and stagnant our thinking. If everything must be practical and correct, we leave no room for ambiguity and imagination. Furthermore we also do not give room to intuitive hunches. Intuition may have no apparent logical reason but they do help in many problem-solving situations. Sometimes we have to listen to our sixth sense or gut feelings. Logic is good when we are evaluating ideas but during stage of searching for ideas it short circuits the creative process.

Do not depend on logic alone.

Lord, Give Us Today Our Daily Idea(s)