Start With Why

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.

People don’t buy WHAT you do, they buy WHY you do it.

Our desire to feel like we belong is so powerful that we will go to great lengths, do irrational things and often spend money to get that feeling.

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.

Decision-making and the ability to explain those decisions exist in different parts of the brain.

The same is true for other decisions. When a decision feels right, we have a hard time explaining why we did what we did.

Whether you defer to your gut or you’re simply following your heart, no matter which part of the body you think is driving the decision, the reality is it’s all in your limbic brain.

When you force people to make decisions with only the rational part of their brain, they almost invariably end up “overthinking.”

rational decisions tend to take longer to make, says Restak, and can often be of lower quality.

It is our inability to verbalize the reasons that may cause us to doubt ourselves or trust the empirical evidence when our gut tells us not to.

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 … we have a clear idea of how to act in any situation.

A WHY is just a belief. That’s all it is. HOWs are the actions you take to realize that belief. And WHATs are the results of those actions

only when individuals can trust the culture or organization will they take personal risks in order to advance that culture or organization as a whole. For no other reason than, in the end, it’s good for their own personal health and survival.

For those within a community, or an organization, they must trust that their leaders provide a net—practical or emotional. With that feeling of support, those in the organization are more likely to put in extra effort that ultimately benefits the group as a whole.

to get the best out his employees he needed to create an environment in which they felt like the company cared about them. He

to get the best out his employees he needed to create an environment in which they felt like the company cared about them. He knew that they would naturally excel if they felt the work they did made a difference.