Simon Sinek went pretty viral not too long ago for some comments that he made on the millennial generation. Whether you agreed or disagreed, he certainly made some fascinating points about what it means for a generation that has been blessed with instant access to so many things to face the daunting task of building a career over the long term.

If for some reason,  you didn’t see it when it was going viral, it’s worth watching and you can see it here

But that video is not my concern today. Today I want to look at Simon’s book, Start With Why.

The idea is that most organizations can tell you WHAT they do, some people can even tell you HOW they do it, but few people have a good sense of WHY they do it. For Simon, these three words are related to each other in a concept called the golden circle (which is three circles, one inside of the other), where the WHAT represents the outermost, shallow layer, HOW is one layer deeper, and the WHY is the heart of the matter.

Simon’s assertion is that for a leader or an organization to be effective and successful, the need to start in the middle of the golden circle and work their way out, starting with WHY, moving to HOW, and ending at WHAT.

Here are some of the notes that I took from the book:

• “Trust begins to emerge when we have a sense that another person or organization is driven by things other than their own self-gain.”
• “Howard understood from a very young age the very human desire to win. No one likes to lose, and most healthy people live their life to win.  The only variation is the score we use. For some it’s money, for others it’s fame or awards. For some it’s power, love, a family, or spiritual fulfillment. The metric is relative, but the desire is the same.”
• “…the goal is not to do business with anyone who simply wants what you have, but to do business with people who believe what you believe.”
• “If people aren’t looking out for a community, the benefits of community erode.”
• “In my vernacular, achievement comes when you pursue and attain WHAT you want. Success comes when you are in pursuit of WHY you want it. The former is motivated by tangible factors while the latter by something deeper in the brain, where we lack the capacity to put those feelings into words. “
• “Success comes when we wake up every day in that never ending pursuit of WHY we do WHAT we do. Our achievements, WHAT we do, serve as milestones to indicate we are on the right path.”
• “Passion may need structure to survive, but for structure to grow, it needs passion.”

I read the physical book, but I’m sure the audiobook is good, it’s narrated by Simon and he has a great voice.

Get the book here: