Start with Why:
How Great Leaders Inspire Everyone to Take Action
Leaders Eat Last:
Why Some Teams Pull Together and Others Don’t
Together is Better:
A Little Book of Inspiration
(illustrated by Ethan M. Aldridge)
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Portfolio Penguin is part of the Penguin Random House group of companies whose addresses can be found at global.penguinrandomhouse.com.
First published in the United States of America by Portfolio/Penguin, an imprint of Penguin Random House LLC 2017
First published in Great Britain by Portfolio 2017
Copyright © Sinek Partners, LLC, 2017
The moral right of the author has been asserted
ISBN: 978-0-241-97840-5
Fulfillment is a right and not a privilege. Every single one of us is entitled to feel fulfilled by the work we do, to wake up feeling inspired to go to work, to feel safe when we’re there and to return home with a sense that we contributed to something larger than ourselves. Fulfillment is not a lottery. It is not a feeling reserved for a lucky few who get to say, “I love what I do.”
For those who hold a leadership position, creating an environment in which the people in your charge feel like they are a part of something bigger than themselves is your responsibility as a leader. For those who work for an organization that does not leave you feeling inspired at the beginning and end of every day, you must become the leader you wish you had. Regardless of our rank in the organization, every single one of us has at least one colleague, client or vendor for whom we can take some responsibility for how they feel when they work with us. The goal is not to focus on what’s standing in your way; it is to take steps that will have a positive and lasting effect on everyone around us.
The concept of WHY is a deeply personal journey born out of pain. I discovered the idea at a time when I had lost any passion for my work. The advice people gave me wasn’t helpful either: “Do what you love,” “Find your bliss,” “Be passionate.” All accurate—but totally un-actionable. I agreed with all the advice in theory, but I didn’t know what to change. I didn’t know what to do differently on Monday. And that’s the reason the WHY has been and continues to be such a profound force in my life. Not only did discovering my WHY renew my passion, it gave me a filter to make better decisions. It offered me a new lens through which I would see the world differently. And it was through this lens—to inspire people to do what inspires them so that together each of us can change our world—that I started preaching the concept of WHY and the Golden Circle. And people listened. In fact, people did more than listen, they joined me in preaching this message, sharing the vision. And our movement was born.
The TED Talk I gave in 2009 helped spread the idea to more people, and my first book, Start with Why, made the case for WHY in much greater depth. People and organizations who know their WHY enjoy greater, long-term success, command greater trust and loyalty among employees and customers and are more forward-thinking and innovative than their competition. The concept of WHY and the Golden Circle became a huge piece of the puzzle to advance this world I imagined. But there was a problem.
Though I was able to make the case for the existence and the power of WHY, and though I could help some people and organizations discover their WHY, I wasn’t able to get to or help as many people as we needed to if we are to have an impact in lots of people’s lives. My team built upon what I started. They made my process even better. They started helping people. They even developed an online course to help people discover their WHY. But even that wasn’t enough.
That’s the reason this book exists. If Start with Why makes the case for the WHY, Find Your Why provides the steps to show people how to actually do it. And just as Start with Why illustrates, though I may be the guy with the idea, I don’t know how to bring it to life at scale. That’s where David and Peter come in.
Peter Docker and David Mead joined me on this journey because they were inspired by the world I imagined. Both have a unique skill set to help bring my vision—our vision—to reality. I may have figured out how to help one person learn their WHY, but it was David and Peter that figured out how to help a room of sixty people, for example, find their WHY.
David knows how to make things work. Years ago, inspired by one of my talks, he started developing workbooks and building training programs to help the people at his then-company. He did this without ever asking me or anyone else for help. Once I got wind of what he had done, I was blown away by how deeply he understood my ideas and his ability to put them into practice.
Peter retired from the Royal Air Force and wanted to continue a life of service in the private sector. He discovered my work and reached out to simply say how much it inspired him. He has combined my ideas with work he was already doing to amplify its impact. Soon after we met, he started mentoring folks on our team just out of the goodness of his own heart. His work was so good that we started using many of his ideas to help build our company and grow our movement.
Both eventually joined our team and a deep friendship formed between the two of them. Their collective genius has taken my work and made it even better. So when the opportunity came to write a follow-up guide to Start with Why, I turned to David and Peter to help. These guys are the “how” to my “why.” And I love that our movement has given them the ability to share their expertise with so many more people.
This book has been years in the making. Peter and David have traveled the world to talk about the WHY and work closely with individuals and organizations to help them understand, discover and use the concepts. They have heard the questions, discovered the roadblocks and found better and better ways to advance the vision. And that’s where you come in.
If we are to profoundly change the way in which the business world works, if we help organizations create cultures in which trust and cooperation are the norm rather than the exception, if we are to build the world we imagine, we will need help. Lots of it. Though the work my team is doing is making a dent, we alone will be unable to create the kind of change necessary. It will take an army.
David and Peter wrote this book to be a practical guide. A complete self-contained handbook that gives any person the pieces they need to discover and articulate their WHY. We designed the book with lots of space in the margins so that you can take notes along the way. Fill in the blanks, dog-ear the pages, highlight as you go. Don’t be precious about it.
Find Your Why is a journey. Though all the how-to steps may be in the book, it’s going to take work and patience to really get it. Remember, this book is a guide. Follow the steps, learn the concepts and absolutely tweak as you go to make the process your own. If you find something that works better for you, do it!
Think of this book as the gun that fires at the beginning of the race. That bang fills you with excitement and energy as you set off. But it is the lessons you will learn as you run the race—as you learn to live your WHY—that will inspire you and show you what you are capable of. And remember the most important lesson. The goal is not simply for you to cross the finish line, but to see how many people you can inspire to run with you.
There is an entire section in the bookshop called “self-help,” but there is no section called “help-others.” This is what we are all doing together—we are pioneering the help-others industry. For all of the people who want to learn their WHY, who want their companies to start with WHY, who want to help others find their WHY … for all of the people who want to help build a world in which the vast majority of people wake up inspired to go to work, to feel safe when they are there and to return home fulfilled by the work they do … I say welcome. The more of us who raise our hands and say, “Count me in,” the greater the chance that we will build the world we imagine. You in?
We travel a lot for business, but sometimes our business just won’t wait—it climbs right onto the plane and finds us. That’s what happened to Peter one day, on a flight from Miami to St. Louis. Here’s the story as Peter tells it:
I was exhausted. All I wanted to do was get to where I was going. Another flight. Another stranger to sit next to. I prayed to the airline gods for a seatmate who wouldn’t invade my space, physically or verbally. I just wanted to be left alone. But as it turned out, my neighbor was going to be one of those people and this was going to be one of those flights.
I was settling in for the four-hour trip when Steve sat down and introduced himself. After some chitchat, he started telling me what he does for a living. If you’ve been in this situation, you already know that Steve was not, say, a bodyguard for Hollywood stars, eager to share behind-the-scenes stories about their love lives and recreational drug use. No salacious stories or gossip to entertain me for the flight. No. For twenty-three years, Steve had been selling steel. Yup, steel. Riveting.
It turns out, however, the steel Steve sells is not just the run-of-the-mill variety. His company, based in Sweden, produces a particularly pure form of steel that enables machines to run more efficiently because their parts—for example, a car’s transmission—are lighter. An engineer himself, Steve could personally attest to his product’s superiority over other options on the market.
As he wrapped up, Steve looked at me expectantly, obviously longing for a follow-up question that would let him talk more about steel. Trouble was, I didn’t much care what Steve did. It’s not that I’m aloof or unsociable or only interested in gossip. I’m none of the above. What draws me in is not what people do for a living but why they do it. So instead of asking Steve how much his steel costs and who his best clients are, I turned to him and said, “So what?”
“Well, er,” Steve faltered, not understanding the question. So I put it another way: “I get that the steel you sell is very pure. I get that it allows for lighter components, which makes machines more efficient. But so what?”
Steve stammered a bit more, then blurted out, “Well, not so much material needs to be used.”
Getting closer. I pushed a little more.
“And what difference does that make?” For a moment Steve looked as if he might crumble. All he’d wanted was to make small talk. Now he was stuck with my weird questions for the next three hours (the tables had turned). But we kept talking and I helped him find his answers.
As it turns out, such pure steel means that parts built with less material still remain strong. Using less material means needing to do less smelting (the process of extracting metal from its ore), so less energy is used in the steel production process and thus less pollution is created. And when the steel is used to produce a machine such as a car, those advantages are repeated: the car is lighter, so it uses less fuel and therefore produces less pollution. And as if that weren’t enough, purer steel is easier to recycle than other varieties. This was actually interesting … but we still hadn’t gotten to why Steve was so enthusiastic about his job.
“Saving fuel and reducing pollution is great,” I said, “but there must be something more to this business that’s kept you going for twenty-three years.” That’s a long time to do something and still be passionate about it. “There must be something more at stake, something you truly believe in,” I prodded him. And then it happened. For the first time in our conversation, I saw Steve’s eyes light up. And his feelings poured out.
Steve is committed to keeping the planet healthy for his children and future generations, and one way to do that is to be more responsible in the way we use our planet’s rich resources. For all the time he’d been talking to me about steel, he never once mentioned this, yet it was the very thing that inspired him to start telling a stranger on a plane all about pure steel.
I asked Steve for permission to rephrase his sales pitch. “In simple terms,” I began, speaking as if I were Steve, “I believe in using natural resources for the benefit of humankind. And I also believe that we should do so responsibly, leaving the planet safe and healthy for our children. This is what led me to become an engineer and to join my current organization. Our company, based in Sweden—a country committed to sustainability—has developed a way to help engineers create lighter, more efficient, greener products. And our particular path to sustainability happens to be lightweight steel.”
“Thank you,” Steve said, beaming. “You’ve just put into words the reason I love what I do.”
Simply by starting my version of the pitch with why he loves his job, I helped Steve see that it’s not what he does that has kept him fulfilled for more than two decades. What inspires him is why he does it. By connecting his work to his sense of purpose, Steve had discovered his WHY.
* * *
Every one of us has a WHY, a deep-seated purpose, cause or belief that is the source of our passion and inspiration. You may not yet know what yours is or how to express it in words. But we guarantee, you have one. If you’d like to understand your WHY, and would rather not wait until Peter sits next to you on a flight, this book can help. We believe that all of us deserve to live as Steve does: waking up inspired to go to work and coming home, at the end of the day, feeling fulfilled by the work we do.
Fulfillment isn’t another word for happiness. All kinds of things make us happy at work: hitting a goal, getting a promotion, landing a new client, completing a project—the list goes on. But happiness is temporary; the feeling doesn’t last. Nobody walks around energized by the memory of a goal hit twelve months ago. That intensity passes with time.
Fulfillment is deeper. Fulfillment lasts. The difference between happiness and fulfillment is the difference between liking something and loving something. We don’t necessarily like our kids all the time, for example, but we do love them all the time. We don’t necessarily find happiness in our jobs every day, but we can feel fulfilled by our work every day if it makes us feel part of something bigger than ourselves. (That’s the reason we can feel unfulfilled even if we’re successful by standard measures like compensation and status. Fulfillment comes when our job connects directly to our WHY.) Steve, our man of steel, finds happiness when he closes a deal but finds fulfillment knowing that he is contributing to a higher cause with larger implications. Happiness comes from what we do. Fulfillment comes from why we do it.
Steve is a lucky man. Though he couldn’t articulate his WHY until he met and talked with Peter, he had been living his WHY for decades and as a result felt inspired and fulfilled. But what if the company in Sweden had been acquired by a larger company that downsized Steve? What if he’d had to look for a new job without knowing his WHY? Given his decades of experience, he’d most likely have tried for another job selling steel. But if the new company wasn’t dedicated to sustainability, his sense of purpose would have vanished along with his enthusiasm when talking to strangers on planes. And he might never have connected the pieces and seen that his passion for his work actually had nothing to do with steel in the first place.
If we want to feel an undying passion for our work, if we want to feel we are contributing to something bigger than ourselves, we all need to know our WHY. And that’s the reason we wrote this book.
* * *
Find Your Why is a distillation of what our team has learned from over twenty-five years of collective experience conducting Why Discoveries. We have helped all kinds of people—including entrepreneurs, individual employees, small businesses and teams within large businesses—to find their WHY. This book was designed to help you find yours.
Below is an outline of the seven chapters. The first two contain information that’s fundamental to finding your WHY, and we urge everyone to read them. After that, you can move on to either chapter 3 or chapter 4, depending on whether you’re discovering your WHY as an individual or as a team or group member. Finally, we recommend that all readers review chapters 5, 6 and 7. At the end of the book, we offer assorted bits of additional information that may help you as questions arise.
One of the hardest things to predict about finding your WHY is how long it will take. In chapters 3 through 5, we outline the process for individuals and tribes, and estimate, based on our experience, approximately how much time each step will take. But these numbers are only averages. For some, the process goes more quickly, and for others, more slowly. There is no “right” amount of time. What’s important is to stick with each section or step until you feel confident about moving on to the next one.
To be honest, knowing you’re about to turn the page to chapter 1, we feel a little jealous. We love helping people find their WHY. For us—Peter and David—we wish we could be there personally with each one of you. But our vision is to bring the WHY to life for as many people as possible. And so we will be your virtual guides as you set off on your adventure. Inspire on!