 First edition | |
| Author | Simon Sinek |
|---|---|
| Language | English |
| Subject | Entrepreneurship |
| Genre | Business |
| Published | 2009 2011 reprinted |
| Publisher | Portfolio |
Publication date | 2009 |
| Pages | 255 |
| ISBN | 978-1-59184-280-4 |
Start with Why: How Great Leaders Inspire Everyone to Take Action is a book by Simon Sinek. [1] [2] [3]
The book starts with comparing the two main ways to influence human behaviour: manipulation and inspiration. Sinek argues that inspiration is the more powerful and sustainable of the two. The book primarily discusses the significance of leadership and purpose to succeed in life and business. Sinek highlights the importance of taking the risk and going against the status-quo to find solutions to global problems. He believes leadership holds the key to inspiring a nation to come together and advance a common interest to make a nation, or the planet, a more civilised place. He turns to Dr. Martin Luther King Jr, John F Kennedy, Steve Jobs and the entire Apple culture as examples of how a purpose can be created to inspire a culture together, away from the manipulative society we live in today. This is highly important especially considering the amount of time we spend on our phones and other devices.
Sinek says people are inspired by a sense of purpose (or "Why"), and that this should come first when communicating, before "How" and "What". [4] Sinek calls this triad the golden circle, a diagram of a bullseye (or concentric circles or onion diagram) with "Why" in the innermost circle (representing people's motives or purposes), surrounded by a ring labelled "How" (representing people's processes or methods), enclosed in a ring labelled "What" (representing results or outcomes). He speculates about the biological factors behind this structure, such as the limbic system.
Lindsay McGregor and Neel Doshi, co-authors of the book Primed to Perform: How to Build the Highest Performing Cultures Through the Science of Total Motivation, came to a similar conclusion: [5] "Why we work determines how well we work." [6]
Ken Krogue, in a blog post for Forbes , argued that it is far more important, especially for salespeople, to find the right person (which Krogue called "starting with Who") before "starting with Why":
Great salespeople always start with Who. Then they move to Why, What, and How. And then eventually to When, and How Much. ... Now once you get to the right Who, Simon Sinek is spot-on about beginning the conversation with Why. Why is a game-changer in selling modern technology. [7]
According to NPD BookScan's mid-June 2016 to mid-June 2017 ranking of printed book sales, Start with Why ranked (without disclosing the geographical region) as the "bestselling leadership book" of that period, selling 171,000 paperback copies. [8]
Darkness in El Dorado: How Scientists and Journalists Devastated the Amazon is a book written by author Patrick Tierney in 2000, in which the author accuses geneticist James Neel and anthropologist Napoleon Chagnon of conducting human research without regard for their subjects' well-being while conducting long-term ethnographic field work among the indigenous Yanomamo, in the Amazon basin between Venezuela and Brazil. He also wrote that the researchers had exacerbated a measles epidemic among the Native Americans, and that Jacques Lizot and Kenneth Good committed acts of sexual impropriety with Yanomamo.
The Fifth Discipline: The Art and Practice of the Learning Organization is a book by Peter Senge focusing on group problem solving using the systems thinking method in order to convert companies into learning organizations that learn to create results that matter as an organization. The five disciplines represent classical approaches for developing three core and timeless learning capabilities: fostering aspiration, developing reflective conversation, and understanding complexity.
Theory X and Theory Y are theories of human work motivation and management. They were created by Douglas McGregor while he was working at the MIT Sloan School of Management in the 1950s, and developed further in the 1960s. McGregor's work was rooted in motivation theory alongside the works of Abraham Maslow, who created the hierarchy of needs. The two theories proposed by McGregor describe contrasting models of workforce motivation applied by managers in human resource management, organizational behavior, organizational communication and organizational development. Theory X explains the importance of heightened supervision, external rewards, and penalties, while Theory Y highlights the motivating role of job satisfaction and encourages workers to approach tasks without direct supervision. Management use of Theory X and Theory Y can affect employee motivation and productivity in different ways, and managers may choose to implement strategies from both theories into their practices.
Organizational behavior or organisational behaviour is the "study of human behavior in organizational settings, the interface between human behavior and the organization, and the organization itself". Organizational behavioral research can be categorized in at least three ways:
In Search of Excellence is a book written by Tom Peters and Robert H. Waterman Jr. First published in 1982, it sold three million copies in its first four years, and was the most widely held monograph in the United States from 1989 to 2006. The book explores the art and science of management used by several companies in the 1980s.
Adrian Zackheim is the founder and publisher of the business book imprint Portfolio and the conservative political imprint Sentinel, both divisions of Penguin Books.
Samuel Truett Cathy was an American businessman, investor, author, and philanthropist who founded the fast food restaurant chain Chick-fil-A in 1946.
A mission statement is a short statement of why an organization exists, what its overall goal is, the goal of its operations: what kind of product or service it provides, its primary customers or market, and its geographical region of operation. It may include a short statement of such fundamental matters as the organization's values or philosophies, a business's main competitive advantages, or a desired future state—the "vision". Historically it is associated with Christian religious groups; indeed, for many years, a missionary was assumed to be a person on a specifically religious mission. The word "mission" dates from 1598, originally of Jesuits sending members abroad.
Simon Oliver Sinek is an English-born American author and inspirational speaker on business leadership. His books include Start with Why (2009) and The Infinite Game (2019).
Patrick Lencioni is an American author of books on business management, particularly in relation to team management. He is best known as the author of The Five Dysfunctions of a Team, a popular business fable that explores work team dynamics and offers solutions to help teams perform better. In addition to Five Dysfunctions of a Team, he has written eleven other business books. He has also applied his management techniques to families in The Three Big Questions for a Frantic Family.
Margaret Heffernan is an entrepreneur, CEO, writer and keynote speaker. She is currently a professor of Practice at the University of Bath School of Management in the UK.
John Baldoni is an executive coach, speaker and an author who has written 15 books on leadership published by the American Management Association and Mc-Graw-Hill, some of which have been translated into other languages.
Venanzio "Vince" Molinaro is a business strategist and leadership adviser. He is the author of several books, including Accountable Leaders. Molinaro is the reference founder and CEO of Leadership Contract Inc.
A social employee is a worker operating within a social business model. Following an organization's social computing guidelines, social employees use social media tools both for internal workflow and collaboration purposes and for external engagement with customers, prospects and stakeholders through a combination of social media marketing, content marketing, social marketing, and social selling. Social employee programs are considered to be as much about culture and engagement as they are about business processes and best practices. In addition to increased leads and sales, social employee best practices are said to improve business outcomes important to social media marketing, such as increased connections and web traffic, improved brand identification and "chatter", and better customer advocacy.
James Stephen Lindsay, known professionally as James A. Lindsay, is an American author. He is known for the grievance studies affair, in which he, Peter Boghossian and Helen Pluckrose submitted hoax articles to academic journals in 2017 and 2018 to test scholarship and rigor in several academic fields. Lindsay has written several books including Cynical Theories (2020), which he co-authored with Pluckrose. He has promoted right-wing conspiracy theories such as Cultural Marxism and LGBT grooming conspiracy theories.
The Infinite Game is a 2019 book by Simon Sinek, applying ideas from James P. Carse's similarly titled book, Finite and Infinite Games to topics of business and leadership.
Michelle Penelope King is a white South African born journalist, writer, women's rights activist and advocate for gender equality. Since December 2019, King has been director of inclusion at Netflix, a department responsible for inclusion and diversity among corporate employees.
Katharine K. Wilkinson is an American writer, climate change activist, and executive director and co-founder of the All We Can Save Project, a climate leadership organization. She co-hosts the podcast A Matter of Degrees with Leah Stokes. Previously, Wilkinson served as editor-in-chief of The Drawdown Review at Project Drawdown and was the senior writer for The New York Times bestseller Drawdown, which documents the "what is possible" approach for addressing climate change. Time named her one of 15 "women who will save the world" in 2019.
Business purpose refers to the wider, long-term goals of a commercial enterprise. It expresses the corporate's reason for existing, its particular commitment with respect to the surrounding world. A business purpose statement serves as an affirmative reminder of the company's core identity to employees, customers, and other stakeholders; a common ground hopefully enabling them to focus on their particular tasks while feeling what they do is part of a wider, socially valued endeavor. Alongside established normative, purpose is a fundamental component of business ethics and is closely related to corporate statements such as vision, mission, and values. A simplifying, although debatable view, contends that business purpose may exist in one of two forms: current purpose, or mission; and future purpose, or vision. The term has gained wide media attention in recent times.
Bittersweet: How Sorrow and Longing Make Us Whole is a 2022 nonfiction book written by American author Susan Cain.
Similarly, marketing expert Simon Sinek ... points out that the best brands in the world 'Start with Why.' Understanding why a person or organisation operates—understanding identity—builds the highest levels of brand loyalty.
