Start With Why

designed, simple to use and user-friendly.
    Wanna buy one?
    It’s not a very compelling sales pitch, but that’s how most companies sell to us. This is the norm. First they start with WHAT they do—“Here’s our new car.” Then they tell us how they do it or how they are better—“It’s got leather seats, great gas mileage, and great financing.” And then they make a call to action and expect a behavior.
    You see this pattern in business-to-consumer markets as well as business-to-business environments: “Here’s our law firm. Our lawyers went to the best schools and we represent the biggest clients. Hire us.” This pattern is also alive and well in politics—“Here’s the candidate, here are her views on taxes and immigration. See how’s she’s different? Vote for her.” In every case, the communication is organized in an attempt to convince someone of a difference or superior value.
    But that is not what the inspiring leaders and organizations do. Every one of them, regardless of size or industry, thinks, acts and communicates from the inside out.
    Let’s look at that Apple example again and rewrite the example in the order Apple actually communicates. This time, the example starts with WHY.
    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.
    Wanna buy one?
    It’s a completely different message. It actually feels different from the first one. We’re much more eager to buy a computer from Apple after reading the second version—and all I did was reverse the order of the information. There’s no trickery, no manipulation, no free stuff, no aspirational messages, no celebrities.
    Apple doesn’t simply 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 they make, from computers to small electronics—no longer serves as the reason to buy, they serve as the tangible proof of their cause. The design and user interface of Apple products, though important, are not enough in themselves to generate such astounding loyalty among their customers. Those important elements help make the cause tangible and rational. Others can hire top designers and brilliant engineers and make beautiful, easy-to-use products and copy the things Apple does, and they could even steal away Apple employees to do it, but the results would not be the same. Simply copying WHAT Apple does or HOW it does it won’t work. There is something more, something hard to describe and near impossible to copy that gives Apple such a disproportionate level of influence in the market. The example starts to prove that people don’t buy WHAT you do, they buy WHY you do it.
    It’s worth repeating: people don’t buy WHAT you do, they buy WHY you do it.
    Apple’s ability to design such innovative products so consistently and their ability to command such astounding loyalty for their products comes from more than simply WHAT they do. The problem is, organizations use the tangible features and benefits to build a rational argument for why their company, product or idea is better than another. Sometimes those comparisons are made outright and sometimes analogies or metaphors are drawn, but the effect is the same. Companies try to sell us WHAT they do, but we buy WHY they do it. This is what I mean when I say they communicate from the outside in; they lead with WHAT and HOW.
    When communicating from the inside out, however, the WHY is offered as the reason to buy and the WHATs serve as the tangible proof of that belief. The things we can point to rationalize or explain the reasons we’re drawn to one product, company or idea over another.
    WHAT companies do are external factors, but WHY they do it is something deeper. In practical terms, there is nothing special about Apple. It is just a company like any other. There is no real difference between Apple and any of its competitors—Dell, HP, Gateway, Toshiba. Pick one, it doesn’t matter. They are all corporate structures. That’s all a company is. It’s a structure. They all make computers. They all have some systems that work and some that don’t. They all have equal access to the same talent, the same resources, the same agencies, the same consultants and the same media. They all