Start With Why

is small, it revolves around the personality of the founder. There is no debate that the founder’s personality is the personality of the company. Why then do we think things change just because a company is successful? What’s the difference between Steve Jobs the man and Apple the company? Nothing. What’s the difference between Sir Richard Branson’s personality and Virgin’s personality? Nothing. As a company grows, the CEO’s job is to personify the WHY. To ooze of it. To talk about it. To preach it. To be a symbol of what the company believes. They are the intention and WHAT the company says and does is their voice. Like Martin Luther King and his social movement, the leader’s job is no longer to close all the deals; it is to inspire.
    As the organization grows, the leader becomes physically removed, farther and farther away from WHAT the company does, and even farther away from the outside market. I love asking CEOs what their biggest priority is, and, depending on their size or structure, I generally get one of two answers: customers or shareholders. Sadly, there aren’t many CEOs of companies of any reasonable size who have daily contact with customers anymore. And customers and shareholders alike both exist outside the organization in the chaotic world of the marketplace. Just as the cone demonstrates, the CEO’s job, the leader’s responsibility, is not to focus on the outside market—it’s to focus on the layer directly beneath: HOW. The leader must ensure that there are people on the team who believe what they believe and know HOW to build it. The HOW-TYPES are responsible for understanding WHY and must come to work every day to develop the systems and hire the people who are ultimately responsible for bringing the WHY to life. The general employees are responsible for demonstrating the WHY to the outside world in whatever the company says and does. The challenge is that they are able to do it clearly.
    Remember the biology of The Golden Circle. The WHY exists in the part of the brain that controls feelings and decision-making but not language. WHATs exist in the part of the brain that controls rational thought and language. Comparing the biology of the brain to the three-dimensional rendering of The Golden Circle reveals a profound insight.

    The leader sitting at the top of the organization is the inspiration, the symbol of the reason we do what we do. They represent the emotional limbic brain. WHAT the company says and does represents the rational thought and language of the neocortex. Just as it is hard for people to speak their feelings, like someone trying to explain why they love their spouse, it is equally hard for an organization to explain its WHY. The part of the brain that controls feelings and the part that controls language are not the same. Given that the cone is simply a three-dimensional rendering of The Golden Circle, which is firmly grounded in the biology of human decision-making, the logic follows that organizations of any size will struggle to clearly communicate their WHY. Translated into business terms this means that trying to communicate your differentiating value proposition is really hard.
    Put bluntly, the struggle that so many companies have to differentiate or communicate their true value to the outside world is not a business problem, it’s a biology problem. And just like a person struggling to put her emotions into words, we rely on metaphors, imagery and analogies in an attempt to communicate how we feel. Absent the proper language to share our deep emotions, our purpose, cause or belief, we tell stories. We use symbols. We create tangible things for those who believe what we believe to point to and say, “That’s why I’m inspired.” If done properly, that’s what marketing, branding and products and services become; a way for organizations to communicate to the outside world. Communicate clearly and you shall be understood.

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    COMMUNICATION IS NOT ABOUT SPEAKING, IT’S ABOUT LISTENING
    Martin Luther King Jr., a man who would become a symbol of the entire civil rights movement, chose to deliver his famous “I Have a Dream” speech in front of another symbol: the Lincoln Memorial. Like King, Lincoln stands (or in the case of the memorial, sits) as a symbol of the American value of freedom for all. Great societies understand the importance of symbols as a way of reinforcing their values, of capturing their beliefs. Dictators understand the