Start With Why

insane. They’ve tattooed a corporate logo on their skin. Some of them don’t even own the product! Why would rational people tattoo a corporate logo on their bodies? The reason is simple. After years of Harley being crystal clear about what they believe, after years of being disciplined about a set of values and guiding principles and after years of being doggedly consistent about everything they say and do, their logo has become a symbol. It no longer simply identifies a company and its products; it identifies a belief.
    In truth, most people who tattoo Harley-Davidson logos on their bodies have no idea what the stock price of Harley is. They have no idea about some management shake-up the week before. That symbol is no longer about Harley. The logo embodies an entire value set—their own. The symbol is no longer about Harley, it’s about them. Randy Fowler, a former U.S. Marine and now general manager of a Harley-Davidson dealership in California, proudly sports a large Harley tattoo on his left arm. “It symbolizes who I am,” he says. “Mostly, it says I’m an American.” Customer and company are now one and the same. The meaning of Harley-Davidson has value in people’s lives because, for those who believe in Harley’s WHY, it helps them express the meaning of their own lives.
    Because of Harley’s clarity, discipline and consistency, most will know what that symbol means, even if you don’t subscribe to it yourself. That’s the reason why when someone walks into a bar with a big Harley logo on his arm we take a step back and give him a wide berth. The symbol has become so meaningful, in fact, that 12 percent of Harley-Davidson revenues are strictly from merchandising. That’s remarkable.
    It’s not just logos, however, that can serve as symbols. Symbols are any tangible representation of a clear set of values and beliefs. An ink-stained finger for Iraqis was a symbol of a new beginning. A London double-decker bus or a cowboy hat—both are symbols of national cultures. But national symbols are easy because most nations have a clear sense of culture that has been reinforced and repeated for generations. It is not a company or organization that decides what, it symbols mean, it is the group outside the megaphone, in the chaotic marketplace, who decide. If, based on the things they see and hear, the outsiders can clearly and consistently report what an organization believes, then, and only then, can a symbol start to take on meaning. It is the truest test of how effective a megaphone has been produced—when clarity is able to filter all the way through the organization and come to life in everything that comes out of it.
    Go back to Apple’s “1984” commercial at the beginning of chapter 9. For those who have seen it, does it make you think about Apple and its products or do you simply like the sentiment? Or the line “Think Different,” does it speak to you?
    If you’re a Mac customer, you probably loved this commercial; it may even give you goose bumps when you watch it—a surefire test that the WHY is connecting with you on a visceral or limbic level. In fact, this commercial, after you learned it was from Apple, may have reinforced your decision to buy a Mac, whether for the first time or the tenth time. This commercial, like all Apple’s advertising, is one of the things Apple has said or done that reinforces what they believe. It is every bit consistent with the clear belief we know they embody. And if the commercial speaks to you and you’re not an Apple lover, odds are you still like the idea of thinking differently. The message of that ad is one of the things Apple does to tell their story. It is one of the WHATs to their WHY. It is a symbol. It is for these reasons that we say of a piece of advertising, “It really speaks to me.” It’s not really speaking to you, it’s speaking to the millions of people who saw the ad. When we say that something like that “speaks to me,” what we’re really saying is, through all this clutter and noise, I can hear that. I can hear it and I will listen. This is what it means for a message that comes out of the megaphone to resonate.
    Everything that comes out of the base of the megaphone serves as a way for an organization to articulate what it believes. What a company says and does are the means by which the company speaks. Too many companies put a disproportionate amount of weight on their products or services simply because those