Start With Why

provides the clear filter for decision-making. Any decisions—hiring, partnerships, strategies and tactics—should all pass the Celery Test.

The More Celery You Use, the More Trust You Earn
    Mark Rubin is a good parent. He spends a lot of time with his two daughters, Lucy and Sophie. One Saturday afternoon, his wife, Claudine, took Lucy to a friend’s for a playdate and Mark was left home to look after five-year-old Sophie. Feeling a little tired, Mark really wanted to just have a little time to relax on the couch and not have to play tree house again for the ninth time that day. To keep Sophie occupied, he opted for the TV as babysitter. Mark had two brand-new DVDs to choose from. He’d seen neither of them and heard nothing about either of them in the press or from any of his friends with small children. Mark didn’t feel like watching the cartoon himself—the plan was to let Sophie enjoy the movie in one room while he watched something in the other room. One of the DVDs was from some company he’d never heard of and the other was from Disney. Which one did he put in the DVD player? Which one would you put in the DVD player?
    The answer is so clear it verges on a silly question, but let’s consider the facts for fun. Both DVDs were cartoons. Both were age-appropriate for a child. Both had a couple of good reviews on the packaging. The only difference is that we trust the DVD from Disney. Disney is not a perfect company. They occasionally have management and leadership issues. Their stock price sometimes goes down. They have lawsuits filed against them all the time. Some would lump them in with all the other nasty corporations that work to appease Wall Street. So why would we trust them?
    Disney operates with a clear sense of WHY—they exist to promote good, clean family fun and everything they say and do has, for decades, worked to prove it. The reason we trust Disney is simple; we know what they believe. They pass the Celery Test. They have been so consistent over time in everything they say and do that parents trust them enough to expose their children to Disney content without vetting it first. This has nothing to do with quality products. This is not rational.
    Southwest Airlines also passes the Celery Test. The company has been so consistent over time that we almost know what to expect from them. The airline offers only open seating on its flights, for example. It’s one of the things they do to prove that they believe in freedom. It just makes sense. A company that serves the common man and values equality for all so much could never have a class structure. If Delta or United or Continental tried to do the same, it wouldn’t make sense, open seating doesn’t fit their way.

In Violation of Celery
    Birkenstock sandals, tie-dyed T-shirts, daisy chains and a VW van. All are symbols of the hippie ideals of peace, love and all things vegetarian. So it was a bit of a surprise in 2004 when Volkswagen introduced a $70,000 luxury model to their lineup. The company famous for putting a vase for fresh flowers on the dashboard of their new Beetle introduced the Phaeton in an attempt to compete with high-end luxury cars, including the Mercedes-Benz S-Class and the BMW 7 Series. The V-8, 335-horsepower car boasted some of the most advanced features in the industry, like an air compressor suspension system and a draftless four-zone climate control. It even included an electronically controlled shiatsu massage system in the seats. The car was an astounding achievement. It was very comfortable and was a monster on the road, outperforming other more established luxury cars in its class. The critics loved it. But there was a small problem. Despite all the facts and figures, features and benefits, and regardless of the world-renowned German engineering, few people bought one. It just didn’t make sense. What VW had done was inconsistent with what we knew them to believe.
    Volkswagen, which translated means “people’s car,” had spent generations making cars for you and me. Everyone knew what VW stood for—power to the people. It brought its cause to life in products that were all about quality that the average person could afford. In a single swoop of German ingenuity, VW had been put completely out of balance. This is not like Dell coming out with an mp3 player or United starting the low-cost airline Ted. In those cases, we had no idea what the companies’ WHYs were. Absent any knowledge or feeling for their