How Great Leaders Inspire Everyone To Take Action Absolutely love love loveee this book! It was so enjoyable. I am already on that wavelength, and searching for/living my why, and how my actions can support my why but this book make it SO much more clear. It just gave me a better understanding and new ideas. I would recommend it to EVERY LIVING BEING! This is actually SO important for all of us to know; our whys. I hope these highlights help you get to know yourself a bit better!! If you're not sure how to figure out your why let me know and I am happy to provide you with a few exercises!! It's really fun I swear.
There are leaders and there are those who lead. (5)
They inspire us. (5)
Great leaders, are able to inspire people to act. (6)
recruit people that all fit based on the original intention. (15)
There are only two ways to influence human behaviour: you can manipulate it or you can inspire it. (17)
Fear, real or perceived, it arguably the most powerful manipulation of the lot. (21)
"They never have the time or money to do it right first time," she said of her client, "but they always have the time and money to do it again." (23)
Peer Pressure (24)
We fear that we may be wrong. (24)
Real innovation changes the course of industries or even societies. (26)
The Golden Circle (38)
Start everything we do by first asking why. (38)
"People don't buy WHAT you do, they buy WHY you do it." (41)
The power of WHY is not opinion, it's biology. (55)
Why is it that things are not a balance of science and art, but always art before science? (59)
To the Dell or HP user, their computer, no matter how fast or sleek, is not a symbol of a higher purpose, cause or belief. It's just a computer. (64)
A WHY is just a belief. That's all it is. HOWs are the actions you take to realize that belief. And WHATs are the results of those actions - everything you say and do: your products, services, marketing, PR, culture and whom you hire. (67)
Authenticity cannot be achieved without clarity of WHY. And authenticity matters. (69)
Starting with WHY is what inspires people to act. (70)
There are many ways to motivate people to do things, but loyalty comes from the ability to inspire people. (73)
When we are inspired, the decisions we make have more to do with who we are and less to do with the companies or the products we're buying. (74)
If your WHYs and their WHY correspond, then they will see your products and services as tangible ways to prove what they believe. (74)
Focus on the people who believe what you believe. (80)
Value, by definition, is the transference of trust. (84)
Leading is not the same as being the leader. Being the leader means you hold the highest rank, either by earning it, having good fortune or navigating internal politics. Leading, however, means that others willingly follow you. (85)
The goal is not to hire people who simply have a skill set you need, the goal is to hire people who believe what you believe. (90)
What all great leaders have in common is the ability to find good fits to join their organization. (93)
"You don't hire for skill, you hire for attitude. You can always teach skill." (93)
When motivated by WHY, success just happens. (96)
Innovation happens at the edges. (99)
Average companies give their people something to work on. In contrast, the most innovative organizations give their people something to work toward. (99)
Innovation was born out of struggle. (101)
They believed they could and they trusted their people to do it. (101)
We trust familiarity over experience. (103)
Great organizations become great because the people inside the organization feel protected. (105)
Great leaders, lead with WHY. They embody a sense of purpose that inspires those around them. (109)
The early majority, indeed the entire majority, need the recommendation of someone else who has already samples the product or service. (120)
The point at which an idea becomes a movement. (120)
You don't just want any influencer, you want someone who believes what you believe. (122)
The WHY is the belief that drives the decision, and WHAT it does provides us a way to rationalize the appeal of the product. (125)
Martin Luther King - his ability to put his WHY into words. He talked about what he believed. And his words had the power to inspire. (128)
"I Believe."
"I Believe."
"I Believe."
But how many people showed up for Dr. King? Zero. They showed up for themselves. It was what they believed. It was what they saw as an opportunity to help.
Showing up that day was one of the WHATs to their own WHY.
It wasn't the details of his plans that earned him the right to lead.It was what he believed and his ability to communicate it clearly that people followed. (129)
Start with why, but know how
Energy excites. Charisma Inspires.
Charisma has nothing to do with energy; it comes from a clarity of WHY. (134)
My cause - to inspire people to do the things that inspire them - is WHY I get out of bed every day. The excitement is trying to find new ways, different WHATs to bring my cause to life, of which this book is one. (136)
The leader imagines the destination and the HOW-types find the route to get there. A destination without a route leads to meandering and inefficiency, something a great many WHY- types will experience without the help of others to ground them." (139) *Why teamwork is so important!!!
Those who know WHY need those who know HOW (140)
HOW-types dont need WHY-types to do well. But WHY-guys, for all their vision and imagination, often get the short end of the stick. Without someone inspired by their vision and the knowledge to make it a reality, most WHY-types end up as starving visionaries, people with all the answers but never accomplishing much themselves. (141)
Difference between Vision Statement and a Mission Statement (142)
A vision is the public statement of the founder's intent, WHY the company exists. It is literally the vision of a future that does not exist yet.
A mission statement is a description of the route, the guiding principle - HOW the company intends to create that future.
Clarity of purpose, cause or belief is important, but it is equally important that people hear you. (146)
Golden Circle is a cone. It is, in practice, a megaphone. (146)
But for a megaphone to work, clarity must come first. Without a clear message, what will you amplify? (147)
He knows that success is a team sport. (150) *Talking about Ron Bruder
Bruder doesn't run companies, he leads movements. (151)
All movements are personal (151)
Apple knows their WHY and so do we. Agree with them or not, we know what they believe because they tell us. (155)
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. (158)
Communicate clearly and you shall be understood. (159)
It helps them express the meaning of their own lives. (163)
If WHAT you do doesn't prove what you believe, then no one will know what your WHY is and you'll be forced to compete on price, service, quality, features and benefits; the stuff of commodities. (165)
The Celery Test (165)
Filtering your decisions through your WHY, you spend less time
the more celery you use, the most trust you earn
in violation of celery
Working hard leads to winning (175)
Less than .004% of all companies make it to the illustrious list. (176)
"We're all working together, that's the secret." (177)
"Celebrate your successes," said Walton. "Find some humor in your failures. Don't take yourself so seriously. Loosen up and everybody around you will loosen up." (178)
It is not destiny or some mystical business cycle that transforms successful companies into impersonal goliaths. It's people. (179)
Achievement vs. Success (181)
Achievement - like a goal, something defined and clearly measurable, and tangible.
Success - is a feeling or a state of being. Using the verb to be to suggest this state of being.
For passion to survive it needs structure (184)
The biggest challenge is success (185)
The School Bus Test - simple metaphor (187)
If a founder or leader of an organization were to be hit by a school bus, would the organization continue to thrive at the same pace without them at the helm?
What gets measured, gets done (189)
A way to measure WHY (191)
Honoré believes that people should not spend all their time at work, but rather they should work to spend more of their time with their families. (192)
Consider how much you get done the day before you go on vacation. Now imagine every day is like that. (192)
Finding WHY is a process of discovery, not invention. (214)
An organization, don't forget, is one of the WHATs, one of the tangible things a founder or group of founders has done in their lives to prove their WHY. (215)
Gaining clarity of WHY, ironically, is not the hard part. It is the discipline to trust one's gut, to stay true to ones purpose, cause or beliefs. Remaining completely in balance and authentic is the most difficult part. The few that are able to build a megaphone, and not just a company, around their cause are the ones who earn the ability to inspire. In doing so, they harness a power to move people that few can even imagine. Learning the WHY of a company or an organization or understanding the WHY of any social movement always starts with one thing: you. (215)
What makes entrepreneurs who they are, driven by passion and completely irrational. (216)
I started having desperate thoughts, thoughts that for an entrepreneur are almost worse than suicide: I thought about getting a job. Anything. Anything that would stop the feeling of falling I had almost every day. (217)
To inspire people to do the things that inspire them (219)
Henry Ford said, "If you think you can or you think you can't, you're right."
If your follow your WHY, then others will follow you (222)
"When the going gets tough, the tough get going." (223)
When you compete against everyone else, no one wants to help you. But when you compete against yourself, everyone wants to help you. (223)
If you believe what we believe and you believe that the things we do can help you, then we're better. (224)
Being a leader requires one thing and one thing only: followers. (226)
All leaders must have two things: they must have a vision of the world that does not exist and they must have the ability to communicate it. (227)
Leaders never start with what needs to be done. Leaders start with WHY we need to do things. Leaders inspire action.
I hope these highlights inspire you to read the entire book "Start With Why". It is honestly one of the best books I have ever read.
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