Start With Why: Inspire Action

It’s a really good book with a lot of advices for people who’s looking more guidance about some activities management to be successful with

THIS IS THE GREATEST BOOK EVER PUBLISHED IN THE LAST 10 YEARS!!!

If I could give this book 10 stars, I would! This book beats many other books. This book is so exciting to read that I read it three times! The beginning of the book said it extremely well — This book is about an unique kind of leadership that has the natural recurring pattern of inspiring, influencing and affecting people. It is about a very small group of leaders that achieve disproportionate amount of influences in their industries/areas compare to other leaders. The most prominent example is, of course, Steve Jobs who displayed a recurring pattern of changing one industry after another.

(Of all the books that study Steve Jobs, this is probably the best one although it is not a book on Jobs’ biography. However, this book offers the best angle to understand his motivation and influence.)

The core of this book is about the kind of WHYs that a special kind of leaders has that enable them to have the natural recurring pattern of inspiring, influencing and changing people and industries. The prime examples of this kind of leaders quoted in this book are Steve Jobs, Martin Luther King, Jr., and the Wright Brothers.

This book is revolutionary. All the top business schools should reevaluate their curriculum based on this book! All the top business consultants should reconsider their theories and recommendations based on this book! All the writers on leadership should read this book and revise their theories! All political leaders in the world should read this book! All board of directors of corporations should read this book and learn how to select the next CEOs! …

This book can be considered the MASTER book to be read before reading books like “From Good to Great”, “Stall Points”, “The Innovator’s Dilemma” and the follow-on books, “Crossing the Chasm” …

The central theme of this book is WHY — the essence, the core, the purpose of a person’s life, of leadership, and the starting point of a corporation. Without the clarity of this WHY, the life of a person, the leadership, and the products and services offered by a corporation are all fuzzy and treated as commodities. This is so very true. Look around us: Though we (persons, organizations and corporations) are special in some ways, yet we are almost all commodities — except the very few that display the recurring pattern of major changes and influences such as Jobs, Apple and Google. These are the ones that have the clarity of WHY and the discipline of diligently and strictly enforcing their HOWs (principles, methods, criteria) in producing the WHATs (behaviors, products and services).

There are three views of WHY + HOW + WHAT presented in this book:
1. Looking from the top — the WHY in the center, the HOW in the middle and the WHAT in the outer layer form a GOLDEN CIRCLE.
2. Looking from the side — the WHY at the top layer, the HOW in the middle layer and the WHAT in the bottom layer form a cone.
3. Viewing in three dimensions — with the external world attached to the base of WHAT, the whole thing is a megaphone for the leader or corporation to sound out its WHY.

These views are wonderful ways for us to look at leadership, to understand the life cycle of a corporation, and summarily see why companies thrived and why they died. These views can even be applied to our personal lives.

Of course, this book has some blemishes. But these defects do not distract from its greatness.
1. The grammar is terrible. The whole book should be reviewed by a competent editor.
2. The WHYs are not strictly examined and evaluated. This book treats all WHYs from leaders, entrepreneurs and corporations as equal when in fact they are not. Probably most of the WHYs are the rewording of WHATs in disguise. Maybe a lot of WHYs are re-branded HOWs. Perhaps only a small number of WHYs can have the recurring pattern of inspiration and influence. I hope the future editions of this book can elucidate this point.
3. The HOWs gets much less treatment than the WHYs and WHATs in the book. It would be great if this topic is covered in more detail.
4. Maybe 60% of this book is about corporations and not on leadership as claimed in the beginning of the book. I hope the author can focus more on the recurring pattern of inspiration and influence of leadership.
5. Not everything stated in this book is correct. The points discussed in this book about Jobs and Apple are good examples. Please read “Inside Apple” and Jobs biographies for more correct views on Jobs and Apple.

At the first reading, the book seems repetitious. The WHY, HOW and WHAT get repeated over and over. However, on the 2nd and 3rd reading, this apparent repetition disappears and you can see the different points that the author was trying to emphasize.

I would like to recommend some future topics or books for Simon Sinek:
a) Qualify and rank levels of WHYs — not all WHYs are equal. Probably some are top-notch while most are mediocre. Also, tell us how to construct best kinds of WHYs.
b) Compare the WHYs to big tech companies, the WHYs of big Wall Street firms (if they have any???) and the WHYs of big retail companies.
c) Compare the WHYs of big empires in history
d) Compare the WHYs of nations in WWI and WWII
e) Compare the WHYs of great leaders in history
f) Compare the WHYs of great geniuses
g) Consider how WHYs can be incorporated into Teachers’ College (Ed College). It is the teachers who educate our future generations. They need to be thoroughly immersed in the understanding of The Golden Circle, The Cone and The Megaphone.
h) Consider how WHYs can be incorporated into the K-12 and the college education
g) Consider how WHYs can be incorporated into and how HOWs can be enforced in our political systems. We have far too many politicians and not enough true leaders
i) Consider how WHYs can be incorporated into our law schools. Our lawyers really need a strong dose of treatment.

In summary, this book is dynamic. It’s a dynamite! It’s the best book I have read in the last 10 years!

Das Buch unterscheidet sich von den restlichen Selbsthilfebücher, indem die fundamentale Einstellung im Mittelpunkt steht, und nicht die Ergebnisse. Super!

I loved this book, very inspiring! It delves deep into various facets of ‘great leadership’ and offers a wealth of actionable insights. All centered around one core theme, “start with WHY”. In fact, I loved it so much that I ordered three copies of this book to gift to my close friends.

Addressing some of the comments from the other reviewers, I mainly see two concerns:
1. All the concepts are presented in the TED talk already, so we can skip reading this book.
2. There is a lot of repetition in the book – repetition of the same examples/concepts over and over again.

I have seen Mr. Sinek’s famous TED talk before as well as after reading this book and here is how I compare them. The TED talk is an excellent trailer for the material offered in this book. Mr. Sinek (in this book) presents the “WHY concept” as a framework and then shows how this framework can be applied to different phases/aspects of leadership. “Decision making”, “Trust”, “Authenticity”, are a few leadership aspects that he expands on. Since the same framework is applied to many different aspects and scenarios, we do find that some text and examples are repeated. However, if we patiently continue, we’d find that there is a new, different point being made in every chapter. Overall, regarding the above two concerns – I disagree with the first, while I do have to partially agree with the second.

The book teaches a lot about leadership. Here is what you’d learn in each chapter. In other words, here is my ‘why list’ for this book:
1. Why ‘decision making’ can’t always be data-driven?
2. Why leaders who choose to inspire (as opposed to those who manipulate) command ‘loyalty’?
3. WHY is the center of the ‘golden circle’. Introduction to the golden circle.
4. Why does the human brain/thinking align with the golden circle? The biology of it.
5. Why and how good leaders achieve ‘authenticity’?
6. Why and how good leaders manage to earn the trust of their followers/team?
1. Why good leaders hire for culture-fit rather than for mere skill?
7. Why do greater leaders have this charisma, due to their ability to communicate ‘their why’ clearly?
1. Why focusing on early adopters is important? Law of diffusion of innovations.
8. Why and how good leaders build partnerships with (how-to) people who can execute the vision to reality?
9. Why good leaders should do ‘what they do’ (your actions/results) to reflect their ‘WHY’ (vision)?
10. Why leaders use their ‘WHY’ (vision) to filter their decision making?
11. Why and how good leaders are successful (and feel successful) every day?
12. Why good leaders/companies impart their ‘sense of why’ into their culture?
13. WHY of an individual depends upon his past and upbringing. Mr. Sinek’s WHY.
14. WHY can keep you going on a long journey in-spite of failures.