How Great Leaders Inspire Action
One of the most impactful lectures I’ve heard was given by a man named Simon Sinek, who finds the blueprint of how great leaders inspire action.
Some of the greatest companies and people such as Apple, Martin Luthor King and the Wright brothers all achieved high levels of success while other companies or people struggled to do the same. What makes these organizations/people stand above the crowd? What makes them different and difficult to imitate?
Those question can be answered with a simple illustration
Now most people or organizations tend to focus on the outside looking in. A car commercial may sound like something like this
What - Our Cars have all the bells and whistles, are comfortable to drive and are affordable (What)
How - These cars are made in Germany with the top engineering and are met with the highest of standards
Go to the nearest dealership and buy one. (doesn’t really answer the why)
Most CEO’s may know what they do (why), they might know how they do it (how) but seldom are they aware of Why they do this. And when I say Why, I am not speaking of Profit, I’m speaking of PURPOSE (These two are fundamentally different)
Now let’s look at our first example, Apple. If Apple sounded like every other company it would probably go something like this.
What – We make great computers
How – They’re beautifully designed and simple to use and user friendly
Why - Wanna buy one (doesn’t really answer why)
This is how Apple really does it
Why – Everything we do we believe in challenging the status quo…we believe in thinking differently
How – The way we challenge the status quo is making everything well designed and easy to use and user friendly
What – We happened to make great computers…wanna buy one?
Big difference! People don’t buy WHAT you do, they buy WHY you do it. Let that sink in for a bit…
Going back to Apple…the organization’s essentially just a computer company that happens to make other products. We have no issue buying an MP3 player from Apple or an iPhone.
Now let’s take at another high end computer company, Dell. Dell made an MP3 player a few years back and it tanked. Think to yourselves, would you ever buy an MP3 player or TV from Dell? Why not? They’re a computer company just like Apple that have the same capabilities and resources to come up with a perfectly great product but yet most of us would never consider buying any of those products from Dell.Â
This can be explained by using biology…not psychology but biology. If you take a cross section of the brain, the outer region is known as the Neo Cortex, and is responsible for understanding facts and figures (The Why) but the Limbic system which is the inner part is the portion that doesn’t understand facts or languages but only feelings (The How and the Why). It also is responsible for our decision making, our feelings, etc.Â
 Many times you may go to the store and the sales person may give you all the right reasons why you should buy their product and even though everything makes sense, it just doesn’t feel right. Same goes for maybe a relationship, the person may sound great on paper and could potentially have many of the qualities you want but for some reason being with this particular person may just not feel right. This is our limbic brain speaking to us.
Again people don’t buy WHAT you do, they buy WHY you do it. The goal is not to do business or work with people that want what you have but instead the goal is to do business or work with people that believe in your why. Same goes for hiring, you don’t want to hire someone that is working for a paycheck because you’ll rarely see them go above and beyond but if you’re able to hire someone who shares the same fundamental beliefs then they’ll give you their blood, sweat and tears, which leads me to my next example.
In today's age, businesses continually fail and stakeholders typically offer the same three excuses - undercapitalized; the wrong people or poor market conditions.
In the early 1900s, multiple groups of people were in pursuit of developing the technology for the ultimate human
dream of flight. One such person, Samuel Pierpont Langley had what we would call 'The recipe for success.' He was given funding from the U.S. Military, worked at the Smithsonian and was well connected with the best minds in the world. Like a luminary, he had the entire country behind him.
In contrast, there were the Wright brothers. Anyone would have logically thought they could not make it - they had no money and used the proceeds from their modest bicycle shop to fund their operation.
On December 17, 1903 they developed the first man made flying machine.
Now take a moment and think to yourself, what was it that made the Wright brothers triumphant in their endeavour? If I may deliberate; the Wright brothers were driven by a cause, a dream. They believed if they could think through and fathom out this flying machine they would change the course of the world for the better. On the contrary, Langley was driven by the simple pursuit of infamy and wealth, and those that were under his employ were there for the pay check and just to prove this was his motive, the next day he quit. If he was really looking to help humanity he could've simply helped the Langley brother’s improve what they already accomplished.
Before I go into my next example I want to talk about the Law of diffusion, which is illustrated the following way.
If you want mass market success you can’t achieve it unless you receive that 15% tipping point.
The ones that “get it” early are the ones that make gut or intuitive decisions based on what they believe about the world.  Innovators and early adopters – stand in line for an iphone or buy flat screen TVs even when they were $40,000.
 In the summer of 1963, 250,000 people came out to watch Martin Luthor King speak. There were no invitations, no websites and they were not advertised in any newspaper.
Now before we proceed, let’s look at that period of time. Martin Luthor King wasn’t the only person to be fighting for civil rights…he wasn’t necessarily the best speaker…actually some of his ideas were bad…but one thing he did which was different than everyone else was that he didn’t talk about what he wanted to get done, he went around talking about what he believed.
He had a belief that there are two laws…one made by a higher power and one made by man and until the ones by man were consistent with the ones that were made by a higher power only then we live in a just world. It just happened that the civil rights movement was the perfect thing to help him achieve that goal.Â
The way he was able to achieve this goal was that he told certain people (innovators and early adopters) who set up structures to tell other people. Eventually what happened next was 250,000 came out on the right day at the right time to hear him speak.
Guess how many people showed up for him? ZERO
Guess how many people showed up for themselves? 250,000
To further prove this argument, 25% of the people in the crowd were Caucasian when he delivered the “I have a dream” speech not the “I have a plan” speech.
Those who lead inspire us…we follow those who lead because we don’t have to but because we want to.
And its those people that start with why to inspire others around them or find others that inspire them.
