Should Strategy Start with 'Why'?

Simon Sinek’s book ‘Start with Why’ and his ‘Golden Circle’ are wildly popular—as evidenced by the millions that bought Sinek's book and that have watched his TED talks over the past years. But does it offer sensible guidance for where strategy should go?

The core idea of Sinek’s story is simple: great companies start with why, unlike everybody else who starts with how and what. With ‘what’ he refers to describing the products and services, with ‘how’ to describing what is unique about these products and services, and with ‘why’ to giving the underlying reason of offering these products and services or starting the business in the first place. Along those lines he has drawn a picture with three circles with ‘why’ in the middle, ‘how’ around it and ‘what’ around that (see above).

If we just look at the content of what Sinek is saying, it is pretty mind-blowing that his story appeals to so many people for so many years. What he says is so basic that it should, in fact, be hardly worth taking notice of. He doesn’t really tell anything else than that we should start with why. How to do it, is left to us. Furthermore, what he is saying is not new or unique. It echoes the decades-long emphasis on mission and vision statements and the importance of purpose that we find throughout the strategy literature. As argued there, strategy should start with spelling out a clear mission, vision and key values as the foundational basis for everything else. You just have to open a random strategy textbook to find this message, and usually in a more advanced form than Sinek’s Golden Circle.

Like most business guru-type messages, the brilliance is in the packaging. Sinek’s message is appealing exactly because of its simplicity. Furthermore, he brings it in an entertaining style and it is marketed brilliantly using smart rhetorical tricks. By referring to how the brain is built up, for example, he presents himself as an expert. By positioning himself as the humble observer who stumbled upon this undeniable truth, he suggests his ideas are based on solid scientific inquiry. And by referring to examples such as Steve Jobs, Martin Luther King and the Wright brothers, he appeals to our secret desire to be great like them.

But if you analyze his message, none of it really holds. As any neuroscientist can tell you, his story about how the brain is wired to think in terms of why, how and what is pretty much nonsense. Furthermore, the ‘evidence’ he presents is very selective and anecdotal. In fact, if we adopt proper scientific standards, there is no empirical evidence whatsoever that companies who start with why are more successful than companies that don’t. Finally, the examples he is using—especially Martin Luther King and the Wright brothers—are largely irrelevant and out of context: they are not about having a business that aims to survive and prosper in a competitive environment but about a Baptist minister leading the Civil Rights Movement and the creators of the first airplane. Very inspiring, but mostly irrelevant to business strategy.

Given these problems with Sinek’s work, I keep on finding it amazing that it is so popular. His message clearly falls on fertile ground. We apparently like to hear that we should look for and talk about the big WHY in our lives rather than worry about the mundane how’s and what’s. The same is true for the strong emphasis on missions, visions and values referred to above. Even though there is no empirical evidence that that leads to more successful organizations, we seem to be almost addicted to formulating them. Sinek smartly alludes to this desire and repackaged it in an attractive simple form. But is 'starting with why' always a good idea?

Like the previous trends that I reviewed (making strategy more agile, moving from strategy to execution, and shifting strategy to blue oceans), the 'start with why' trend comes with a number of benefits. First, Sinek’s Golden Circle reminds us to move the attention away from the technicalities and the details to the bigger picture. For those who are focusing on selling laundry lists of features and specs, this may help to actually think about why a customer would buy a product or service from you. Second, Sinek’s message also reminds us to make things not more complicated than necessary. So, compared to defining an extensive mission or vision statement, focusing just on the why might help keep things simple. Third, Sinek also helps us reflect on what we are doing and why we are doing it in the first place. As such, the Golden Circle might serve as a tool for reflection.

But there are risks as well. The most important ones are:

1. There is no empirical evidence for what is being said. As referred to above, Sinek’s work is based on shaky grounds. Even though it sounds appealing and intuitive, there is no evidence that it works. So, while it is of course up to you whether you adopt his ideas or not, based on the research so far, you might want to temper high hopes. Also, you might want to think of the opportunity costs: could you have used the time and money spent on finding your 'why' more effectively for other means?
2. It stimulates oversimplistic thinking. Even though Sinek’s simple Golden Circle is appealing, it vastly oversimplifies the complexity of doing business. Strategy, and business more generally, are about many other things that cannot be reduced to a simple why, how and what. We might wish this were true, but it isn’t. By the way, Sinek’s Golden Circle isn’t at all unique in this sense. With its preference for 2×2 matrices, the field of strategy has a whole reflects an appetite for oversimplifying. Strategy practice, though, is pretty complex.
3. It may lead to a perpetual search for the big WHY. Finding a real answer to the ‘why’ question can be tremendously difficult and leading to endless searches for the ‘root cause’ behind what the business is doing. But a large part of doing business is just that: doing business. It is for this same reason that we need to be skeptical about the widely spread belief in formulating mission and vision statements.
4. It can lead to selling hot air. If invented after the fact, focusing on the ‘why’ largely is a matter of selling fiction. If a company is really driven by a strong ‘why’, it probably knows this and already is built around it. If on the other hand, the ‘why’ has to be ‘discovered’ one can question whether it really is important. Furthermore, many customers—especially in a business-to-business environment—also just want products and services that do what they are supposed to do. This means that the ‘what’ and ‘how’ may oftentimes be much more important than the why.
5. Finally, starting with why can lead to quite egocentric organizations. It takes our own ‘why’ as the starting point, but why would that really matter? Illustrative is Sinek’s example of Steve Jobs who wanted to ‘put a ding in the universe’. For Simon this is a great example of starting with why. But how does the world benefit from a ding in the universe? This ‘why’ reflects a sole person’s desire not to be forgotten, but that is not necessarily a good basis for business. Thinking about how to help customers might be a better basis.

The verdict: Sinek’s Golden Circle appeals strongly to many and alludes to some deep desire to think about why we do the things we do. It has some strengths, the most important of which is probably that it has made people think and reflect more about their business. And when done for real, starting with why can be a really good idea. However, as we have seen above, Sinek’s message is too simplistic and ungrounded to really help us move forward. Furthermore, as a repackaging of the traditional focus on mission and vision statements, it basically reinforces the traditional way of thinking rather than moving it ahead.