If you follow your Why, others will follow you

Before I go deep to explain this book written by Simon Sinek, I would like to pen down one story that I was inspired by this book. This story is about Ben Comen. 

Ben’s been in the Hanna High School Cross-Country Track team and have never won a single race in his entire time, because he is the slowest team member in the team. Ben has Cerebral Palsy.(Cerebral Palsy, a condition often caused by complications at birth, affects someone’s movement and balance. The Physical Problems endure for a lifetime) 

The gun fires and the race is on.. The runners take off and the stronger ones will pull ahead and the weaker ones will start to fall behind. The pack pulls farther and farther ahead while Ben falls farther and farther behind. He slips on the wet grass and falls forward into the soft earth. He slowly picks him up and keeps going. He again falls and this time it hurts but he gets back up and keeps running. All the runners are out of sight and there is only Ben running alone on the track. He is exhausted, fell again on the ground yet another time. No matter his mental strength, there is no hiding of the pain and frustration on his face. He keeps moving and gives all his energy to get to the finishing line. Everyone uses to finish the race in about twenty five minutes, but Ben usually takes forty five minutes. 

When Ben eventually crosses the finish line he is in pain and he is exhausted. It took every ounce of his strength and energy to make it, but he did it. Ben inspired us all, indeed. As you can see, Ben hasn't won the medal nor he came first but his story is more deeper in lesson. This story is not about fall and gets back up, most athletes in Olympic suffers huge injury and still they finish their race and this is no doubt the best lesson to learn, but what Ben teaches us is something more deeper. 

When everyone completed the race and Ben was the only one running on the track after twenty five minutes, something amazing happened. Everyone comes back to run with Ben. Ben is the only runner who, when he falls someone else will help pick him up. Ben is the only runner who, when he finishes, has a hundred people running behind him. 

Ben teaches us a special lesson. When you compete with others, no one follows you but when you compete with yourself, everyone wants to help you. Ben starts every race with very clear sense of WHY he’s running. He’s not there to beat anyone but himself. Ben never loses sight of himself and that attitude gives him the strength to keep going and pushing him harder to achieve more. 

Now think, how we do business today.. We are all competing with each other and trying to push other competitors out of the park and do all the dirty tactics to gain market share. But what if we compete with our own progress year after year and follow our WHY, don’t you think we will achieve more and inspire others to follow the same path….. 

The Golden Circle

This term is inspired from the universe’s renowned ratio “The Golden Ratio”. If you are not aware of this ratio, then let me inform you that this ratio is called the perfect ratio because whatever beautiful things that we see in the universe has a value of 1.61803398875, which is called “Phi” 

As any beautiful thing follows “The Golden Ratio”, same way any organisation who wants to be different and highly successful than their competitors needs to follow “The Golden Circle” 

For any organisation, three questions should be very clear to their Executives and their team members. 

•  Why they are in the business? (Clarity)
• How will they achieve their “Why” ? ( Discipline )
• What they do that is inline with how and why they do? (Consistency) 

"What” and “How” is what majorly all the organisations have the answers for it, but when it comes to “Why they do it What they do”, 99% of the companies fail to answer. 

The Golden Circle is an Inward approach, where an organisation needs to be very clear about Why they are in the business and then pass on the vision to your Managers and Leaders to “How to achieve their Vision”. And at the end, it’s your Managers and Leaders who will pass on the Vision to all the team members on What we should do and how to do it to achieve our vision of Why we are doing it. When any organisation is clear about their WHY, they inspire all of us to follow that path even though the chances of being successful is low, but all of them will move towards the bigger purpose “WHY”... 

Most companies Aspire us to follow their dream but few Inspire us to be a part of their dream. Aspiration is Short term, but Inspirations is long term…. Be Inspired or Be an Inspiration to others…..

People don’t buy “WHAT” you do, they Buy “WHY” you do it. 

Organisations who fails to communicate the sense of “WHY” among the masses, actually uses Manipulation tactics like Price, Service, Quality etc to sell their Service or Products. When Manipulation tactics are used to penetrate into the mass market, Customers needs more time to take the decision because they are being very rational about whom they want to choose, as everyone are competing with Price, Service, Quality etc.. Such Practice might give Organisations Repeat Business, but they cannot gain Customers Loyalty. For example Apple and Dell, Both of them are successful but what makes them different is their “WHY”. Apple has a very clear Sense of Why it is in the business and what they do, but in the case of Dell they know What they are doing but doesn’t have a clear sense of WHY. For this reason, when a new Apple product is launched many will stand in line for hours to get it not because Apple will have better features than others, but it's just the Loyalty among the customers for the Apple brand. Dell will have several customers who will use their Laptops year after year, but when they encountered some problems with the company, they will switch to another company, even though they have been with the same company for years. Those customers give repeat business, but never became the loyal customers of Dell. 

Loyalty is hard to gain, but when you gain it’s hard to lose even though you are having bad phase…… 

How Brain takes Decision

The Golden Circle (Why, How and What) corresponds precisely with the three major levels of Brain. The newest area of the brain, our Homo Sapiens brain is the Neocortex, which corresponds with the WHAT level. The Neocortex is responsible for the rational and analytical thought and language. 

The Middle two sections comprise the limbic brain. The limbic brain is responsible for all our feelings, such as trust and loyalty. It is also responsible for the decision making, but it has no capacity for language. 

When we are rational about our decision and only think through our neocortex level than it becomes more complicated because it will only analyse vast amounts of information, facts and features. We are not aware of the WHY and thus the decision process becomes complicated and longer than expected. But when we communicated inside out, then we are talking directly with the part of the brain that controls the decision - making, and our language part of the brain allows us to rationalize those decisions. 

The part of our brain that controls our feelings has no capacity for language, and thus it’s hard to explain in words. It’s as simple as your love towards your spouse. The feeling that you cannot express in words or measure in metrics. It’s just their…. When you are looking at the stock market and takes the decision to purchase the share without thinking much on it and feels right about it, and if someone asks you why you purchased it, but you cannot express it so you rationalize the situation by saying because it has good P/E ratio, etc etc…. 

This is where “Gut Decisions” comes from. Our limbic brain is so powerful that even we have facts and data in front of us, still we go with our Gut Decision for making any big decision. It just feels right, no words to explain…. 

This is the reason why we follow some great leaders or great brands. We cannot express it in words why we love Apple products or why we follow Great leaders, thus we rationalize it. 

Clarity, Discipline and Consistency

Clarity of “Why you are doing it” (It’s a purpose, value and belief that you have envisioned - C-level Executives) 

Discipline on “How will you do it” (It’s the Process - Managers and Leaders )

Consistency on “What you do” (It’s the product or service that you do in Process to achieve the Purpose of it - Workforce) 

If all three, “WHY, HOW and WHAT” which refer to as a “Golden Circle” acts in balance, then it is said that people will trust the brand and doesn’t have to look for Price, feature, service and quality manipulation tactics. They will become the loyal customer to the brand as company and customers will share the same values and beliefs that makes them pay premium for the services or products that brand offers.

How to gain Trust of your employees or customers?

Gordon Bethune is one example of an excellent leadership quality that have lead his company “From Worst to First”. When Gordon Bethune appointed as a chief Executive of the Continental Airlines, the company was making huge losses and was among the 10 worst airlines in the history of America. But it was Gordon’s leadership quality that leads the company from one of the worst airlines to one of the best airlines in the history of America, and it all happens because Gordon trusted their employees and treated them well. All the employees also trusted Gordon’s vision of WHY and worked towards the goal.  Read the book “From Worst to First to know how he did it” 

Trust is a feeling and not a rational experience. It needs to be built by nurturing the relationship with employees and customers. Trust begins to emerge when we have a sense that another person or organisation is driven by things other than their own self gain.  

Bethune Successfully achieved “The Golden Circle” of “WHY, HOW and WHAT” to build trust among the organisation. Bethune was not a leader but was leading a company. Leader will have more power in the organisation, but the one who leads being willingly followed by everyone.  

Today, we all are warring against each other on what we have or what we do, but only few are actually working towards a bigger goal, a purpose to live, a reason to lead. They know their WHY. Most organisations have dictator, but few have communicator who communicate not to speak but to listen to others, be it a manager or team members. They emerge trust among the organisations, because they know that words are hollow, but the deed you do and the value you believe are deep and will stay forever.   

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Warm regards, 

Sanjay Purohit