Simon Sinek

“We follow those who lead not for them, but for ourselves.”

“that the result went the way you wanted does not mean you can repeat it over and over”

“More data, however, doesn't always help, especially if a flawed assumption set the whole process in motion in the first place.”

“We make sure it fits when we design it, he said.”

“What the American automakers did with their rubber mallets is a metaphor for how so many people and organizations lead.”

“There are only two ways to influence human behavior. You can manipulate it or you can inspire it.”

“Typical manipulations include things like dropping the price, running a promotion, using fear, peer pressure, or aspirational messages, and promising innovation to influence behavior, be it a purchase, or a vote, or support.”

“The auto industry had effectively created cashback junkies out of customers, building an expectation that there's no such thing as full price.”

“For transactions that occur an average of once, carrots and sticks are the best way to elicit the desired behavior.”

“Manipulations are a perfectly valid strategy for driving a transaction.”

“With perfect irony, we, the manipulators, have been manipulated by our own system.”

“When most organizations or people think, act, or communicate, they do so from the outside in of the golden circle, from what to why.”

“Every single one of them, regardless of their size, regardless of their industry, thinks, acts, and communicates from the inside out.”

“When an organization defines itself by what it does, that's all they will ever be able to do.”

“The concept of better begs the question, based on what standard?”

“It's not a debate about better or worse anymore, it's a discussion about different needs.”

“What if they had defined themselves as being in the mass transportation business, perhaps their behavior would have been different.”

“No matter where we go, we trust those with whom we are able to perceive common values or beliefs.”

“Fan clubs started by customers are often formed without any help from the company itself.”

“Asking people why they chose you over another may provide wonderful evidence of how they've rationalized the decision, but it does not shed much light on the true motivation for the decision.”

“Decision-making and the ability to explain those decisions exist in different parts of the brain.”

“The first thing people did when they pulled their laundry out of the dryer was to smell it.”

“Products with a clear sense of why give people a way to tell the outside world who they are and what they believe.”

“For the golden circle to work, Each of the pieces must be in balance and in the right order.”

“For values or guiding principles to be truly effective, they have to be verbs.”

“In both cases, they copied how Southwest did it.”

“The problem was, no one knew why Song or TED existed.”

“It's a good strategy, except it's not scalable. the gut decision can only be made by a single person.”

“It can turn a controversial decision from a debate into a discussion.”

“We trust people and companies even when things go wrong sometimes, and we don't trust others even though everything might go exactly as it should have.”

“A completed checklist does not guarantee trust.”

“Trust begins to emerge when we have a sense that another person or organization is driven by things other than their own self-gain.”

“You have to earn trust by communicating and demonstrating that you share the same values and beliefs.”

“We measured the things that employees could truly control, Bethune said. We made the stakes something the employees would win or lose on together, not separately.”

“The goal is to hire those who are passionate for your why, your purpose, your cause and belief, and who have the attitude that fits your culture. Once that's established, only then should their skill set and experience be evaluated.”

“Langley, Tobin said, did not have the Wrights' passion for flight, but rather was looking for achievement.”

“One was motivated by the prospect of fame and wealth. The other by a belief.”

“Some time after Orville and Wilbur Wright took flight, Langley quit. Got out of the business. He could have said, that's amazing, now I'm going to improve on their technology. But he didn't.”

“It is the people inside the company, those on the front lines, who are best qualified to find new ways of doing things.”

“Companies that study their competitors in hopes of adding the features or benefits that will make their products better are only working to entrench the company in what it does.”

“Companies with a clear sense of why tend to ignore their competition, whereas those with a fuzzy sense of why are obsessed with what others are doing.”

“People who come to work with a clear sense of why are less prone to giving up after a few failures, because they understand a higher cause.”

“What is more interesting is the culture at the bank that could allow for these conditions to exist in the first place.”

“There was a stigma against people speaking out.”

“Only when individuals can trust the culture or organization will they take personal risks in order to advance that culture or organization as a whole.”

“Remove the net, and he will only do the safe tricks, the ones he knows he can land.”

“It's not enough to just write them on the wall. That's passive. Bonuses and incentives must revolve around them.”

“The value of too many celebrity endorsements is the celebrity appeal alone.”

“As the law states, the first two and a half percent of the population are the innovators, and the next 13 and a half percent of the population are our early adopters.”

“That 15 to 18 percent is not made up of people who are simply willing to buy the product.”

“The entire act of incentivizing an influencer is manipulative. It renders the influencer completely inauthentic to his or her group.”

“TiVo sold about 48,000 units the first year.”

“TiVo did not start with why. They ignored the left side of the curve and completely failed to find the tipping point.”

“Many try to make the argument that TiVo's failure was due to the cable company's superior distribution.”

“He gave the I have a dream speech, not the I have a plan speech. It was a statement of purpose and not a comprehensive 12-point plan to achieving civil rights in America. Dr. King offered America a place to go, not a plan to follow.”

“He gave the I have a dream speech, not the I have a plan speech.”

“Dr. King offered America a place to go, not a plan to follow. The plan had its place, but not on the steps of the Lincoln Memorial.”

“Energy is easy to see, easy to measure, and easy to copy.”

“Over time, such tactics cost money and increase stress both for employee and employer alike, and eventually will become the main reason people show up for work every day.”

“That's not loyalty. That's the employee version of repeat business.”

“Regardless of what we do in our lives, our why, our driving purpose, cause, or belief never changes.”

“To reach billion-dollar status, to alter the course of an industry, requires a very special and rare partnership between one who knows why and those who know how.”

“Yet although the stunt worked well to reinforce Oprah's generous nature, something with which we were all familiar, Few people remember that Pontiac was part of the event.”

“But for a megaphone to work, clarity must come first.”

“when we don't know an organization's why we don't know what to expect so we expect the minimum price quality service features the commodity stuff but when we do have a sense for the why we expect more”

“What you do can change with the times, but why you do it never does.”

“the CEO's job, the leader's responsibility, is not to focus on the outside market, it's to focus on the layer directly beneath.”

“It no longer simply identifies a company and its products, it identifies a belief.”

“That symbol is no longer about Harley.”

“The meaning of Harley-Davidson has value in people's lives because, for those who believe in Harley's why, it helps them express the meaning of their own lives.”

“It is not a company or organization that decides what its symbols mean. It is the group outside the megaphone, in the chaotic marketplace, who decide.”

“If, based on the things they see and hear, the outsiders can clearly and consistently report what an organization believes, Then, and only then, can a symbol start to take on meaning.”

“It's not that the other advice isn't good. It's just not good for you.”

“As soon as I gave you the filter, as soon as I said the why, you knew exactly what decisions to make before I said so.”

“They have been so consistent over time in everything they say and do, that parents trust them enough to expose their children to Disney content without vetting it first.”

“This has nothing to do with quality products. This is not rational.”

“What VW had done was inconsistent with what we know them to believe.”

“When they decided to add luxury models to their lineups, they created new brands to do it.”

“The moment at which the clarity of why starts to go fuzzy is the split.”

“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?”

“the founder's why must be extracted and integrated into the culture of the company.”

“she found a way to measure why bonuses were not given for the amount of money that was collected they were given based on how many thank you cards her agent sent out”

“Unfortunately, we have very poor measurements to ensure that a why stays clear.”

“Failing to put the movement into hard words leaves them as the only ones who can actually lead the movement”

“The difference is that people believe it when Costco does it.”

“When people know why you do what you do, they are willing to give you credit for everything that could serve as proof of your why.”

“The why does not come from looking ahead at what you want to achieve and figuring out an appropriate strategy to get there.”

“Finding why is a process of discovery, not invention.”

“An organization, don't forget, is one of the what's, one of the tangible things a founder or group of founders has done in their lives to prove their why.”

“Instead of focusing on the stuff that didn't work, I chose to focus on the stuff that did, to find out what it all had in common.”

“When you compete against everyone else, no one wants to help you. But when you compete against yourself, everyone wants to help you.”

“What if we showed up to work every day simply to be better than ourselves.”

“What if the goal was to do better work this week than we did the week before”