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Ron: Simon, thank you for taking time to come onto the show. I know you're very busy, I
really appreciate you taking time to visit with us.
Simon Sinek: Oh, my pleasure. Ron: Yesterday, I was finalizing my notes
for today's call and I jumped over to TED.com and I looked up your famous "How Great Leaders
Inspire Action" video. I think I've watched it a few thousand times.
But I saw that it's up to 23 million views. That blew my mind a little bit. I'm just curious,
could you have ever imagined when you did that 18-minute talk, that it would go on to
be one of the most watched Ted Talks of all time?
Simon: No, of course not. Nobody can plan for that. People ask me all the time, they're
like, "How are you going to do another Ted Talk as popular as your first?" And the answer
is I'm not. [laughs] I didn't plan for that to happen, so I certainly
can't plan to beat it. Ron: I'm curious, how did you prepare for
that talk? Had you done that particular talk before?
Simon: I had been giving that talk in an hour, an hour and a half version for about three
years prior. What I didn't think was possible was to communicate the message in 18 minutes.
Ron: [laughs] Yes. Simon: When they asked me to do it, I thought,
"That's not possible." Of course, that's not an option. Yeah, I guess it works.
Ron: It definitely works, yeah. It's one of my favorite videos of all time. Actually,
we saw you at the AME Conference last year in Florida. That was brilliant, as well.
I don't know if you remember that, but that was great. The first question I have for you
is I'm curious, as it relates to your work, what problems are you trying to solve?
Simon: The discovery of the “Why,” for me, solved a very personal problem. I'd lost
my passion for what I was doing, and the process of discovering my “Why” restored my passion
to levels I'd never experienced before. It was only in learning more about it and
the biology of human decision making did I realize that this is not some management idea,
but this is literally the biology of how our brains work, how we make decisions, how we
live our lives, how we run organizations. My work all contributes to this idea that
we're all entitled to be passionate about the work that we do. Fulfillment, inspiration
is not a luxury but a privilege. It's not for the few people who get to say, "I love
my job," and the rest of us go, "Oh, you're so lucky."
Everybody gets to say that, and we get to demand from our leaders that they provide
environments that we want to come and work in and feel inspired to work in every day.
Ron: I can't help but think of Barry-Wehmiller as one of the best at doing exactly what you
just said. Perhaps we can explore that later in the show.
First, I want to talk a little bit about the golden circle, Simon. You first shared the
golden circle in that Ted Talk that I mentioned earlier.
You taught us that while knowing what we do and how we do it is important, the most critical
thing we can understand is why we do what we do. I'm interested to know, how did you
arrive at the idea of the golden circle? Was it through research or some sort of self-discovery?
Simon: It was an evolutionary idea. It's not like I sat in a room and just popped it out.
It originally began as an idea where I wanted to understand why some marketing works and
some marketing doesn't. I came from a marketing world, and I was always
astounded by how I could take the same team and put them on one client or a different
client, and we'd have completely different results, even though, I had the same brilliant
people working on it. I realized there was a pattern to how good
marketing works, and I wrote it down, and it was that order.
It wasn't until I started to learn about the biology, which came a little later, did bells
and lights start flashing. I realized this wasn't about how marketing works, this is
about how we live our lives, and that's when things started to make sense.
Ron: In "Leaders Eat Last," you explored a topic of brain science and why things like
dopamine and oxytocin play such a critical role in human behavior. How did you come to
study this? Simon: I'm not a researcher, per se. I'm not
an academic, but I am a little kid. I have an insatiable curiosity to understand why
things work and why things do the things they do, in all aspects of my life. I get on a
plane, I want to understand how a wing works and a jet engine works. It's just how I am.
I went on a trip to Afghanistan as a guest
of the United States Air Force, and everything on our trip went wrong. It was a very intense
experience and would observe these remarkable human beings around me who trusted each other
with their lives. As I like to say, we give medals to people
in the military who are willing to sacrifice themselves so that others may gain, where
in the private sector, we give bonuses to people who are willing to sacrifice others
so that we may gain. I realized it was completely different to the world I was brought up in,
in the private sector in business. It was no other reason than I just wanted
to understand where trust came from. Are they actually more trustworthy people? Is that
really what it is? That doesn't sound right. When you start asking these questions about
why trust exists in some organizations and not others, it necessarily takes you back
to our anthropological beginnings and makes you forced to understand the environments
for which we were designed to survive in. That's where it all began. It came from my
desire to be around more people to trust. Like I said, all my work is semi-autobiographical,
it was my own struggle. Ron: Yeah, I hear you. Obviously, you teach
the importance of understanding our “Why.” In other words, what's our cause? What's our
purpose? Why do we do what we do? My question is, is any “Why” okay, or are some “Whys”
better than others? In other words, is there a North Star that should be guiding us?
Simon: No, because it's subjective. All “Whys” are positive. People say, "That guy's a negative
‘Why.’" Nope, all “Whys” are positive. The other thing is all “Whys” have nothing
to do with the product or service that you sell or offer, and you only have one. People
are like, "We have four ‘Whys.’" I'm like, "No, you don't. You have one ‘Why.’
It's the sum total of who you are, how you were raised, the lessons you learned as a
young person, and the rest of your life simply serves as an opportunity to either live in
or out of balance with your ‘Why.’" It’s the same with an organization. A “Why”
is why was the organization founded? What problem was it attempting to solve? The founders,
what vision did they have? It's an origin story. There's no such thing as a North-Star
“Why” objectively. This is why a “Why” is important, because your “Why” may resonate
with some people and not others. That's the point of stating and knowing your
“Why,” which is you want to attract the people who believe what you believe, and you
want to be attracted to the people who believe what you believe. That's why when we listen
to political races, we want our leaders or our would-be leaders to tell us what they
believe, not just what they'd do. When we hear what they believe, we want to
align ourselves with those who share our beliefs and that we trust that they will do the things
to uphold those beliefs. The same is true in a company. We want to know what the company
stands for, why they do what they do so that we can devote ourselves and our energies to
helping them advance that cause.
Otherwise, it's just a job, just a series of transactions. I do work, you pay me money.
It's a transactional relationship. Ron: If you could just take a rough swag at
a percentage of companies that have done a great job of identifying their “Why,”
what would you think it would be? Simon: Under 10 percent.
Ron: Really? [laughs] Simon: Yeah.
Ron: Wow, that's pretty scary, really, isn't it? Simon: I see opportunity. [laughs]
Ron: You have job security, Simon, I guess. [laughs]
Simon: That's depressing, isn't it? I'd like to work myself out of a job. I talk about
trust and cooperation. There should be no demand
for my work. Ron: That's true, yes. How does your work
apply to people who, let's say, aren't knowledge workers, or perhaps they're not even leaders
of people? In other words, say, some person listening
to this right now hates their retail job or their factory job. Can they get value out
of the golden circle and finding their “Why” just as individuals?
Simon: Oh my goodness, of course. It has nothing to do with the work that we do. It has to
do with the people with whom we work. We are social animals, and we respond to the environments
we're in. You take a good person, you put them in a bad environment, they're capable
of doing bad things. You take a person that maybe others have given
up on, they may have even performed bad acts, you put them in a good environment, they're
capable of becoming remarkable human beings. I think people in the knowledge business world
suffer from hubris and terrible ethnocentrism, that, "I can't imagine someone who works in
a factory would actually be happy." That's because they think happiness is equated with
the work that you do, which is nonsense. Happiness and joy are equated with the people with whom
we work. If we feel trusted then we love going to work,
regardless of the work that we do. We've all helped our friends move, and it's been a joyous
experience. Lifting boxes, carrying them, and putting them on a truck is not a joyous
experience, but serving and taking care of our friends is.
We've all been on our hands and knees trying to help someone build IKEA furniture. It's
a pretty awful job, it's a pretty awful task, but we enjoy it and we say yes because of
the joy of helping our friends or having the joy of our friends helping us. It's terribly,
terribly pompous to think that because the work is unglamorous that you can't have joy.
I can tell you, I've met factory workers and people who are in the stone crushing business
who were way happier, way more inspired, and way more fulfilled than somebody who works
for a tech company or a bank. Ron: I don't know how much you've studied
the Lean movement that we work in, but one of the principles that we teach is Respect
for People. What you're saying is so true. It doesn't matter if you sweep floors or you're
the CEO, we all have inherent respect, and we should all take care of one another and
help each other. Simon: We're all cogs in a machine. Some of
them have a more visible role, like the hands on the front of the clock, and some of them
are more hidden, but every piece in that machine needs to work and feel valued and valuable.
Otherwise, things break. That's just the way it works. That's why we refer to companies
as "well-oiled machines." As you know from the Toyota experience, Lean
has nothing to do with efficiency. Lean has everything to do with people. The biggest
mistake the Americans made bringing the Toyota process to America was calling it Lean.
Ron: [laughs] I didn't know how much you really knew about the Lean movement, Simon, I have
a whole new army of questions for you. I'm fascinated to hear you say that.
Simon: Americans turned it into a tool for efficiency, and that's never what it was supposed
to be. There are zero, zero examples of an American company successfully implementing
Lean when they do it as a tool for efficiency. Zero. How good can a process be if there are
zero examples of success? When it's used as a people tool, it's used
for a tool for helping people respect each other, and helping each other, and kaizen
moments where you can help someone else solve the problem that they're suffering. You can
take an accountant, and ask them to look at this machine, and say, "Do you see something
that I'm not seeing?" It's about cooperation, not efficiency. Efficiency
may come out of the cooperation, as will profit and innovation, but the motivation is human.
It's not a metric. Ron: Back in the '80s, when Dr. Womack and
these guys were traveling around Japan, and it's actually John Krafcik who coined the
term Lean. If you had been sitting in that room, and
you were on that research team working around and looking at why are these guys so good,
and you're trying to come up with a name to call this, what would you have said?
Simon: This is the challenge when you have economists and these guys doing the research,
because they're looking at the results. If you had social scientists and anthropologists
doing the research, they would have named it something else.
They would have called it teaming, or they
would have called it cooperation, or they would have called it trust, or they would
have called it community, because that's how Japanese companies operate. You give your
life to the company, but the company offers you equal loyalty to them.
Ron: Have you been to Japan? Simon: I have.
Ron: What do you take from their culture, versus, say, the traditional Western culture?
Simon: Look, there are things that work in their favor, and there are things that they
will struggle with. There's no such thing as a perfect system.
Every system is balanced and has its strengths and has its weaknesses. Some of our strengths
are their weaknesses, and some of their weaknesses are our strengths.
Europe is the same way. One of the things that I love about America is we have an entrepreneurial
spirit that Europe doesn't have. For example, if you start a business in America and you
fail, there's no humiliation in that. Everybody's like, "Cool, nice try. Way to go."
In Europe, if you try to start a business and you fail, it comes with humiliation and
maybe even get ostracized from a community simply because you're viewed as a failure.
You look at the number of patents and crazy innovations that happen in America. It's because
this culture is less afraid of trial and failure as opposed to other societies. Again, it's
not a better or worse thing. America has its other weaknesses, which is
sometimes we go too quickly, and we're blazing a trail, and we're not looking where we're
going. Being comfortable with those kinds of things comes with its own set of liabilities
that the Europeans don't have. They have an element of stability that we don't have.
My point is to compare one culture to another and ask which is better or worse is a fool's
errand. To find out why they do what they do and the natural strengths that align themselves
with one culture to another, I think it makes us better qualified and better able to choose
where we want to live, and where we want to work, and how to operate in those societies.
Look at the industries that a certain country will dominate if you want to understand their
culture. The Germans, it's all about engineering. Not a lot of passion there, but my goodness,
things work well. The opposite is Italy. Oh my God, it's passion up the wazoo, but things
don't always work that well. It's not better or worse.
A Porsche is different than a Ferrari. One is an engineering marvel and the other one
is a marvel of, or a Lamborghini, of passion and love.
What you're putting your finger on is the
importance of understanding why, because then, we can understand how to work with these organizations,
work with these people, work inside these countries. Also, better direct our own careers
so that we will live and work in a place in which we can naturally thrive.
Will you naturally thrive in Los Angeles, or will you naturally thrive in New York?
That same obvious question, because you understand the culture of New York versus LA, is true
from company to company. Will you natural thrive in the culture of
company X, or will you naturally thrive in the culture of company Y? It's not a better
or worse thing, it's just a different thing. Ron: How much have you studied the whole Toyota
production system or the Lean movement? Simon: I would call myself a neophyte. I'm
a beginner, and I probably understand things superficially, especially, compared to you
and your community. Ron: It's always fascinating, though, just
the fact that you got the whole respect for people part.
I would say, sadly, a large percentage of my continuous improvement friends may say
that, but they don't always have that. Simon: There's a lot to be said for marketing,
and I wish they'd never called it Lean. It really has done huge damage to the value that
the idea actually offers. Ron: I actually interviewed James Womack and
his guys a few years ago, and they actually basically said the same thing.
If they had to do it over again, they probably would have chosen a different name, especially,
when the word "manufacturing" is put at the end of it.
Then it's like, "Well, I work in an office so these principles don't apply to me," or,
"I work in a hospital," and of course the principles apply to anyone no matter what
kind of work you do, to my wife who stays at home with my children. These principles
of respect, and helping, and finding value in things is...
Simon: It needs to be re-marketed, right? My friend Bob Chapman, who runs a company
called Barry-Wehmiller out in St. Louis, $2 billion company, 8,000 employees, they've
implemented lean and they've done a very, very successful job of it, but they call it
Truly Human Leadership. Because they've re-branded it, it is basically
a lean journey. Everybody who learns the principles understands that it's about helping each other,
and it's not just about metrics so that is a successful example of the implementation
of lean, but they didn't call it lean. Ron: Exactly. What's the most unusual or surprising
why that you've ever encountered?
Simon: None of them are unusual or surprising. I tend to have a very agnostic view of these
things. The thing that is more interesting to me is
how people react to it, and when you're working with especially high-performing organizations
that have a lot of stuff already figured out, and they learn their why, and you see all
the light bulbs start to fire and all the pieces click into place.
You literally see it on their face. You see click, click, click, click, and in an instant,
they understand why things that worked worked, and why things that didn't work didn't work,
and why frustrations happen. It's an amazing thing to be in the room when it happens. You
watch someone have an epiphany. It's a beautiful thing, especially for the
very leader-minded people out there. It super charges them and gives them this incredible
sense of calm. It's an amazing thing to see, quite frankly.
Ron: Yeah I recently gave a talk where I told the story of a man who experienced one of
these same awakenings during a weeklong Kaizen event. It’s so humbling to witness one of
those situations. Simon, why do you think we need to be reminded
to start with why? Shouldn't it be common sense?
Simon: I think one of the biggest liabilities to “Why” is those who know it think everybody
else understands it as clearly as they do, and those who don't know it don't know to
stop and look for it. At the end of the day, we wake up every day,
and we go to bed every day, and it's what happens in between that seems to preoccupy
our attention. At the end of the day, we don't wake up in
the morning and say, "What does five years look like from now?" We're visual animals,
and we're often motivated by short-term gains, and that necessarily forces us sometimes to
take our eye off our long-term goals and visions. I think what why does is it keeps us focused
on the whole picture. The way I like to describe the why is when you do a jigsaw puzzle, the
first thing you do is you lean the box against the wall, and then, you start putting the
pieces together. Now, you could do the jigsaw puzzle without
the box against the wall, but it's much more difficult, and it really is, on a short-term
basis, each piece connecting to each piece. That's about as good as you can do. What the
why is, it's the picture on the box, and sometimes, you put your head down, but every now and
then, you have to look up, and you double-check the short-term gains you're making to the
bigger picture. The “Why” is the picture on the box, that's what it is, and the what
is putting the pieces of the puzzle together.
What we often do is go to work to put pieces of puzzles together with no concept of the
picture that we're trying to build. Ron: In addition to all the “Why” work
that you've done, you've also spent a lot of time, especially recently, I think, on
the importance of making people feel safe. I'd like to hear your thoughts on how leaders
of people can create this circle of safety in a work environment, where perhaps there's
restructuring, or business transformation, or maybe process changes that could be brought
on by things such as continuous improvement. How do we go about that when things are changing
within the organization, not necessarily headcount reduction or anything like that, but change
is difficult for anyone, so how do we go about that?
Simon: I'm tired of listening to people tell me that people fear change. No, they don't.
What people fear is sudden change, what people fear is big change, what people fear is change
without context, so effective change, it's about evolution, not revolution, because revolution
is sudden, and violent, and there's always a counter revolution.
Evolutionary change is sticky, and it lasts, and that doesn't mean it has to decades, but
it can take months instead of days. Change that has context, which is everybody understands
the “Why,” everybody understands the vision, everybody understands the picture on the box
and understands that we have to make this change in order to get closer to the vision
that we have, and everybody goes, "Oh, I see. No problem."
People are very comfortable with change when, A, they have context, B, it's not sudden and
unforeseen, and thirdly, when they feel safe within that change.
I think one of the main reasons people fear change in a modern business context is because
layoffs is so heartily embraced as a means of balancing the books, people fear that any
kind of change puts their job at risk. Whereas, if we worked in an environment where
we felt safe, where we felt that our leaders would sooner sacrifice the numbers to protect
the people and never sacrifice the people to protect the numbers, if we worked in an
environment where we felt that our leaders cared about us as human beings, they didn't
engage in conversations about head counts, because they viewed heart counts.
This is what Bob Chapman does. He thinks about heart counts. It's hard to reduce a heart
count, and if we worked in that environment when our leaders say that there's going to
be change, we say, "How can we help?" rather than hunkering down. So change is only negative,
and only bad, and only faces resistance when we don't understand the context and we don't
trust the people. Ron: There's a lot of continuous improvement
practitioners listening to this podcast right now, and I'm curious from you, you gave us
some great advice on the name, that's duly noted, but what other advice do you have for
us people who are out trying to do what
Barry-Wehmiller and these organizations have done, but perhaps we're not as far along on
that journey? Simon: It takes courage, and the courage of
leadership is the willingness to do the right thing, even though there's no guarantee that
there's going to be success. For example, somebody on this journey would never say to
somebody, "I will give you more responsibility if you prove to me that you can handle more
responsibility." That'll never happen. In an organization that undertakes this journey,
just like a parent who says, "You know what? I think you're ready to take the training
wheels off," even though the kid may be too afraid, a good leader looks at their people
and says, "You know what? I think you're ready for more responsibility even if you don't
think you're ready for it." They just let the person try, and sometimes,
it doesn't go right, and sometimes, we gave them too much responsibility too soon, and
that's on us, not on them, but no person should have to prove that they're worthy of trust,
for example. Leaders simply extend trust. The example that comes to mind is, again,
Bob Chapman. When he bought a new factory and he started implementing some of these
things, he recognized that the way they treated the people on the factory floor and they way
they treated the people in the management office were different.
If you wanted supplies and you worked as an accountant, you just went and opened the supply
closet and took out whatever you needed. If you worked in the factory and you wanted supplies,
you had to go to the locked cage and have somebody else who works in the cage sign out
the parts for you. He thought that was ridiculous, he took all
the cages down and got rid of all the locks, got rid of the person who works in the cage,
and now, if you needed something, you went and signed it out yourself. He made no grand
pronouncements and he asked for something in return. That's called leadership.
I think, quite frankly, the single most important...I get asked this all the time, "What are the
qualities and characteristics of all great leaders?" "Charisma. Vision." I know some
great leaders who aren't that charismatic, and I know some spectacular leaders who don't
have big Steve Jobs-ian visions. They have maybe much smaller visions, but they're still
great leaders. One thing I can say without a doubt that all
the great leaders that I've ever met all possess is courage. It's really, really hard, and
the risks are real, and if you stand up and say, "I'm going to lead properly," that means
you have to give away credit when good things happen and you have to take responsibility
when bad things happen, and that's not for everyone. That's a huge pill to swallow, and
it can only be done when you have somebody who's got your back.
Leadership is a very, very, very lonely, lonely
experience. It can be anyway, and when you go on the leadership journey, I strongly recommend
going on it with someone, whether it's someone inside the organization or outside the organization
and you choose to go on it together, let's do this.
Let's both learn how to do this, and when you have a mom and a dad, when you have a
Roy Disney and a Walt Disney, when there's that George Balanchine, Lincoln Kirstein,
whatever your combination is of the visionary and the builder, and they trust each other,
and they care about each other, and they go on the journey together, that's how you implement
these big transitions. That's how you go on the lean journey. You
can't do it alone. Ron: I have a few just random questions that
I've got to ask, because I don't know if I'll get to talk to you again, Simon, to be honest.
Simon: Go for it. Ron: What Simon Sinek book are you most proud
of? Simon: I am very proud of "Leaders Eat Last."
Ron: I didn't want to say it's my favorite, but... [laughs] I also...
Simon: "Start With Why" is simple and elegant, and it's a foundation, but "Leaders Eat Last"
is really a mature...I find it to be a mature, much more...it's a much deeper piece of work,
and it was much, much, much more difficult to write. "Start With Why" I had to just get
out of me, but "Leaders Eat Last" was an extraction. It was...I'm proud of that work.
Ron: My story with Leaders Eat Last, we were actually on a long road trip, my family and
I, and I've got a bunch of kids so it gets a little noisy, I put the headphones on and
I listened to it through Audible. The beginning, when you're telling the story
of the fighter pilots and all this, oh, it was so incredible, Simon, and then I read
it, because I actually prefer reading over listening, but I also read it. Very good.
Very good work. Simon: Thank you.
Ron: One last question, you led on to it, is what's next for Simon? Do you have more
books in the works? Simon: Yeah, there's another book in the works.
It's coming out next April. The working title is "Together is Better."
Ron: "Together is Better."
Simon: "Together is Better." It might change, who knows, but that comes out next April and
I'm really excited about that. It's going really well. It's a really beautiful
piece of work, and we've designed it to be delightful. That's what we want it to be.
We want it to be delightful, so that's happening. Really, I've spent the better half of 10 years
preaching this thing called the “Why,” and talking about purpose, and really creating
demand for these things, and now that there's demand for it, I'm looking to partner with
people and working with people to now bring product to bear so that people can actually
implement this stuff. Now that people know about it, and want it,
and understand the value of it, now people are saying, "Well, how do I do it?" We want
to answer that question, that's really exciting. Ron: Wonderful. I can't wait to read it, and
listen to it, and all the rest of it. Simon, I could talk to you for hours, but I want
to be respectful of your time. Let's just go ahead and wrap this show up
with perhaps you just sharing some final words of wisdom, and then, why don't you tell people
how they can connect with you on social media or any other website that you have?
Simon: Sure. Thanks very much. This is a very personal journey for me. These ideas that
I talk about and write about, as I said before, are things that help me better understand
my position in the world, and the way in which I operate in the world, and the way in which
I interact with people, and what I learned was that the solutions I came up with for
myself worked for others, too, so I made the choice that I would share them with as many
people as who would listen. Leadership is a thing about giving. Leaders
are the givers, not the takers, and every single one of us has the opportunity to be
the leader we wish we had, and it's the most remarkable journey.
Sometimes it's thankless, sometimes it's hard, sometimes it's lonely, and like being a parent,
the joy you get from being a leader is seeing that your people grow up to become something
bigger and more than you ever could have imagined you could have done for yourself, and you
sit back, and you say it was all worth it. I want as many people as possible to experience
the joy of that journey. It really is amazing, not to mention the remarkable
world that we can build around us when we ask others to help us. It's people like you
who I consider we're all working from different sides of the same coin. I'm out there. My
job in the metaphorical jigsaw puzzle is to point to the box and remind people to keep
looking at the box. "Hey, guys, don't forget the picture on the
box. Hey, guys, don't forget the picture on the box." What you're doing, by teaching people
about Lean and the Lean journey, is a way to do the jigsaw puzzle. The companies that
are actually doing it well are pieces of the jigsaw puzzle that are making our picture
come to life, and we all play a role.
It's important for us to work together, shoulder-to-shoulder, to build that vision that we all share. Thanks
very much for giving me a forum to share my ideas, and I'm proud to march shoulder-to-shoulder
with you. Ron: Thank you. How can people connect with
you? Simon: All the usual places, Twitter, Facebook.
Our website is startwithwhy.com, and we have a bunch of free stuff on there and
a “Why” Discovery Course on there. We have these little things called "Notes
to Inspire" that you can sign up for to get a little dose of inspiration in your mailbox
every morning. Lots of fun stuff to help advance the cause.
Startwithwhy.com is the place to go. [background music]
Ron: Thank you again, Simon. I really appreciate it. You've made a huge impact on my life.
Not just as a business professional, but I feel like I'm a better husband, and father,
and friend because of you, so thank you. Simon: That means a lot. Thank you, Ron.
Ron: Take care, and hope to meet you in person one day. Simon: I look forward to it.