With over 43 million views, it’s safe to say that most people in business have seen Simon Sinek’s excellent TED talk or read his book “Start With Why”. The talk is excellent, and Sinek is an inspiring speaker who can really bring an important message to life with a memorable model, and lots of examples.
However, he leaves one thing out. After the talk, when you realize what a great idea this is, you go back to your office and decide to try it. And you get stuck. You realize that you don’t know where to start. This is not Sinek’s fault. He introduced the importance of needing the “Why”. (No small thing.) But he never promised to show you how to find it.
That’s where we come in. The first thing we do with our clients is work with them to find their ‘why’. It’s interesting that many clients come to us saying that they already know what it is. When asked how they derived their ‘why’ the answer is usually that it came from several ‘strategy sessions’, or workshops where everyone gave input and the leadership team selected the ‘best’ one. Maybe they even power-dot voted. You get the point.
And that’s the problem. Your company fails or succeeds based on how well it connects with the market it serves. It’s not YOUR ‘why’. It’s THEIR ‘why’. And that’s the “why” we enable them to find. The next post will help you to get started.