Simon Sinek explains a "just cause" as an idealistic vision of how the world should work that organizations pursue knowing they'll never fully reach it. Martin Luther King Jr.'s dream and Steve Jobs' Apple show how this inspires workforces and bolder innovation than typical goals like "be the best" or "provide greater value."
Chapters
A just cause is something a lot more idealistic. It's a statement of the world that you wish the way the world you wished it worked. It's a world that you imagine. Like we imagine a world as PwC. We imagine a world in which. And then we devote our practice, we devote our energy, we devote our resources to advance towards that cause. And we're going to bring our clients with us. The work that we do takes us closer to that cause. So I'll give you an example. So, so my just cause, our organization's just cause. We imagine a world so you can see there's that forward thinking, which as an aside, which is why we call it vision, is because you have to be able to see it, right? So we imagine a world in which the vast majority of people wake up every single morning inspired, feel safe wherever they are, and end the day fulfilled by the work that they do. That is our cause and it is a cause so just that we would be willing to sacrifice in order to advance closer towards that ideal. We will never get there. It is an ideal. And you can look at organizations or leaders that have made profound impact in their industries or in the world. You'll see these just causes, whether it's all men are created equal, right? It's a just cause. Imperfect in its own way, but you can see a nation striving. I have a dream literally imagining that one day little black children will hold hands on the playground with little white children. Imperfect in its own, in reality, but you can see a nation striving. When Apple and Steve Jobs used to talk about empowering individuals to stand up to Big Brother, you can see the attraction to the personal computer because it literally gives power to an individual to compete against a corporation. Imperfect, but a striving. And all of these things become striving that become incredibly inspiring for a workforce because they feel like they're contributing to something bigger than themselves. But when you think about innovation, if you say provide greater value for our clients and it's not wrong, I have to stress it's not wrong.
But when you say innovate around that, the innovation tends to be more features and benefits. It tends to be tweaking inefficiencies. When you say be the best, I don't even know how you innovate around that, right? You can't say some to say somebody, you know, make innovate so we're better. But when you say innovate a way to advance this, the ideas can come from anywhere inside the organization and the ideas tend to be a lot bigger. So it's not that those things are wrong. It's that what I'm. What I'm offering are.
A clearer path to embracing an infinite mindset. Right? It's not that the other doesn't work. It doesn't have value. It just has less value in the infinite game.
