Simon Sinek explains how organizations and individuals should pivot during a crisis by focusing on their 'why' (their core purpose) rather than their 'what' (specific products/services). Using his public-speaking business as an example, he shows that pivoting on 'why' opens many digital opportunities—repurposing existing content (e.g., 360 reviews, a one-sheet "growth and performance" evaluation), running book clubs, and supporting virtual team huddles—whereas pivoting on 'what' (e.g., only offering online speeches) is limiting. He encourages asking how to bring a core purpose to life in changed conditions (example: tourism in Aruba).
Chapters
So how to use your why to pivot in time of crisis. Okay, so let me give you a tangible example so it makes more sense. So what I do is public speaking. It's one of the things I do, but it's one of what I do. What I do is public speaking, right? So if I were to pivot based on what, it limits my creativity, right? So I'm pivoting based on what? Really, my only options are to give speeches online. So the only opportunity I have is to put on a conference online and charge money for tickets for people to come to my conference online. Doesn't that seems very limited? And it doesn't seem repeatable. I mean, how many of those could I even do?
So.
So you don't want to pivot on what because it limits creativity. So I'm pivoting on why. So my why is to inspire people to do the things that inspire them. So we're asking ourselves not how do we do more public speeches online? We're asking ourselves what ways can we take advantage of in this modern world to inspire people to do the things that inspire them? And what we're doing is we're going through everything we've done and we realize we have tons of content that we never realized had any value to the outside world. For example, we found a way to do 360 reviews for our own company. We invented it for ourselves, and we do it for ourselves. Well, we can share that with other people. We found a way to do evaluations.
We call it growth and performance gmp. It's super simple, one sheet way to evaluate it. Well, we can share that with people. We're realizing that our work, the importance of being inspired, not giving a speech, the importance of being inspired is more valuable now than ever. We're doing a book club that was born out of this pivot. We're realizing that helping people start their huddles, teaching people how to do huddles, teaching people how to do huddles, because we've been doing them for years, we're a virtual team is something we can offer. Even showing up for five minutes or 10 minutes at the beginning of someone's huddle is something we can offer. So you can see we're pouring with ideas. And by the way, these aren't all my ideas, These came from the team. But the point is, because we're pivoting based on what we believe to inspire people to do the things that inspire them, we're finding lots of opportunities that we can bring to life in a digital world. But if I pivoted based on what.
It'D be all over. And I see that happening all over the place, which is companies are trying to go back to the question about Aruba, like, how do we do tourism? Now? You don't. You don't do tourism. Now the question is, what is your why and how do you bring that to life in a world where there is no tourism? That's going to yield a lot of great ideas.
