Put PEOPLE First | Simon Sinek

Isn't there some tension in. And I know you talk a lot about this empathy and having empathy and looking at people as human being and as leaders, but there also being a tension with that will to succeed and that drive. And how do you think you best balance that? Because I think one without the other.

You can have an enormously wonderful culture that isn't actually advancing the ball.

The tension is healthy. The tension is good. You know, if all you have is empathy, then you have a hippie commune and you're not actually going to cure anything. But if all you're doing is driving the numbers, driving the numbers, you're going to have a short lifespan and break the machine also, and you might have a spike and then you'll disappear. Or all your best people say, I hate it here, and they go work somewhere else and take all of their brilliance somewhere else.

So there is a balance, but there's also a hierarchy. It's not 50 50. There's no such thing as 50, 50. It doesn't exist. You can't say, well, we're 50% driven by performance and 50% driven by culture. Because you will face decisions where one of those things.

Will sacrifice the other. The question is, which one are you going to choose? There has to be a bias towards people. There has to be a bias towards the teamwork, the environment. And the will to succeed is driven by the belief in the cause.

If the cause is clear. And the metrics, and you're letting people see the metrics so they feel. They feel like we're making progress again. Go back to that marathon analogy, which is you're exhausted, you're tired, but you're getting closer to the finish line. You start running faster, not slower.

That's a good point.

And so it's keeping people included to know what the metrics mean and which ones are trending and which ones are absolute. But, yeah, there's nothing wrong with the drive to succeed as long as there's a context within which that drive exists.