Simon Sinek explains why your purpose, not your products, defines who you are. When leaders abandon their why to chase money or status, like Disney under Michael Eisner or Microsoft under Steve Ballmer, everything falls apart. A real why is stable and rooted in the problem you set out to solve.
Chapters
There's no such thing as a why going wrong, right? You don't have a work why and a personal why, and your why doesn't change ever, right? We are the sum totals of how we were raised. Like, you are who you are based on the experiences you had as a kid, and I am who I am based on the experiences I had as I'm a kid. And that's what makes me me now. The rest of my life offers me choices to even live consistently and act consistently with who I am or not. And if I start becoming obsessed with fame and fortune, for example, and I make decisions, my friends will say to me, it's like, I don't know who you are anymore. Right? And so what you're saying is when your why goes wrong, what you're saying is you started making decisions and you've actually let go of the why as a. As a filter for decision making. You're making decisions for different or wrong reasons. That's usually more common because you only have one wine that lasts your whole life. And if the why truly is changeable, then it's probably poorly articulated. And by the way, it's the same for companies. A why fundamentally is an origin story. That's basically what it is. Like your why is your origin story. My why is my origin story. The company is the same. Like, why was this company founded? Because you read an article in Inc. Magazine, you're like, I'm going to start a company. Those companies don't do well when you're just chasing opportunity. Why? What. What went wrong in your life or somebody else's life that you decided to take the risk of overwhelming failure to choose as opposed to just getting a job because you believed so fundamentally that the solution didn't exist that you had to build it yourself. What's the origin story? You know, the Disney origin story. Walt Disney started his company in a time after war and depression where people were stressed, and he gave them a place to go and escape the stresses of the world through the movies and then through Disneyland. That's why there. It's a magical place and it's a class list. The rich and the poor hang out at Disneyland and we leave and you go read the inscription that was written in 1955, or whatever it was that's outside Disneyland. Behind these gates you will find da da da and leave behind. It's all true to this day. It's an origin story. And like people, when companies forget where they come from, the business tends to go sideways because they're chasing the wrong things. We saw it and we see it regularly. Michael Eisner, on his second half of his tenure, he became obsessed with world domination. Disney went off the rails. Steve Ballmer became obsessed with beating Apple and forgot the cause, that that company was obsessed with productivity and helping people be more productive in the world. And that company couldn't hire talent, and they kept losing talent and they went off the rails. You see it time and time again. Fortunately, both those companies were wealthy enough to stay in business until a better leader came along. Not all companies are wealthy enough to withstand a bad leader. And so if. If the why truly is wrong or we've we had to change from that why to this why, it probably was poorly articulated to start with, and it was probably based on the product. A why has nothing to do. My why is to inspire people to do the things that inspire them. So together, each of us can change our world for the better. It doesn't tell you how I do it, and it doesn't tell you what I do. That's the flexibility part. All companies are the same. All companies are the same. If your why has your product in it, it's not your why. It's just a statement of.
