“People don’t buy what you do, they buy why you do it”. That’s one of the central points of Simon Sinek’s golden circle model which he presents in his book, Start With Why (you can read a summary of the book here).
The golden circle model comprises three concentric circles (picture a bullseye target), with ‘Why’ in the centre, ‘How’ in the second ring and ‘What’ in the outer ring. This model provides a structured way of imagining the way the most successful organisations go about their work.
Every organisation knows what it does. And some know how they will succeed. However, few have a deep understanding of why they do what they do.
Most organisations therefore work from the outside in. For example, a new budget airline will decide first that they want to fly people from A to B (what) and then decide that they will succeed by keeping costs low, so they can sell high volumes of low price fares (how).
Sinek argues that the most successful organisations work from the inside out. That is, they ‘start with why’. Using the example of the budget airline, they might start by identifying that their core purpose and burning desire is to connect families and friends across the country, irrespective of their socioeconomic background (why). And that they will successfully do this by flying between secondary airports, offering a no frills, but friendly service, and operating only one type of plane to keep maintenance costs down (how). This will enable them to fly people from A to B at the lowest cost possible (what).
One of the best examples in Start With Why looks at why people were happy buying music players from Apple, but not from Dell. Up until the early 2000s, both Apple and Dell were computer manufacturers, each making good quality laptops and desktops for business and consumer customers. However, Dell very much focussed on what the company did, which was to make computers. Whereas Apple focussed on why it did what it did, stating that “In everything we do, we believe in challenging the status quo. We believe in thinking differently”. How they did it was by “making [their] products beautifully-designed, simple to use and user-friendly”. Finally, what they did happened to include “[making] great computers”.
Sinek makes the point that people wouldn’t buy a mp3 player from Dell, because they’d think: ‘Why would I buy a music player from a computer company?’. But Apple was a computer company and nobody hesitated to buy an iPod (or subsequently music, a phone, TV player, tablet etc.) from them. The difference he hypothesises is that people are connected strongly with why Apple does what it does, not what it does. Whereas people are fixated on what Dell does and therefore find it difficult to imagine Dell doing anything else.
This presents an opportunity to any organisation or role. Whenever we speak about our role or organisation in day to day life, or even within the workplace, we have a chronic habit of focussing on what we do. Think about it. Have you ever been asked at a party, ‘What do you do?’? What do you say? We usually describe exactly what they asked for: what we do. Focussing on why we do what we do is way to increase the purpose in our work.
Why does why we work matter? Research presented in a 2018 Harvard Business Review article shows that 9 out of 10 people are willing to earn less for more meaningful work. How much less? In the study’s sample, participants said they’d be willing to forego 23% of their future lifetime earnings if they had a highly meaningful job. Other research by BetterUp shows that a stronger sense of belonging can lead to a 56% increase in performance, a 50% reduction in turnover risk and a 75% decrease in sick leave.
Research repeatedly shows that people in roles related to education, health and wellness experience the highest level of meaningfulness in their work. Why is this? It’s likely because the impact of their work is both highly concrete and easy to observe. A teacher helping their students to read for the first time can clearly articulate the positive impact of their work (illiterate adults are profoundly disadvantaged) and directly observe the outcomes (they can watch as their students improve from one week to the next).
The challenge then for all organisations is to focus on creating meaning within our people’s work. This presents an amazing win-win opportunity, where both the individual team members and the organisation as a whole will be better off.
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