Certain companies and leaders inspire people around them to achieve amazing goals. They mobilize people beyond using personal incentives and rewards - instead, they make people feel a sense of purpose and belonging to a community.
These effective leaders Start With WHY - they communicate the purpose of what they are doing and the impact their work will have.
Here are three examples of leaders who put their WHY first.
Samuel Pierpont Langley had a goal: he wanted to be the first man to build a working airplane. He seemed like the perfect man for the job: he was a senior officer at the Smithsonian Institution, had been a mathematics professor at Harvard, and had secured a $50,000 grant from the War Department to help fuel his ambitions.
Already an established man, he sought fame and glory. He wanted to have the same level of fame as a Thomas Edison. He wanted the result more than the WHY itself.
A few hundred miles away, two brothers--Will and Orville Wright--had the same vision but none of the resources. They had no funding, no government connections, and no one on their team had a college education.
But they had one resource in spades: inspiration. True scientists at heart, they were obsessed about the physical problem of flight and balance, and they were determined to make it work. They endured countless failures because they believed the scientific problem was solvable. And they knew if they succeeded, it would transform the world. This WHY inspired their team to surmount every setback.
The Wrights’ inspiration came from starting with WHY, which was much different from Langley’s motivation. That WHY is what made them the first men to achieve manned flight on December 17, 1903—not Langley.
Indeed, once the Wright brothers succeeded, Langley quickly quit his flight dreams. Had he been inspired by the WHY, he would have been excited to improve on the technology. Instead, since he cared mainly about fame, the failure was humiliating, so he quit.
The 1960s and 1970s in America were characterized by common people rising up and challenging people in power. That was the case for Steve Wozniak and Steve Jobs, who were at the forefront of the technological revolution.
Although Apple is one of the most prominent technological companies today, Wozniak built the Apple I not to make money, but to help the common man. Wozniak believed that allowing average people to buy and own computers would level the playing field and give the little guy a leg up.
Job’s role was to sell the computer Wozniak made. Jobs was more than just a great salesman: he also believed that revolutionary ideas would change the world.
That combined vision of accessibility, opportunity, and revolution became Wozniak and Job’s WHY—and it led to incredible success. In their first year, Apple made $1 million in revenue. This rose to $10 million in their second year. And by year six, Apple had become a billion dollar business with 3,000 employes.
Wozniak and Jobs weren’t the only people, or even the first people, participating in the computer revolution of the 1970s. But Apple succeeded--and continues to succeed--because it starts with WHY.
Most applications in Start With Why focus on business, but the principle applies broadly to any area of life.
Like Wozniak and Jobs, Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. wasn’t the first or only person participating in the civil rights movement of the 1960s. What made Dr. King stand out was his ability to inspire others. He knew that his voice wouldn’t be enough to change race relations in America. It would take thousands of average people to rally around a common cause.
His commitment to his ideals and his vision for a unified America is what brought 250,000 people to Washington D.C. to hear him deliver his “I Have a Dream” speech on August 28th, 1963. They weren’t invited and the speech wasn’t advertised. Dr. King’s vision inspired people to spread the word, build a movement, and change the nation. And it all started with Dr. King’s belief in his WHY.
Those who lead aren’t necessarily #1 terms of market share, but they’re the companies or people who are setting the course for their industries. Apple computers only make up 3 percent of the global home computing market share; however, Apple leads the technology industry because of its impact and vision. Other technology companies are trying to become Apple, not the other way around.
Great leaders:
Studies show that most people are disengaged from their job. They lack a sense of purpose. And this feeling often starts from the top. Instead, if every leader started with WHY, great results might happen: