Start with Why Part 7 of 7: When Why Goes Fuzzy
May 5, 2010 by dr. lam · Leave a Comment
Simon Sinek
Sinek recounts how Sam Walton was used to success. As a high school football star in America’s heartland, he worked hard and won state. He even maintained a successful paper route during the Great Depression. He never saw failure because he was so accustomed to having success.
Starting Wal-Mart in Bentonville, Arkansas in 1962, Walton was able to grow his business to the colossus of 44 billion a year revenue that it is today. He did not offer a better product or a better service. The idea of a low end pricing was already prevalent in five and dimes. Kmart and Target were both started in the same year and offered a similar business model. What Walton offered was a relentless focus on people, on the people who worked for him and his customers who patronized his stores. His WHY was clear, which was to serve all of these people the right way. It helped grow Wal-Mart to the giant it is today.
However, since his death, the company has been increasingly plagued with countless lawsuits about wage violations and poor customer relations. Everything that Walton founded the company on has since slipped from sight. The WHY has become sidelined for the WHAT, just a blistering array of cheap goods. Will that be enough to sustain the company through the 21st-Century? We’ll see.
Whenever you lose your way, go back to the WHY.
By the way, last night, I saw on Sinek’s Facebook wall that he was featured on Ted.com so here is his great talk so you can see for yourself what has inspired me directly, having heard him talk live twice:
Start with Why Part 6 of 7: The Celery Test
May 4, 2010 by dr. lam · 1 Comment
Sinek says imagine you are at a dinner party and you have four trustworthy friends give you advice on food to eat. One insists that the new oreos are all the rage and you have to get them. Another says no celery is simply wonderful this season. A third chimes in and argues that rice milk is the favored food item for children and adults. Finally, the fourth says M&M’s are the in-thing that should be not only in every home but in every business.
After hearing all of this apparently sage advice, you run to the grocery store and buy all of the above four items: the oreos, the celery, the rice milk, and the M&M’s. However, this is a jumble of things that may or may not be worth buying. However, starting with a clear filter of WHY, like I want to eat only healthy foods. The choices become crystal clear: I shall buy the rice milk and celery.
Let’s say I wanted to eat chocolate cake. Perhaps I could say that I wanted to gratify a part of my craving but that I would then have to work harder to fix the negative health impact that the food item would have. However, I would be under no illusion that it fit any of my WHY.
When we start with WHY, we have clarity of what we are doing. As Sinek says, it passes our Celery Test. Think of how many companies in particular make moves (WHATS and HOWS) without any clear filter of WHY. No wonder why they get into difficult situations. Recently, I hired a new staff member and what seemed right was her WHY fit my organization’s WHY. She mentioned how in her past organization she disliked how the patients were being treated and what she liked most was how a patient’s life was changed from the procedure performed. So far she has lived up to her professed WHY, and that is wonderful.
Start with Why Part 5 of 7: The Wright Brothers
April 30, 2010 by dr. lam · 4 Comments
Sinek recounts the story of Samuel Pierpont Langley. Who? Exactly. Langley was an astronomer and inventor who was well connected with giants like Andrew Carnegie and Alexander Graham Bell. He served at the Smithsonian Institute, the Harvard Observatory, and at the U.S. Naval Academy. He was desirous of making the first heavier-than-air flying machine. He was well funded, well educated, intelligent, and determined.
About the same time, Orville and Wilbur Wright worked on the same goal. They were poorly educated and used the proceeds from their bicycle shop to finance their endeavors. All of their staff barely had any education, many not even high school. However, failure after failure, they plugged away until the fateful day of December 17, 1903 in Kitty Hawk, North Carolina when their contraption stayed afloat for a miraculous 59 seconds, none of which was even covered by the press until after the fact.
Once Langley got wind of this achievement he quit. How did he fail despite intelligence, creativity, funding, and a strong work ethic? He had no WHY. He wanted to be famous like Alexander Graham Bell. The Wright Brothers wanted to accomplish the impossible for the betterment of humanity. Langley’s quitting right after the Wright brother’s initial success is a testament to his motivations. Once the fame component was taken from him, he had no more incentive. Why are you doing what you are doing? Money and fame? Or is there a deeper WHY?
Start with Why Part 4 of 7: Building a Cathedral
April 29, 2010 by dr. lam · 4 Comments
This is a favorite story of mine that I believe I heard from Sinek first but may have heard elsewhere. After reading it again in the book, Start with Why, I wanted to share it you…
A man walks up to two stonemasons. He asks the first one, “Do you like your job?” The first stonemason responds, “No, I hate it. I toil every day in the hot, scorching sun. I have no breaks. I lift heavy rocks, and I have no idea why I am doing this or when this project will ever end. I have been doing this monotonous work for as long as I can remember.”
The man walks thirty feet farther and asks the second man, “Do you like your job?” The second stonemason answers, “Of course, I do. I am building a cathedral. Yes, I have been doing this for as long as I can recall, and it gets pretty hot out here carrying these hard and heavy rocks. I have no idea whether this project will be completed in my lifetime, but I am building a cathedral.”
When we have a sense of purpose, a mission, a WHY, we have something so deep that we are propelled forward. We don’t sense the negative but are only possessed by the positive. We are filled with why we do what we do and it makes all the difference. Why do you do what you? What is your why?
Start with Why Part 3 of 7: The Shackleton Expedition
April 28, 2010 by dr. lam · 6 Comments
Finding people who believe in what you believe in is what I am all about. Who am I directing that to? Everyone. My patients, my staff, and my friends. I want them to be imbued with the same passion, compassion, and drive that I am. That is why I have such loyal patients, such amazing staff, and that is why I hang out with people from the Entrepreneur’s Organization, all of whom share my same passion for being better and making a difference.
The English adventurer Ernest Shackleton set out to explore the Antarctic in the early twentieth century. Since the Norwegian explorer, Roald Amundsen, had already become the first explorer to reach the South Pole, it became Shackleton’s quest to cross the continent.
On December 5, 1914, Shackleton and a crew of twenty-seven set out for the Weddell Sea on the Endurance. However, the crew would never reach the continent of Antarctica. Just a few days out of South Georgia in the southern Atlantic, the ship got stuck in endless pack ice, eventually crushing the ship on November 21, 1915. The crew watched the ship sink into the frigid waters of the Weddell Sea. In three lifeboats, the crew landed on tiny Elephant Island. Leaving all but five men, Shackleton set out over 800 miles of rough sea to find help, which they eventually did.
How did all of these men survive? Because Shackleton hired the right people. He did not ask for crew like this: “Men needed for expedition. Minimum five years’ experience. Must know how to hoist mainsail. Come work for a fantastic captain.”
Instead, his ad in the London Times read like this: “Men wanted for Hazardous journey. Small wages, bitter cold, long months of complete darkness, constant danger, safe return doubtful. Honour and recognition in case of success.” Perhaps that would not be a great ad in Craigslist today. However, it got the right people on his bus, so to speak. His right hires allowed his crew to make it safely back from an impossible journey. How good is the fit of your company’s employees? How good is the fit of the friends you hang out with? How good is the fit of those who are your clients or patients?