Do You Know Why You Are in Business?
Does your organisation have a plan? Or are you the achievers who say “I believe, I believe, I believe” and you share your beliefs with others who follow? Are you the Wright Brothers, Apple or Martin Luther King in your own special way?
Simon Sinek’s TED Conference talk on how great leaders inspire action has been on my browser tab for a week and I must have played it through five times. His Golden Circle Model (below) is worth discussion.
In the talk Simon explains that nearly every organisation knows what they make or they wouldn’t be in business. They also know how they make it. But very few organisations understand why they do what they do – and this is a defining factor behind some interesting market success and failures. It’s the understanding of what your organisation believes that has the power to create synergy through the personal beliefs of customers and other stakeholders.
The aim is to have people buy your products and services because they join you in your vision… they buy into your why.
Plans are about what and how… dreams and visions and beliefs are about why. A big tick for Apple products.
Martin Luther King made the statement “I have a dream”. He didn’t say he had a five year plan. It’s that shared vision of the ‘I have a Dream’ of Martin Luther King in the minds of large numbers of Americans that gave the movement its momentum.
Apple doesn’t sell computers. They sell a vision and a belief system and they happen to make great computers they’re willing to sell you.
On the flip side, there can be a lot said about this model in relation to the old media of newspapers. Somewhere in the middle of the 20th Century they stopped being about great journalism as their why and went back to the what and how… they stopped being about the news and became all about the profits. They lost their passion. Their journalists lost their passion. And because they don’t believe anymore it’s a domino effect that we don’t believe.
There are a lot of models out there explaining the complexities of the business environment from various angles but I think the driving passion in Simon Sinek – a man who believes and believes and believes in spades – makes this a fascinating perspective about business success and failure.
Almost the exact same talk was given to me in a recent Strategic Management lecture in the MBA program at the University of Tasmania. This is nothing new. But it’s something that the vast majority of businesses get fundamentally wrong.
And the question is provoked in all of us – what is our WHY. Have we got that vision we can ask people to buy into? Dig into your passion like the Wright Brothers and people will come on board. Just remember profit isn’t why you’re in business – it’s a side effect of doing business well.
