Simon Sinek: How Great Leaders Inspire Action

A talk I enjoyed by Simon Sinek (@simonsinek) on “How Great Leaders Inspire Action.”

Simon Sinek: How Great Leaders Inspire Action

Some great insights from Apple, Dr. Martin Luther King, and the Wright Brothers:

• Why  -> How -> What
  • Start with Why
• Why is not “to make a profit” that’s a result..
• Why is your purpose, your reason for existence.
• Common approach is What -> How -> Why but much less compelling.
• People don’t buy what you do they buy why you do it.
• Dr. King said “I have a dream” not “I have a comprehensive 12 point plan.”

This last insight reminds me of

“Inventing the future requires giving up control. No one with a compelling purpose and a great vision knows how it will be achieved. One has to be willing to follow an unknown path, allowing the road to take you where it will. Surprise, serendipity, uncertainty and the unexpected are guaranteed on the way to the future.”
George Land in “Breakpoint and Beyond“

And a poem by Antoine de Saint-Exupéry

Build Me a Boat
by Antoine de Saint-Exupéry

If I communicate to my men
the love of sailing on the sea,
you will soon see them specializing
according to their thousand particular qualities:
that one will weave the canvas,
another will fell the tree in the forest,
another still will forge nails
and there will be some who observe the
stars to learn to steer,
and yet all will be as one.
To create the ship
is not to weave the canvas,
to forge the nails,
to read the stars,
but rather to convey the taste of the sea.

Simon Sinek is the author of “Start With Why”

Related Blog Posts

• Understand, Believe, and Act
• More on Understand, Believe, and Act by Jerry Weissman
• Quote Investigator “Sea“

Photo Credit:  “Candle Black Background” by naturemania (licensed from 123RF)