Start with Why: How Great Leaders Inspire Everyone to Take Action

Knowing you have a loyal customer and employee base not only reduces costs, it provides massive peace of mind. Like loyal friends, you know your customers and employees will be there for you when you need them most. It is the feeling of “we’re in this together,” shared between customer and company, voter and candidate, boss and employee, that defin

Every employee at Honoré Construction is required to clock in in the morning and clock out in the evening. But there’s a catch. They must clock in between 8:00–8:30 a.m. and out by 5:00–5:30 P.M. Stay any later and they are taken out of a bonus pool. Because employees know they have to leave by 5:30 p.m., wasted time has dropped to a minimum. Produ

So the logic follows, the goal is not to hire people who simply have a skill set you need, the goal is to hire people who believe what you believe.

It is not just WHAT or HOW you do things that matters; what matters more is that WHAT and HOW you do things is consistent with your WHY. Only then will your practices indeed be best.

The role of a leader is not to come up with all the great ideas. The role of a leader is to create an environment in which great ideas can happen.

It’s not size and might that make a company strong, it’s the culture—the strong sense of beliefs and values that everyone, from the CEO to the receptionist, all share. So the logic follows, the goal is not to hire people who simply have a skill set you need, the goal is to hire people who believe what you believe.

TiVo attempted to convince consumers to buy by telling them only WHAT the product did. Features and rational benefits. The practical-minded, technophobic mass market’s response was predictable. “I don’t understand it. I don’t need it. I don’t like it. You’re scaring me.” There were a small number of TiVo loyalists, probably about 10 percent, those

But we know that people often go out of their way, pay a premium or suffer an inconvenience to buy a product that resonates on a visceral level with them.

Even if the quality is superior, there is more to succeeding than just the product and the marketing.